PhDs from the Faculty's Perspective
cacm.acm.org
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I wish more "real world" managers believed in this principle.
Academics tend to want their students and post-docs to function independently. They don't have the money to hire "managers" (a.k.a. "people who boss other people around and don't contribute"), and therefore prize autonomy. It's not universal, but it's common. Even on large projects, there tend to be very few formal "managers" on a scientific team. The research organization tends to be flat, and the leaders are the people who produce.
When I first left grad school, I assumed that this sort of autonomy would be a prized commodity in the real world, but instead I've found that most businesses have a natural revulsion to independence. Politics, money and laziness conspire to produce a class of people who want mainly to exercise authority without doing much work. These folks are easily threatened, resort to micro-management to control situations that they don't understand, and generally just try to get in the way of any progress that occurs without their consent. It's a weird pathology of the commercial world, but I don't think I've ever encountered a professional manager who thought that his most effective role was "getting out of the way".
Also, Michael Lopp, aka rands of rands in repose seems to hold that philosophy.
Most new grad students drift for a while until they find their internal ass-kicker. The job of the "manager" is to help them find the thing that lets them excel, then get out of the way.
Most smart people carries an awful lot of weight in that sentence. And respect can be traded off against liking. Valve is an existence proof that this is a feasible mode of organisation but I would be surprised if it worked with a workforce that was not above average in intelligence, conscientiousness or both.
Perhaps the best way to close this column is with something I once heard attributed to Stu Card, a pioneer the field of human-computer interaction: "Grad school will be the best years of your life. Having said that, get out as soon as you can."
You will question yourself. You will envy your friends who've graduated from the program and are now working as a professor, or for Google or for MSR. You'll look around at all the new grad students and realize you don't know their names.
So the quote is right on. Enjoy your time, but get out as fast as you can. :-)
In regards to the article, yes. It hits all of the points that all grad students should understand. Especially the social part, which tends to be difficult when PhDs are known to be socially awkward. Hence Beer :D.
Re:Delirium, in my experience (Biology) Professors don't pay for their students tuition. That should be covered by the department for 3-5 years.
Very true.
I'd add: There is also a wide range of management styles of the profs. Some are hands-off (come back and see me in a month), others want hourly updates. The best ones dial their style upon recognizing which way the student works best.
So true! Each one of us is different. Personally, I love my freedom and ability to work at my own hours. My advisor always respects that and allows me to do so. He however adopts a different strategy for other students.
If the student isn't grant-funded, then yes, the prof isn't expected to pay them anything: the department will cover their tuition, and they'll work as a TA to earn their stipend. But at R1 universities it's nowadays expected that profs will fund at least a substantial proportion of their PhD students each year on RAships paid out of grant money.
The difference is not always obvious from the student perspective, though: when departments say they guarantee funding for 3 years, they just mean that somehow the student will be funded each year, not that the department will pick up the funding each year. The goal is to get the profs to pay for as much as possible out of grants, with departmental internal funding as a backstop.
It sounds very similar to Bio with the exception that the department typically has money for their students coming in(the best schools have training grants from NIH which cover incoming students). Tuition is always covered and is only up to the PI to pay when the student's departmental money runs out, but in practice, the dept. picks it up if the student TAs.
At good schools, students are encouraged (and in some cases, mandated) to submit a grant to NIH which covers their tuition/stipend and provides some travel money for conferences. That grant is really difficult to get, so most 3-6th year students are covered under their PIs grant, or they teach to cover tuition.
ALso, and I think this may apply to CS people, there are dissertation grants which give a small amount of cash (when I applied it was ~$15k) to improve a dissertation project. http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=13453 NSF has some really nice programs out there. I've been funded by them on 2 different occasions and I really like what they support.
"I came away from the presentation feeling quite embarrassed, pretty much the same way you feel after watching Ricky Gervais doing another one of his cringeworthy performances."
Oh, yeah.
In a sense, each lab is a small business, and I think this is exactly what needs to be taught to a new professor. It is a real shame that this isn't taught. People management, money management, and resource management are skills that some people, regardless of how brilliant they are, don't have. As it would in any business, these attributes ultimately lead to a lab that is run poorly. The really bad thing is that these labs continue to operate, which is a huge waste...especially when talking about federally funded labs.
downvote all you like, you ignorant fools (so ready with a cheap piece of cynicism). everyone i know cares deeply about their students. they're like surrogate kids.
In Comments
Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names.
...
Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you.
and frankly, i don't see why i should be civil to people who mindlessly accuse others of not caring about something that, in fact, is hugely important to them, just to appear cynically cool.
more generally, the problem with hn these days is not a lack of politeness; it is a lack of insight, depth and originality. read any thread here. this kind of cheap, cynical throw-away remark is the bland norm.
maybe you should find some authority figure saying "be smart and care" and try posting that? best of luck...
Individual faculty members care a lot for their individual grad students, and generally go out of their way to help them. They academic system as a whole (which is partially run by the faculty) treats them pretty poorly (long hours, way below market pay--often near the poverty line and largely without benefits that well educated professionals [which is what grad students are] would expect in any other job).
No one is saying that your partner is a bad person. They're saying that the system is a bad system.
Because it's the protocol here. Because it contributes negatively to the discussion. Because it makes you, and indirectly your point, look worse.
>it is a lack of insight, depth and originality
Perhaps your own bias is preventing you from understanding their perspective? You're not the only person here who knows someone in academia, there is a very wide range in the way professors deal with their students, especially across fields and departments.
Because civility is the foundation of civilization, i.e., society, even in the microcosm. If you disagree, consider how to carefully respond and present a reasonable argument. This is the stated standard for HN.
If you don't like the tone of discourse and feel it could have insight, depth, and originality, please add insight, depth, and originality, in a civil fashion.
er... "downvote all you like"?
That sort of remark in response to downmods (or the expectation thereof) is precisely what that line in the guidelines is about. But, if you insist you weren't "inviting", let's look at the next guideline up instead:
Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
"i don't see why i should be civil [...]"
Because the guidelines of this community ask that you be civil, and they don't say "oh, but feel free to ignore that bit if someone annoys you". Because fighting incivility with incivility is the path to flamewars. Because, if you don't like the behaviour an online community expects of its participants, you can either: leave, and make everyone involved happier; or: stick around, flout the local etiquette, and piss everyone involved off.
"more generally, the problem with hn these days [...] read any thread here. this kind of cheap, cynical throw-away remark is the bland norm."
Okay, let's take this submission by way of example. I see... exactly one "cheap, cynical throw-away remark", the very one you replied to -- and it's been modded down to near the bottom. That's the usual pattern I see: sure, there's a little vacuous snark, but it's far from the majority of comments, and it tends to get downmodded pretty hard.
Regardless, if you're so convinced that HN has such endemic problems -- well, my comment earlier "if you don't like the behaviour an online community expects of its participants ..." applies equally well to "if you don't like the discussions on an online community...".
"maybe you should find some authority figure [...]"
Oh, my post wasn't about invoking authority. They're guidelines, not rules. But nice job trying to paint me as a cowed bootlicker because I pointed out you were either unaware of or wilfully disregarding them.
[Edit: I forgot to mention that] One of the best examples of that is the Racket conspiracy: http://racket-lang.org/common-plt-app.html
I have my own favorite version of the joke ("Graduate school: Not just a job, it's an indenture!"), but the idea is pretty offensive and isn't especially relevant to anything I've seen.
[And yes, I'm sure I'm a great disappointment to Mohamed.]
I don't have any experience with fields that require a large laboratory of techs to get anything done, though. If you are in biology, physics, chemistry, or what-not, your mileage may vary.
That said, there are plenty of PIs who see grads and post-docs as nothing more than a revolving door of cheap labor. My comment may have been snarky and short, but I stand by the statement and don't apologize for it.
As a whole, academic science is a horribly backward place to work. In my field (biology), most grads stick around because of a misplaced sense of honor/duty/guilt.
"If you can't stay in science, you can't hack it! Now go finish that experiment over the weekend."
The ignorant fool is the one who thinks he has the right not to be offended by the truth. Or the one who generalizes from his personal interest.
You want to contest something, do it with actual fact and logic. Not name calling.
I'll wager that all the publish-or-perish, empire-building psychopath profs I've encountered more than average out all the profs you know.
Now postdocs, there's a deal: accomplished researcher who already has several degrees in the field and knows how to write papers and conduct experiments, available for ~$45-50k.
University professors are expected to advise, and see through graduation, their share of M.S. and Ph.D. students.
For "normal" faculty members (i.e. those not waving around Turing awards, Fields medals, and Nobels), the number and quality of Ph.D. students (where I'm from, Masters didn't count) the professor has advised is one of the most, if not the most, important prestige factors.
Getting grants and writing papers will get you tenure, but are significantly less important after you have it.
In areas with fewer DARPA-sized projects, students are definitely the best way to get major influence, though, since producing research progeny is a good way to spread ideas, general approaches to research, etc. It seems to be particularly the case in mathematics that certain mathematicians are influential in part because they mentored a substantial portion of a generation of researchers.
So, you can dedicate ~80% of your time to research as a paid employee of the university, including ~ 1.5 months paid leave including weekends, holiday money (8% of year income), 13th month (one month extra salary per year) and benefits (retirement fund, unemployment benefit).
I have just finished my thesis, and during the last four years I have felt as welcome and as much part of the staff as any other employee.
Most people doing things this way took 4 or 5 years rather than the 3 of full time PhD students - but at least you got a decent salary - not a bad trade off (not to mention the other perks of working on EU funded projects).
[Of course, some supervisors were good some were awful - I heard some horror stories from colleagues].
Downvotes away.
In the real world, a PhD has very little utility. If you're smart enough to get a PhD, you're smart enough to do something else that doesn't have 5 years of opportunity cost and a negative expected ROI. You might make important social contributions as a research engineer, but your employer owns them all anyway and you'll never see a dime of the value you add to the economy.
My brother graduated top of his undergraduate class at an Ivy with a BS in physics and two publications. He was leaning towards going into a PhD program, but I told him to do business/consulting/finance recruiting for his last summer in college instead of doing more research, just to see how he liked it. He did that, then went back full time, and has abandoned any plans to do a PhD. He is tremendously happy with the decision.