Slashdot Mirror
Faculty To Grad Students: Go Work 80-Hour Weeks!
New submitter Ian Paul Freeley writes "Controversy has erupted after a departmental email from faculty to astrophysics graduate students was leaked. Key tips for success in grad school include: 'However, if you informally canvass the faculty (those people for whose jobs you came here to train), most will tell you that they worked 80-100 hours/week in graduate school. No one told us to work those hours, but we enjoyed what we were doing enough to want to do so...If you find yourself thinking about astronomy and wanting to work on your research most of your waking hours, then academic research may in fact be the best career choice for you.' Reactions from astronomy blogs has ranged from disappointment to concern for the mental health of the students. It also seems that such a culture, coupled with the poor job prospects for academics, is continuing to drive talent away from the field. This has been recognized as a problem for over 15 years in the astronomy community, but little seems to have changed. Any tips for those of us looking to instigate culture change and promote healthy work-life balance?"
Astronomy students don't want reality checks, Romney doesn't want healthcare, and muslims get mad when you draw cartoons of Allah.
What's next, children don't want Santa?
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Don't pay your tuition, organize, demand change, (kids at my university went on hunger strikes). Not advocating this but sometimes that's the only way the Regents actually notice this bs.
This reminds me of the push 10 years ago to reduce the hours inflicted on med school students and residents.
Hasn't seemed to have made a huge difference in their workload, though.
This sounds shockingly similar to the (possibly still-ongoing, I'm not sure) controversy over 36-hour shifts for doctors. The only real justification is "We did it when we were young, so today's young'uns should do it too! Never mind what the data says!"
Everything is better with chainsaws.
It's not just a job; it's an indenture.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
I thought they were all already mentally ill to begin with.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
i hear the stock market is like modelling the galaxy
Quit slacking and get back to work!
Most of us with degrees and skills usually put in more than 40 hours a week in our work. We do it because we enjoy the work, the pay is good, and our employers give us time off when we want it. Besides, it doesn't mean your stuck behind a desk for 10-12 hours a day. Many of us take our work on the go, or do some of it from home.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I guess most people just don't like to hear that some of us enjoy our careers enough that it is one of our primary hobbies. I easily spend 60-80 hours working on some software development related task (even if it is just reading a book), and I don't consider myself overworked.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Get a real job....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
My wife is finishing grad school with a PhD and getting the hell out of Dodge. She's already found a job related to science/academia in her field that pays more and has better benefits than anything she could expect as a post-doc or assistant professor. It's a stable job where she can see clear career advancement over the coming years. This as opposed to an academic career where she wouldn't have much say in what part of the country she ended up and would have to work like crazy (publish or perish is so true) in an attempt to maybe get tenure 15+ years down the road.
Not to mention that more than a few of her advisers and colleagues have been having serious funding issues. She's in a field where lots of funding comes from the NIH and they're cutting back like crazy. It's not a very good climate right now.
Look, the rule of thumb for non-science is 2 hours study for every credit, plus the time spent in labs and classes.
Which is only 60 hours.
The rule for science is 3 hours study for every credit, or 4 hours study for every credit in Law or Engineering.
Double majors add 25 percent.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Unfortunately, any beefing up of labor regulations and vacation time would be decried as socialism, so the only thing you can do is find a company that has a good work-life balance. Those are rare however and anyone in IT will tell you it has been that way for some time.
Any tips for those of us looking to instigate culture change and promote healthy work-life balance?
I'm probably missing something somewhere, but the glaring response to that would be "Don't work 80 hours a week". I'm not entirely sure ANYTHING whatsoever can be done unless that first step is taken.
"It also seems that such a culture, coupled with the poor job prospects for academics, is continuing to drive talent away from the field."
Good. That's what is supposed to happen. The truth is we don't have a need for a large number of astronomers. If we did then there would be more job prospects. Since we don't have the need, it's good that talent is being driven to other fields where there is greater need. Those who love astronomy so much that they can't work anywhere else and are willing to put in the long hours - those people can still work in astronomy. Those less committed can go make themselves more useful elsewhere. Supply and demand is not just a good idea, it's the law.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
When your lab is often only open from midnight to 6AM, you might find yourself saying "screw it" and just staying at the office overnight. The solution to this isn't to tell the grad students to get used to it; it's to encourage them to keep better track of their hours, and if they've hit 40+ by Thursday night, go ahead and take a three day weekend. They've done their time for the school at that point.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
This is not limited to Astrophysics. I know a lot of students (both, grad and PhD) that work basically 'round the clock, from fields as diverse as bio-chemistry, materials science and computer science. I'm hesitant to call this even call this a problem. What few realize at the beginning of their academic career is that science is actually a lot like sports: it is constant competition. It's all about who can discover/prove/engineer the next milestone first. There is no such thing in science as a runner-up. Those who come in second, are the first to be scooped. Period.
Now, why do we work crunchtime in science? That's the difference to sports: our brain is our muscle, and that doesn't get sore -- provided sufficient sleep (5-6h sleep is sustainable), nutrition (sugar!), and the occasional reset. Working longer hours gets you faster to the results, gives you better chances of publishing. May sound sick to outsiders, but the truth is, that getting a paper out is highly addictive. In a way we're all hooked on achievement.
Computer simulation made easy -- LibGeoDecomp
This (yet another edition of "Winner Take All" or maybe "Let's Eat our Young" or maybe "@#$% It ... This Country Is Toast ... I'm Gonna Get Mine While the Gettin' Is Good") is so 2012 it hurts.
I remember a time in college when I was working 64 hours a week and carrying a load of 12 hours, half of it comp sci. The trick there was to find at least one BS job in there (typically graveyard shift) where you could do your homework and, hopefully, another large company job that kicks educational benefits in for a least a class or two a semester.
Tough? Yes. Would I do it again? Speaking from a zero-debt, never unemployed (unless I wanted to be) point of view - it was the best thing I could have done in my early 20s.
I did some consulting for a company years ago. Some of their top employees worked 4 day weeks as a reward for function points delivered and bugs not delivered. One guy generated enough that he could have worked 2 day weeks (but didn't) and still held the top position on the leaderboard (ranked weekly). The top 3 employees were not gaming the system they were just really good; their total points were a huge multiple of the bottom 20 employees. Then the company brought on a new manager (a lawyer) who said this simply couldn't stand. He eliminated the days off and the top 5 employees all quit right after lunch. I left a few months later when they were getting slower and slower paying my invoices and then poof they were gone. This was after the previous year of 20 million in revenue generating around 6 million in profits. Those top guys had started a new company doing this crazy new thing (iPhone app development) got bought out for about 5 to 7 mil a tiny bit less than a year later.
What I did involved coming in at random times of the day. I can remember was that the worst employees were the ones sweating the long hours. Then after the lawyer came in those same guys were singled out for their dedication and hard work.
Oh the lawyer unsuccessfully tried suing them after their success.
While producing your thesis!
Watch faculty position offered to applicant from China or India!
Win!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
As a code addict, I see nothing wrong with doing what you love +80hrs per week. Last I checked I was at ~108 hours per week of coding, it's what I do for fun & profit and I've been doing it since age 8 -- If people want to pay me for doing it, well that's just awesome. (repeat sentence with subject as: sex/masturbation, shopping, drugs, etc. instead of code until you "get it").
I talked to a girl the other day who works in the mortgage industry managing compliance with government regulations in 50 states... I felt bad for her because her job actually feels like Work, and mine feels like poetry/pool/hide&seek/sculpture... Anything but "work", sure at times it's tedius but I could say the same about HO scale train sets. If you feel as passionate about astronomy as I do about writing code, go for it! Don't let them keep you from "working"!
Clearly, the point being expressed there is that people who love the field so much *choose* to devote those types of hours.
Now, perhaps this was an indirect way of letting students know that they're *expected* to devote those hours, or that if they don't, they're likely to be out-competed. But taking the words at face value, it's saying that if you really love astronomy, you may find yourself spending hours like that.
If you're a grad student who isn't comfortable with that, then don't do it. It's up to you to decide if that means the field isn't for you.
I've known enough grad students (and Ph.D'ed people) to know that's how they enjoy their time.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I found links to "Science Coffee" and "Journal Club" here.
Though it sounds insane, they probably left out the some important details. When I was a mathematics graduate student, I too spent a LOT of time thinking about mathematics -- a lot of it was for fun. Did I spend 80 hours a week thinking about mathematics? Probably not, but likely close. However, it was not as though I locked myself up in a room and had someone from the real world slide slices of pizza underneath the door so that I could do mathematics. A lot of theoretical science happens in one's mind, and that can be done anywhere, anytime. On the other hand, you could not do this if your job was to be a surgeon or pilot -- it's not the same. Mind you, all that thinking does get exhausting even if only mentally. However, if you want to ever be a "star" in anything -- sports, medicine, mathematics, etc -- you have to "practice" (i.e. put in extra time). Maybe 80+ hours per week is a bit much, but it is not completely impossible in some areas of study. Of course, you could just go the "average" route and still be "ok" in the end.
I was not a grad student in astrophysics, I was Electrical/Computer Systems Engineering, but I can attest that those hours DO have a detrimental effect on the mental health of the grad students. It happened to me. My work schedule was basically around the clock seven days a week. I was under a lot of pressure from school/work (same thing for me in those days) and from general lack of money. I was in a bad mood most of the time and my relationships soured. I began to feel isolated. I wasn't sleeping. My health started to suffer in a few areas, culminating in a hospital stay when I got mono and tried to work through it. Finally I had a run-in with the police that almost escalated to an arrest. I did still have to go to court for excessive traffic tickets. I had a mental breakdown. The next week my adviser came in and told me to write up my thesis and get out of there. It was a dark time.
Anyway, that letter coming from the school is very, very disappointing. I feel sorry for the students in that program that must now bear that extra pressure.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Yes, get another profession. There aren't enough astronomy jobs to go around, so if you can't keep up with the rest of the pack then as far as labs, schools, and other employers are concerned you're in the wrong field. 9-5 jobs can only exist in fields where labor has the upper hand, and in the case of academia where there's enough funding to afford adequate staffing. Neither of these apply to astronomy - especially the part about funding - which is why the 80 hour week is common as it's the only way to get enough work done.
Go blue! (That's my boy, blue)
Hourly wage. Keeps management at bay.
The critic is misquoting and badly criticizing the original poster. Seriously, it is shocking how this is being torn apart as a result of poor criticizm by slashdot. If you read the letter, the letter is not coming across as being arrogant or demeaning and it might be reasonably sincere. Having done enough astrophysics to realise that it is no trivial physics or mathematical field, I do believe that having passion for any subject will allow you to surpass your peers. This is obvious stuff.
If you love programming, you will work at work during work, and work on home projects at home. Hell, you might just work on work until the coke/coffee runs out. Either way, passion is a significant advantage in any field. Obvious stuff... Enter the free market and someone is going to be better off.
I think the trick is 'do what makes you happy', and 'dont let someone abuse you'.
I would imagine that this started the same way long hours started in any research setting. That the only way to get data was to sit there and record each point or record by hand on paper with manually adjusted equipment. With modern computer controlled equipment the 16 hour shift of recording data everyday is no longer needed, but as the people who run research programs now are the one's who did it by hand and they think that sort of time input is required to get good data.
Guess who's gonna be soylent green in a few years! Bitch!
So, Mr(s). Tenured Professor, how many hours a week do you work for that $200,000 salary?
sudo make me a sandwich
Seems to me one could spend 80-100 hours a week trying to instigate culture change...
I have a micro PhD and have worked as faculty in Sweden and now Germany. Hey folks ... it's extremely competitive and 80-100/h weeks are the norm. Your output is measured in volume (number of papers, talks and posters) and you need to be working that often just to physically write/travel/talk/present often enough to keep up. In addition, not only do you need to produce high volume, it better be top-notch quality.
As far as salary goes, after PhD (at least in Europe) it's quite good. Postdocs start at €40k and can easily negotiate €60k with the standard 6-8 weeks of holidays (which do get used by most people that I know.) Currently, I am flirting with Professorship offers at major unis in the US right now and it seems that going rate is $8-10k/month gross salary and most universities cover the 9 months that you teach, which leaves your first grant to covers the last three ... so you're looking at $96-120k/year in the US and a job where you're essentially not subject to being fired (tenured). It's not that bad of a gig. Sure, consultants make more (on both sides of the pond), but do you really want to do that?
Go fuck yourself.
We don't enjoy 80 hour work weeks that we get paid a small stipend from.
You had a bad teacher or something then, I enjoyed the hell out of my compiler class in my CS degree.
I would also rate a compiler class as one of the things more practical in later work experience, as off and off I have actually used LEX/YACC for real work related projects.
In a degree that can be really abstract at times, understanding compilers well has a clear value that will last you quite a long time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My last two semesters in grad school (Computer Science) saw me spending about 16 hours a day in the lab, usually six days out of the week. Occasionally I wouldn't even go home to sleep. I would pass out for a couple hours on the floor and get back to work. Sometimes someone would kinda nudge me and say "Hey we've got a tour coming through, can you go sleep somewhere else?"
Ended up having a complete mental break one night, after reading a story about a guy who's Mom had died and he found a bunch of gifts from her in Animal Crossing.
All this while being paid $650/mo for a "20-hour a week" job, when my apartment cost $475/mo... After all that, all I have to show for it is 200% more debt than when I finished my bachelors, and a "two years equivalent experience" added to my resume when I got my first job.
Don't get me wrong, I still think it was worth it, but you probably have to be a special kinda stupid and/or have Stockholm Syndrome to do something like that...
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Name the actual academy, or you are just an internet troll.
Other than in school vs in-work, the pressure to work a lot of hours is the same. I just heard my CEO say "just because it's time to go doesn't mean you shouldn't". When will bean counters learn that more hours do not mean more productivity or more results? When will bean counters realize that work, especially brain aka thinking work can be done in the shower, or on the drive home or after a break playing xbox?
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
There is a difference between enjoying it and needing to do it in order to be successful.
... so you went into Astrophysics. Obviously what you really should have been into as a kid was getting your ass kicked every day at recess, because that's more the reality of this profession.
It's COD'S MINOCH!
If anybody thinks that they will be in academy for a nice simple life, they are dead wrong. Yes, you have to put in 80-100 hrs/week esp. until about age 40. After that, you can coast and do 50 or so. And yes, the work SHOULD be on your mind constantly.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
People estimating how much or how hard they worked a decade ago, or even in the past week is unfortunately akin to asking a dude the size of his penis. That is to say you'll hear an awful lot of people comparing themselves favorably to John Holmes, and very few accurate estimates.
Welcome to the real world.
Yes there is. In the cases I've seen, it's been both. They have said, if you don't enjoy it, do something else, because you keep doing it, even after you are a grad student.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
>Last I checked I was at ~108 hours per week of coding
Last I checked you was a liar. Math does not add : ...) and to read /. (really time consuming)
108 / 7 ~= 15.4 h of work by day
24-15.4 = 8.6 h left for natural needs (sleeping, feeding, cleaning,
A reading for you :
http://www.occupational-psychology.com/2011/01/presenteeism-in-the-workplace-reviewed/
This is a hilarious letter written in the same vein as the old chemistry one.
http://hardass-6owwz.posterous.com/listen-up-you-whiny-bitches
To quote Dan Truman "beg'n your pardon sir, but it's a big-ass sky"
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0053372/quotes
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Last I checked I was at ~108 hours per week of coding, it's what I do for fun & profit and I've been doing it since age 8
This sounds accurate for a /. reader.
I talked to a girl the other day
Ok, now I know you're full of sh*t.
If you are not passionate about what you are doing, why are you doing it? Find something you are passionate about, and do that instead.
Most astronomy and physics undergraduates have to put in 60-80 hours a week throughout at least the last two years of their degrees. If you survive that and still want to go to grad school in the field, you're probably already quite familiar with work week.
Students to Factulty: Take your cushy, non deserved, tenure and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.
>Last I checked I was at ~108 hours per week of coding, ...tick...tick...tick...
Don't feel too bad when things hit the fan; everyone else thinks they're indestructible when they're young too.
Most, not all, but a LOT of kids today coming out of college, especially those with MBA's, somehow have the idea with NO experience, they should start off at $100,000.00, couple weeks vacation and more and more perks. How about proving yourself first? Putting in just the minimum hours isn't cutting it. I look for those who come in early, stay late.
Any tips for those of us looking to instigate culture change and promote healthy work-life balance?
You won't change the system from the outside. Therefore you must subvert it:
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
80 to 100 hrs/week. ok. everyone here on salary run 60 to 80 hour weeks in the office. thats not including time at home with the blackberry in hand to find out what the crisis is this hour. And lets discuss the times Im on "vacation" i.e. spending 30 hours on planes and in airports to get to some third world country that is 12 time zones off home. you spend all day doing the job your there for then go answer emails till you fall asleep. and people wonder why I piss off a couple hours a day on /.
Congrats on having an obsessive personality, most people are not so single minded. We have multiple interests but it would still be nice if someone could participate in a field without having to be a monomaniac.
Great discoveries rarely come from those who do not
live for their work.
15.5 hours a day, 7 days a week and still finds time to post on /.
The professors want you to do their research for them, so they can publish it in a journal. So they come up with these requirements that you sit around and do their menial labor for them.
Here's an idea - either accept that in grad school, you're your professor's bitch, or get out there and get a real job, and confine your research to your free time. Of course, if you aren't attached to a university no journal will publish your findings (no matter how interesting) but no longer do researchers have to lick the right asshole and get published in a $180 / issue journal that's only actually read by a couple dozen people. Just throw your data up on the web.
I hope you all learned something about academia today.
Sweatshop university administrators are even worse than sweatshop factory managers because they pretend that they are your benefactors.
They are your enemy and should be treated as such.
50 years ago our schools were both cheaper and better because pay went to teachers instead of the infestation of administrative parasites. The same goes for hospitals.
No one is telling anyone to go work 80-100 hrs/week, what they are really talking about is this: If person A _loves_ what they're doing so much so that they're willing to _voluntarily_ put in a lot of extra time into it (because they love it and can't get enough of it), whereas person B can't wait to finish with the task so they can get on with other (better) things in life, then the odds of person A succeeding in that field is astronomically (get it?) better than person B.
This is a well written and funny letter: http://hardass-6owwz.posterous.com/listen-up-you-whiny-bitches
What I have seen in graduate students is lots of inability to concentrate and make good decisions on top of exhaustion and insomnia. I have seen months spent going down the wrong track because of an inability to think clearly. I have seen late nights spent fixing things that were messed up due to tiredness. I have seen students who can't get anything done in the lab because they hate grad school and can't enjoy doing anything else because they feel that they should be in the lab.
Want proof? Look at how many graduate theses start with a 100-page literature review, covering material which is well known and not particularly important to the real research. The appropriate material would be 15 pages and lots of references. That review represents many months of wasted energy and probably lots of 80 hour weeks accomplishing nothing of value.
Well, I do have to say times have changed. I am a new professor, and I just graduated my first own graduate student. We are in a field-based science, and to do a masters degree in two years, the first summer has to be dedicated to field work (and some lesser amounts of lab work), and the second year is for the majority of lab work followed by write up. The student was upset that it took an extra semester over two years to complete their masters degree. Then again, the student had really comfortable working hours, and throughout the year maintained 9-5 for academic/research work, and the rest of the day for non-academic personal time. Weekends were off-limits, too, they were also for personal time. Almost every holiday, the student's helicopter parents flew the student back to visit from vacation start to vacation end. And the first summer that should have been dedicated to field work, well, that was six weeks of vacation with the family, another few weeks putzing around, and finally just two weeks dedicated to field work. It was no surprise to me that the student would have trouble finishing in two years, and we discussed it several times. But the student's attitude was that they were dedicating plenty of time to grad work. Sorry, wrong, not the case--grad school does require a huge amount of time. I think the departmental e-mail that is the focus of this thread is not off at all--it is direct and upfront about expectations.
About 15 years ago I worked with a guy that had a PhD in Astrophysics from MIT. I asked him why the hell he was working where we were and not out in his field. He replied that his GPA was very high, but it wasn't perfect. He said "You don't get astrophysics related jobs without a perfect GPA. Every math geeks dream is to be an astrophysicist." So the field is literally flooded with perfect GPA, willing to work for peanuts, 100hr work week people. It's really hard to beat that and he said that after he realized what it was going to be like he just gave up and did it as a hobby instead. I guess he could have been full of shit, but he certainly knew about Math and astronomy. Enough to completely blow my mind.
If there are 10 jobs available, and 100 people qualified for those jobs, and 80 of those are willing to work 100hrs+/week to get it... that pretty much makes it mandatory. Do you think heterosexual male porn-stars bitch about the hours?
...in the proper sense of the word.
Work-life balance is important when you cut your life off in order to work. For those people who feel comfortable sacrificing their own lives to do someone else's bidding for money, then sure balancing that with spending the money is important, and 80 hours in a week is way too much.
But those of us who feel that cutting out a part of my life just to make money is completely absurd in the first place, and that 10 hours per week is equally way too much, choose instead to convince others to pay us for our hobbies. In that way, we never work a day in our lives.
In this case, astronomy faculty are looking for the latter. And they've stated, quite clearly, that they are willing to pay astronomy enthusiasts to enjoy life -- with all of the equipment and resources available.
So quit complaining. Start by quitting the job that you clearly hate. Figure out what you actually enjoy doing (that contributes something of value to someone) and get paid for it.
Everything from raising children to painting counts. There is an endless supply of hobbies that pay. Gardening counts too. Raising fish, breeding jellyfish, driving just about any type of vehicle.
Why'd you ever choose a job that wasn't something you already enjoyed doing?
To improve work / life balance, just do all your astronomy during regular business hours.
the pay is good
Not in graduate school; I get paid less than the custodial staff at my school (and in this "right to work" state, they are not really getting paid much).
our employers give us time off when we want it
Some professors demand that their grad students never go on vacation, or threaten them if they dare to do so.
The number of people who drop out of graduate school is staggeringly high, even at second and third tier schools, despite that fact that most PhD students believe that any work other than research constitutes a personal failure. There is a reason for that: whatever goals people have going in to the program start to seem less and less worth it as they endure the treatment that is typical in graduate school. Some professors think this is a good thing, because it "weeds out" the people who "can't handle the demands of research," which is ironic since professors take vacations and have days off. This situation is made worse by "publish or perish," since some professors shift the publishing load to their graduate students so that they can have more free time (usually for things that have nothing to do with research or teaching, like taking vacations with their families, pursuing a side business, etc.).
Palm trees and 8
no actually there is not. you need to do it and you need to enjoy it in order to be successful, where successful means you have risen to PhD level of accomplishment. if you dont do it you wont be successful, if you dont enjoy it you wont do it (or will do it poorly) and again will not be successful.
...is not going to damage your mental health. If you are watching the clock you don't belong in grad school. Go learn to weld.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
With good students "No one told us to work those hours" is the overriding factor. Good students are so interested in learning and the opportunity afforded to them that they naturally work long hours.
This applies to pretty well every science PhD program in the states. You suffer for less than minimum wage for many years and then you get tortured more when you want to finish.
Of course,many grad students in the US are union-represented. Unfortunately like in pretty much every other industry in this country, the unions have pretty well no power over anything. If you're really lucky your union will negotiate a 5% discount on parking for you in comparison to what visitors are paying for the same space - though you'll still be parking 5 times further from the lab than your PI and paying 4 times his rate for that privilege.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I am a grad student in a highly-ranked institution in history, not astronomy, but this sounds similar to my experience. The commandment floating around but never voiced is that you should have a couple hours of free time a day at most, if you are going to be one of those who get a good job. Since this is not medicine and demand for history academics remains low and sometimes even shrinks as more and more people enter grad school, no forces exist to moderate this workload, only to increase it in ever more intense competition with your peers.
But at least the work is enjoyable.
I was a medical student at a premier Canadian medical school in Montreal. I was working in the hospitals about 120 hours a week for several months when I withdrew due to stress induced emotional problems and fear of harming patients. In addition to work time in the hospital I was studying another 20+ hours a week. In restrospect, it is a shame that the administration (the decision makers of which are all doctors themselves) of the medical school, which should have known more than any other administration what the impact of excessive work hours would be, could so abuse students. My situation was not unique, except that I had alternatives to continuing in the program and withdrew. I am saddened now to think how many of my fellow students came to talk to me, when they learned I was withdrawing, and said that they wished they too could withdraw.
Large corporations and bureaucracies (more than a few people - small teams are less distinct from the members) are amoral and sociopathic entities. They should not be trusted to manage the lives of people. They should not be trusted. Rather, they should be subject to rigorous scrutiny and control.
I can tell you the 80 hour weeks aren't really the worst part. I just calculated my actual wage this afternoon (before reading this, actually). My take home pay - and I pay very little in taxes as a grad student - is around $700 for a two-week check. If I was working only 40 hours a week, that would put my wage around $8.75 per hour. I happen to be in a state where minimum wage is $7.25. Of course, my average week is more like 60 hours actually in the lab, which puts my wage closer to $5.83 per hour. If you include the 20 hours I spend doing work at home, my wage plummets to $4.38.
The school I work for gets away with this by claiming that we work "30 hour weeks" - which is of course complete and utter bullshit - which allows them to claim to be paying us $11.67. Thankfully we get health, (really terrible) dental, and (mediocre) vision insurance with our "30 hour weeks". Don't even think about asking for an FSA, life insurance, or any kind of 401(k) or other retirement account - even though some of us are around longer than the average stay of a junior faculty at our institution.
Here's a clever idea. Double your hiring efforts so each chump works only 40. WOW such a idea. Not only will you help the recession but you will have twice te workforce. Trust me, universities can handle the cost. They are nothing but successful business with you (the student) being the sucker to buy in.
"No one told us to work those hours, but we enjoyed what we were doing enough to want to do so"
Wise Words. Figure out what you like and do it. Do it a lot. Do well at it. Do well by it. People who dedicate themselves to accomplishing things tend to do better than those who just put in their time. 40 hours a week does not cut it. Don't be a slacker.
When I was young and just discovered computers, I taught myself to program and then started to program professionally. In those days, late teens/early 20s, I prolly put in 80-100 hours on a computer. Figure 50 hours work, 10 hours school (work full time, college part time), and the rest of my free time programming my TRS-80. I was "working" a lot of hours, but considered it playtime.
The thing was, my boss expected 40 hours a week from me, was very flexible in letting me go to a class or two in the middle of the day, and was very supportive.
When I hit my 30's I'd gotten my BS, was a couple generations removed from my TRS80, wasn't as passionate about it, but my boss suddenly expected 50 hour weeks without caring about my outside life.
Now that I'm in my 50s idle time is 45 hrs/week, when things are happening it goes to 50 and tops out there. I've realized anything past 50 hours a week is counter productive. First, my code sux when I'm tired. Second, my resentment skyrockets and, the more I resent my job, the more time I spend thinking of sticking pins into voodoo dolls of my boss than I do coding. So my ass is in the chair, but my brain is in the cloud.
You tend to be all gung-ho about shit and are all gung-ho to get it done NOW! Then after a couple of years of that, when the system has sucked them dry, it will toss their desiccated husks aside and start sucking the new batch of grad students dry! It's the circle of life!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
In 1840, a carpenter by the name of Samuel Parnell took a decision that effectively created the default assumption of an eight-hour working day for an entire country.
Read up on how he did it. It is, ironically, a lot of work.
Sorry to be political, but wanted to point out that conservatives use examples like these to argue for conservatism. It is a known fact that Universities are completely dominated by liberals and democrats. The university is their opportunity to create the environment of their dreams. And what do they create? A system where a few people at the top make really good money while working very few hours. Meanwhile, the people at the bottom work huge hours for little or no money.
A system where a few people at the top make really good money while working very few hours. Meanwhile, the people at the bottom work huge hours for little or no money.
Do you have any idea what you are talking about? The notion of "people at the top make really good money while working very few hours" is utter bullshit, unless you are talking about the executives in charge of universities who are more likely to be business (conservative) types than science (liberal) types. And the executives at major universities are, with few exceptions, being paid far less than the football and basketball coaches at the same schools. The vast majority of actual teaching and research faculty work very long hours every day for the kind of money that business execs in this country would laugh at.
Active faculty members not only are working full days at least 5 days a week, they are also spending most of their time at home working on grant applications and publications so they can keep their jobs.
In other words, what you said is utter bullshit.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Quit. Go get an MBA, you'll get paid better.
my I assure you that all cases of mental illness in physics students are both pre-existing and necessary for admittance.
I took an astronomy course in college and the professor was kind enough to point out that we would never see an astronomer wanted posting in the help wanted ads. The number of positions for astronomers other than teachers is a small handful per year and we have lots of young people getting PH.ds in astronomy. In a climate with a severe over supply of post doctoral grads unable to ever hope of working in the field you need to know going in that you had best be a prodigy, expected to work brutal hours without making errors and live like monk sworn to poverty as your pay check will be really tiny on top of your other woes. It is similar to "poets wanted". You might be whiz kid in all aspects of poetry but your chances of starvation are probably all the worse for your degree of expertise.
Find a way to put potatoes in the pot that are tasty and cheaper than ever before or a softer toilet paper and you might get rich. Intelligence is its own punishment.
There will always be someone who is willing to work harder then you and someone who is willing to work as little as possible. In the middle reside everyone else. Your accolades will depend on hard work and a little bit of luck. You can pass legislation preventing you from being required to work 80 hours a week, but its not going to stop that overacheiver we all hate from doing it. I learned this early on. First I worked my 40 and went home to my family and hobbies. Then I started working my ass off, 80 hour weeks, 100 hour weeks and even a 120 here and there where I ate at my desk and didn't sleep for three days straight. What did I gain? I gained EXPERIENCE. I didn't gain the approval of my employer who only cared about a deadline, I didn't gain the approval of my coworkers who worried I made them look bad. I certainly didn't gain the approval of the client who only sees total hours and not distribution. When you work 80 hours a week you gain experience faster than those who work 40. It's an investment. My long weeks are why I am now self-employed with a business that nearly runs itself. No magical "start your own business" scheme did it, no accolades or friends with money contributed in any way. It was purely experience and only experience, I have more of it because I worked harder. I got smarter faster because of the time I put in.
Go in for some line of work that doesn't involve 80-hour grad school due to the competition?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A wise man once said, "If you're good at something, never do it for free."
So, Mr(s). Tenured Professor, how many hours a week do you work for that $200,000 salary?
There are virtually no tenured professors in the US being paid that much. Whoever wrote that comment is pulling number out of their ass to push their misinformed agenda. The only people at most universities who are paid at that level are top executives (who don't teach or conduct research, and should not be called professor) or sports coaches.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I guess in any field of research if you don't enjoy it, doing all the work, getting the funding, grinding the academic details for publishing, etc. is hard to do. It is not like the big money is there for the motivation either. So yeah, you would need to enjoy it, be good at it, and this can easily associate to working long times around the day. Still, don't know how much of the joy stays there for doing it after years and years, especially as success is not guaranteed and it is difficult to change much of your focus if you feel like doing a bit different research. In my (limited) CS research experience there is a good chance of this, and at least some options are good to have and looking back it would be nice to have at least enjoyed the time spent.. :)
no one says that you are entitled to any specific standard of living.
My family's sweat and blood, spilled in the defense of this great nation, says differently. My family has not held the funerals we have held to watch this nation's manufacturing base handed over to the very thugs our previous generation just got through fighting.
Not only is taking advantage of an exploited labor market immoral, since handing money to our sworn enemies is pretty much the definition of treason as well.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
You may think you're doing awesome but at 108hours a week I wonder just how many hidden bugs there are in your code.
Study after study has been done regarding this and for the vast majority of the population anything over about 6 hours a day and you start making mistakes and productivity slows.
People that are sleep deprived are just as dangerous as and impaired as drunk drivers. Worse still is that they don't even realize how bad they are.
I am a physicist. I published a lot of nice papers in grad school, and sometimes I worked really long hours. Those two things are correlated.
Note that I did not say I always worked long hours. When you need to stay at work to babysit something (an experiment or observation), then do so. When you don't need to be at work, go do something else. You will be LESS effective working as much as you can, all the time. Good science requires creativity, not drudge work. The professors want results. They have no training in management and no interest in it either.
If you really want to see a culture change, don't get a PhD. Research funding pays for grad students, not staff scientists. Don't think that you'll be immune to this. Part of my job is to help the government manage research funding. Even when the economy is good, the government can't justify spending money on one professional when the same amount can get us 3-4 grad students (each working free overtime, right?). Think about what that means.
As long as grad students are happy working for peanuts, the system will continue. The accountants are merciless.
Let's get it straight, if you do it for the hypothetical job of your dream you might get in return, you're doing it wrong. If you're not enjoying what you do, no matter it's only 40hrs a week or 72 (6 days at 12hrs), you're not doing the right thing.
Back when I was doing my M.Sc and PhD, we all used to work around 70 hrs a week, sometimes more (conferences deadlines for instance), sometimes less. It wasn't bad or unhealthy at all, because all of those who did this enjoyed what they did. Indeed, sometimes it wasn't the heavy workload, it was that you just could not stop doing something related to the field. Now that I'm associate professor, it still happens a lot that I get weeks of more than 70hrs of work at the lab. I still enjoy it. I still grab a recent paper to read and annotate on Sunday evening. Is that work too?
Ask yourself the question, how many hour do professional musicians work? Probably more than 80. Science is not so different from art, in the sense that you do something that truly brings you pleasure. What is the point of doing it less, when you can do it more?
Sometimes I'm saying this to the students who complain there is too much work. I'm available from 8 in the morning till 8 in the evening, and I answer email until 11, so if you have a problem, I'd be happy to take an hour or 2 to re-explain something or to try to solve your problem. If you're not willing to spend these 2 hours, then you're probably not doing the right studies. There is no secrecy, if you want to learn something, you have to spend a lot of time on it. So you'd better enjoy it.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
One of the problems with your statement is that it isn't 80 hours/week of "astronomy." It's 80 hours of astronomy*, classes you don't necessarily want to take, homework, studying, teaching, tutoring, group meetings, safety meetings, department meetings, hiring committee meetings, thesis advisory meetings, seminars, faculty interviews, writing, poster design for conferences, conferences, lab cleaning, fixing the instrument the undergrad broke, fixing the instrument damaged by the leak in the lab above your lab, evacuating the building because the fucking fire alarm keeps getting set off by the HV experiments in the physics lab, and department "fun nights" that you're required to be at for the sake of "fostering intra-departmental communication" or some BS, even if you don't like going to the bar and watching the football/basketball team lose (which they inevitably do). Oddly enough, these outings never occur outside of football/basketball season.
*This describes my chemistry grad school life, but I suspect it applies pretty closely to astronomy, as well.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
That stuff all gets done while code is compiling!
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Man up, Nancy? I worked 80-100 hours per week when I was in school, too. Expect to continue the practice if you want to teach. That's just the way the system is designed right now.
I suspect that the system hasn't changed too much since the early 1800s.
80 hr weeks at (Ph.D.-level) grad school seemed to be the norm in the late 80s when I was playing the game. Some research advisors were up front stating that anything less than 75 hours/week was considered a bad work ethic. They considered it "paying one's dues" I suspect. Grad students have been, continue to be and probably will be for the forseeable future - indentured servents. The system has no reason to change: There is no shortage of cheap labor (Ph.D.-seeking graduate students willing to sell a portion of their lives for the degree).
There was an obvious discontinuity however: These same advisors, the tenured ones at least, who also taught both undergrad and graduate classes were frequently out of the office, missing office hours, cancelling appointments for "business" and taking lengthy sabbitacals to exoitic places, so I found the lectures about "work ethic" to ring hollow. The untenured faculty were still putting in 80 hour weeks, just like their grad students.
Did you end up getting the date with the girl you talked to?
Progress has typically been born out of extreme devotion by highly driven individuals. It's just that instead of hiding that fact some administrator finally stated that it is what it takes to be successful.
Fuck "getting ahead". Getting ahead is living the life you want.
I heard a great quote once. Success is getting what you want but happiness is wanting what you get.
Before the 80 hour/week restriction, surgical residents used to average over 100 hours/week. I did that for 5 years learning how to be a specialized surgeon, and hit up to 130 hours a few times
There is that much to learn.
The average person does not need 9 hours/night of sleep - 6 to 8 I'd say yes, but there are many very driven people in doctorate fields, and many who just aren't like other people.
I typically need about 4-5 hours/night, and have been doing that for 25 years. Some people just don't need that much.
..........FULL STOP.
A friend of mine had a tee shirt he wore while working on his Ph.D. It said, "I am a grad student, I am used to abuse". This was in the 70s.
At 108 hours per week it is indeed impressive that a girl talked to you, given that you are working 15.4 hours per day, which leaves exactly 8.6 hours for eating, sleeping, bathing and commuting.
To summarize, people who are great successes in any endeavor really have put in awesome hours. But putting in awesome hours is not how you become successful. From the point of view of someone who has no particular skills, putting in awesome hours might get me some overtime pay, but it will never make me successful. I have better things to do than go to work, but none of those things will ever pay the rent, so I put in enough time (40 hours a week) on some job I can do well enough. Then I have enough money and leisure to do some of the things I want to do. I'll bet this is the situation of the majority of people in any country. A crowd of achievers talking to each other will never take this into account, so the discussion will go nowhere.
Many of the posters here are, unsurprisingly, completely full of shit.
I'm a PhD student in one of the very top CS departments (think "Google"). Nobody I know works even close to 80 hour weeks consistently. When there's a paper deadline, sure, you put in a lot of extra hours, but the rest of the time this is unnecessary and would not be productive over the long run. In my lab, which is full of successful students all on track to graduate on schedule, I sincerely doubt that anyone averages more than 55 hours a week.
It's important to note that as students we have a lot of vacation time and I find that many take maximum advantage of it. For instance, my lab basically shuts down for 2-3 weeks around Christmas. Many will take that entire block of time off. Perhaps graduate students work longer hours than most when we're on, but then we can have quite a bit of off time as well to balance it out. The amount of time we work per week is extremely variable. I can't even imagine how people come up with weekly time estimates given this variability.
I've seen "statistics" here claiming that EE faculty are supposed to average 65 hours per week and expect successful students to put in similar hours. I suspect that this number is also a bit bullshitty and yet it's still a far cry from 80. I've heard extremely successful graduates in my program quote 65 as well, but their analogues at the undergraduate school I came from quoted 55 - and that was a top-10 research university, too.
Interestingly, when Barbara Liskov came by as part of her post-Turing Award tour, she explicitly stated that she treated her job at MIT as a 9-5 and valued her personal time outside of work. Perhaps she exaggerated a bit, and no doubt some of her downtime was spent productively on research - if only subconsciously - but I see many successful and highly productive faculty around here with very reasonable work schedules. I have no reason to believe they're aberrations.
I don't doubt that there are tyrannical advisors that keep their students in the labs spinning their wheels for long hours, but, at least in CS, and in my area of it, I've found this to be rare.
There most definitely is. Do you suspect that on your death bed you will wish that you had spent more time in the office? Much like any hobby or addiction, there are healthy levels. Putting in 60+ when there is a some big project is GREAT. You deserve a raise, or maybe even a promotion. But... we've gotten to a point where 60+ means nothing, and is even expected, and often still isn't enough to get ahead. It isn't healthy, and it is a disgusting use of a life, in my opinion.
point taken, i agree
Simple solution. Mandatory overtime pay for all hours worked in excess of 45-50 hours a week regardless of the job. Travel time counts as .5 hours.
Solution to work life balance and solution to unemployment. Now if you'll excuse me, we are so understaffed that I have to get back to my 12 hour work day because we can't afford to hire anyone for fear my boss and his bosses will have to start flying commercial airlines again. That would be a shame.
If you want to do a job, that only is available to a few, that many people want, then prepared to be exploited for your desire.
I liken this to the Video Game industry. Programmers and the like, many many would like to make and produce video games. The companies that make these games are aware of this. That is why you hear of stories of companies like EA having employees with super long hours, over long periods of time, and frequent burnout.
In AstroPhysics, it is almost worse. Unlike video games, where you can go independent and create something, and there are a lot of companies and options out there (relitively), in Physics you are going to be working for either a University or the Government. In many cases, simply having access to the things you need, like high tech science, or big infrstructure like telecopes, space assets, or whatever. Anyway same principle applies. It is a popular job, with few positions, be prepared to be taken advantage of.
It is very likely he may have exaggerated a bit to try to make a point or to scare some people off. The basic gist of what he is saying is that if you are going into this field of study, you better really love what you do with a passion, as you will be exploited, and will be working very long hours all the time...
Which really isn't all that big of a strech or a surprise, just stating the obvious.