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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?"
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 think you mean cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. He was the dude who passed along stuff he heard from the Archangel Gabriel, who was Allah's PR guy.
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?
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.
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.
"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.
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..."
Bosses love to hear it. Employees like you are easier to exploit. More work for less pay. Employees like you also make it easier to pressure other employees into similar behavior.
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"
Hell no. I was in this exact position when I graduated with my Physics degree. I had a job offered to me to work at Goldman Sachs with a starting salary of $150k+signing bonus. It took a lot of soul searching, but I ultimately turned it down to pursue a Ph.D., where I get $20k a year and work the 60-80 hours quoted above, nights, weekends, and holidays (guess where I was 4th of July and Christmas Eve). But even after all that, For $130k more I couldn't buy the time I spend doing what I love each and every day. Sure I could buy boats and cars and a house, but I don't think any of that would make me truly happy as I am pursuing my passion that will one day (I hope) make a difference (as opposed to managing rich people's and corporation's money and helping them to make even more money. Oh how fun and rewarding.)
Not a binary decision. Work the $150K job for 6 years or until downsized, bank the whole thing, go back to academia for your $20K/yr 80 hr/wk job, withdraw money from the bank account to hire a clone of yourself willing to work for $20K/yr at only 40 hours, then give him half your workload and both of you coast along at 40 hrs? At zero interest rate, 150 * 6 / 20 is still 45 years...
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
There is a difference between enjoying it and needing to do it in order to be successful.
I know you're half joking, but working for a number of years and returning to do a graduate degree was one option I considered. However, I came to the conclusion that it would be easier to do the phd first and go into a wall street job later than the reverse. My thought was, after 5-7 years on wall street Id be nearing 30 with perhaps a different set of priorities... Maybe a wife, maybe kids... I could never afford the time i can devote to my research now. And to be sure, a phd is not something you can do more efficiently by parallelizing the task (much like a baby didn't grow faster if more women are involved).
I hate to break it to you, but the eventual application of your research (if any) will primarily help rich people make even more money.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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).
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,
This is a well written and funny letter: http://hardass-6owwz.posterous.com/listen-up-you-whiny-bitches
The point is that if working 80-100 hours a week is the norm for those students, then many of them are going to suffer and be un healthy, and we as a society should not simply accept, condone or encourage that. I mean do the math: 100 hours of work in one week means 14.5 hours a day, every day. That's INSANE. Considering the average person needs 9 hours of sleep per night to stay healthy, that leaves them the choice of either not sleeping enough, or having 30 minutes of time away from work per day. No prob, it's just enough time for a shit and shower! You can eat while you work.
If there's a joke here, it's that anyone thinks its ok for this to be a reality check.
Oh that's a complete crock. My father-in-law ran a research lab for one of the world's largest electronics companies. He supervised people who won international awards for their work. They did a lot of research sitting in vineyards drinking wine, smoking, and chatting. Sure, they worked long hours too, especially at crunch times. But leisure is key to creativity. And they ate well and exercised, having cycling and skiing teams they belonged to (and still belong to as retirees). And they were all men in single-income families who were cared for intensely by their wives. They were pampered, fed, rested, exercised like thoroughbreds because that's what they were. (Not to mention Nobel winners.) In my field I have worked with internationally renowned literature scholars, people who crank out books like mad, win big grants, lecture around the globe. They work hard, but they also take care of themselves, taking breaks, eating right, exercising, etc. --- This talk of round-the-clock work, with no time for exercise, for family, it's not something I've heard from really successful people. Yes, there's crunch time, and yes, you have to work, but this "Work work and smile! Arbeit macht frei!" is the mantra of a drone or a future burnout.
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.
To improve work / life balance, just do all your astronomy during regular business hours.
The fact is you get rich and success by working hard.
What you really meant was, "People become successful by working hard on the right things." Unfortunately, the first thing graduate students discover when they begin their research careers is that they are not going to be working on "the right things," that research work is not what they thought, and that the likelihood that their PhD work will be worth mentioning (beyond the fact that they did PhD work) is very low. Here are some characteristics of research as a graduate student:
There are exceptions, but the reality of research is that it is mostly incremental, it is mostly determined by what NSF/NIH/DARPA want to see researched, and it is loaded with overstatements of results. Most outsiders do not notice this, because the only way to learn enough about a topic to even notice this trend is to become a researcher in that field. Most graduate students are embarrassed to be part of such a system, so they convince themselves that they are not actually doing it (but they really are, with a few rare exceptions).
Palm trees and 8
I'm sorry to disappoint you, but the amount of hours you work have little bearing on how successful you are.This is especially true in any area where you are reporting to a boss. If you run your own business, the time you spend on it is time you pay yourself, and time you spend advancing your own career. Anywhere else, a large chunk of success depends on the whims of management and the competence of the executive team.
I'll be happy to check back with you in a few years and see whether you think that that overtime was worth it.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
As a PhD student I was a TA to several courses. Most of the time there were 140-180 students in the class. I needed to organize 4 tutorial sessions. We had 3 exams (2 mid, 1 final) and 3 assignments.
I would say the most destructive thing in regard to my PhD research progress was the huge amount of work I supposed to do. I officially was supposed to work 9 hours/week but it was many times more than that.