[HN Gopher] Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career...
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Mourning and moving on: rituals for leaving a career (2014)
Author : luu
Score : 163 points
Date : 2024-08-22 06:03 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (franceshocutt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (franceshocutt.com)
| flobosg wrote:
| (2014)
| mgaunard wrote:
| I quit the company I was working for many times.
|
| It was usually an opportunity to leave the drama behind, not
| create more.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| To be fair, this blog post is more about making a complete
| career change, not just switching companies within the same
| general field.
|
| Having one of your friends bring you funeral lilies does seem a
| little much, though.
| campervans wrote:
| Wonder how it went for her. Probably the best decision of her
| life
| the_real_cher wrote:
| Seems a bit dramatic
| KSteffensen wrote:
| I don't know anything about the author and their situation, but
| in my experience the first time you realize that your life is
| not going to be as you expected in major ways can be quite
| hard.
|
| I don't think mourning is an inappropriate word to use for
| this.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Leaving academia is like this. It's very sticky and scary to
| leave. I remember how devastating it was for me. I think it's
| because there's a very strong sense of a missed dream, and that
| you can never return.
| 0xEF wrote:
| I feel the need to point out that it's not difficult for
| people whose identity is not centered around their jobs,
| since I see that disconnect in the comments. I found the
| author's take full of the pageantry that I often associate
| with people who make big deals out of fairly inconsequential
| things, but before I begrudge the author their take, I have
| to remember that my career is of relatively little importance
| to me.
|
| Hypothetically, when you meet someone new, do you introduce
| yourself as your job? Is one of the first exchanges of self-
| identifying information what you do for a living? A lot of
| people do and while I do not understand it, I guess that is
| what their lives are. Tbh, I find it a bit sad. Generally, my
| career does not enter the conversation unless there is some
| relevant reason. I'd rather talk about my productive hobbies
| where I am making or building or learning a thing.
|
| Breaking this down, when we use our jobs as our identity, I
| find it exceptionally difficult to pull the "why do you do
| it" out of that conversation, because a career is just a
| paycheck, in the end and involves very little personal
| enrichment. Of course, not everyone views careers that way
| and I'm not here to try to change minds, but shed light on
| why it might seem silly to many of us.
|
| Perhaps we are not one of the lucky few with those unicorn
| jobs that both pay the bills, offer a bright future, and
| promote personal growth. They exist, I am sure, but they are
| the exception to the rule.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I agree for most jobs, but academia is different. It's so
| wildly different to other careers, that it does feel more
| like a calling, and is far easier to identify with.
| Especially if you are a first generation academic, you are
| doing something considered wildly more prestigious than
| anything anyone before you has done.
|
| That is, I think it's relatively easy to dismiss your
| career as not that important if you have a normal job. But
| I think it's inherently much harder if you are an academic
| for many reasons.
| tpoacher wrote:
| I think academia is one of those special places where a lot
| of people who enter it are altruistic and idealistic, and
| consider it a part of their identity to make a change in
| the world in a larger sense. You are literally taking a
| pay-cut, willingly, in order to make the world a better
| place. At least in theory. So, in that sense, academia is
| (or at least used to be) more akin to monasteries than
| corporations.
|
| Not that other jobs aren't making a change in the world,
| but you know what I mean. It's one thing to be a knowingly
| replaceable cog in a team that tries to offer more
| effective ads, and it's quite another to singularly,
| completely in isolation, try to devote your life trying to
| invent the MRI, where if you fail the MRI may never come to
| exist. So yes, a lot of people in academia traditionally do
| ascribe a big part of their identity to their jobs, but I
| think this goes beyond the superficial sense you describe
| (i.e. I'm so boring and soulless that my work defines me).
|
| Which is also why it's such a big deal when some academics
| are found to be 'cheating' the system (again, see
| monasteries). Traditionally, the whole edifice has been
| based on 'honor', but the tide seems to be changing; the
| rampant corporatisation of academia has been a very recent
| phenomenon, and now that the inevitable shills and snake-
| oil merchants have entered the game, we don't quite know
| how to handle them.
| xtracto wrote:
| >You are literally taking a pay-cut, willingly, in order
| to make the world a better place
|
| This is a pretty interesting take. I feel that it may be
| even a bit "western " if not 'American ' centric.
|
| In my country Academia is perceived as a "ladder" in the
| socioeconomic level. It's one of few ways people coming
| from low class can actually climb their SE level. As
| such, there is a different kind of pressure one side, and
| on the other, a lot of people are 'living their best
| life' doing the academia dance.
| foldr wrote:
| You can't really be an academic whose identity is not
| centered around their job. This is because it virtually
| never makes sense to pursue an academic career as a means
| to other ends (given that pay and conditions tend to be
| quite bad).
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| In the 19th century you had the same job for life. If you
| were a blacksmith you stayed a blacksmith and died a
| blacksmith in the village where you were born. Your surname
| was synonymous with your skill. Wheeler. Smith. Potter.
| Even in the mid 20th century people worked for the same
| company for life. The "corporate" (body) world meant
| something very different than today. The corporation took
| care of you. It paid for your health and holidays. If you
| were unhappy in work, it helped sort that out so you would
| stay. As late as the 1960s, and still for some people who
| work in government, and still a culture in Japan, you can
| get a "job for life".
|
| "Career" means to move haphazardly. It replaced the more
| stable notions of "vocation" and "calling". Today you might
| spend a year in hospitality, a few years in sales, then do
| a diploma in programming, move to California, get into
| media design, and then open a juice bar on the beach...
| Everyone is at the mercy of ever swirling markets and the
| slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, layoffs and
| takeovers, new trends. Who here didn't "get into AI" in the
| last 2 years?
|
| In a way that's a richer better life. It's more
| challenging. It is also shallower. There are less places to
| put down roots and grow anything worthwhile. People with
| active minds and a lust for life naturally outgrow scenes,
| groups and institutions. Moving on should be an exciting
| joy. What I see of America and UK now (at least here on HN)
| is that people are held in place by fear. We've regressed
| to 19th century ideas about work and life, minus the
| positive 'belonging'.
|
| What I think people sometimes "grieve" is the sunk-cost
| spiritual investment in what they thought an institution
| represented. Or they found themselves in an career that is
| in decline. or in institutions that have decayed - and it's
| painful to move on. Those reasons may be emotionally noble;
| loyalty, fidelity to values etc. You can let go of values
| and of a dream. Or you can take them with you, by realising
| that they never belonged to any "institution" in the first
| place. They're yours.
|
| Academia is definitely that place in 2024. The reality of
| academic life is the antithesis of human values we
| traditionally associate it with. If the institutions we
| inhabit are inflexible, ineffectual, and less than our
| ambitions then it's time to move on. The problem is not so
| much that people identify with what they "do", but where
| and with whom they do it. It's a strong and valuable kind
| of person who keeps their calling/purpose separate from
| their employment identity.
| greener_grass wrote:
| Out of curiosity, why can't you return?
| zer0tonin wrote:
| Cults sometimes don't allow returnees.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| Academia tends to have fairly linear career paths. You do a
| doctorate, then maybe do a post-doc, then become a lecturer
| / assistant professor, etc. If you don't follow the path
| you end up without the track record (publications, funding,
| etc.) you need for promotion and will be passed over for
| other candidates who look more likely to succeed. There are
| many more applicants than positions in most fields.
|
| If you're not on this career path, there is basically no
| alternative in most institutions. You can be an adjunct, or
| lab assistant, or other low-level employee forever but this
| will lead nowhere. This is particularly a problem in the
| US, where the tenure track system gives you seven years of
| grind to achieve tenure, and if you fail your academic
| career is basically over.
|
| (Things are changing. Some institutions have, for example,
| teaching track positions.)
| bowsamic wrote:
| Well, for one, people usually leave for systematic issues
| with academia that won't just magically be fixed over time.
|
| Second, it's very difficult to get back in anyway, you will
| have a publication gap and with the extreme increase in
| publish and perish it's hard to imagine it being a good
| choice. Here in Germany, getting any permanent academic
| position is a pipe dream even for the extremely motivated.
| This ties back into the first point.
| tpoacher wrote:
| Not OP, but in general to be hirable in academia you need
| to demonstrate a constant flow of papers and grant
| proposals.
|
| Being 'out of the game' for a couple of years means you
| have not published or applied to grants within that time.
| At best, you might be looking at restarting at the bottom
| of the ladder until you've reasonably caught up in numbers
| to climb back up again.
|
| And it's not even just a case of "computer says no" because
| of automated metrics. In the UK at least, government
| initiatives like the REF mean that the university will
| actively avoid hiring you because by definition you would
| be costing the university money. (and conversely, you have
| an advantage for being hired if you demonstrate the right
| REFfable metrics, even if you weren't the most suitable
| candidate at the interview, because this automatically
| brings a university money that is directly linked to your
| recent REF outputs).
|
| I don't know what the situation is like in the US, but I'm
| fairly sure similar exercises exist with effectively the
| same effect.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Another anecdata point... For me leaving academia was a big
| challenge - I'd have to find a job, pass interviews, move
| home, etc, etc. Scary stuff! But as soon as I had actually
| done this, my new career path in industry went smoothly, and
| my first year in industry massively improved my personal
| confidence. As an academic I was surrounded by other
| academics, but in industry I was forced to interact and
| communicate with a more diverse group of people, and I
| quickly found that it wasn't as scary as I had thought. E.g.
| doing product demos to senior people, supporting our
| marketing people by building prototypes, etc.
|
| Amazingly, the company I moved to had much better tooling for
| the type of software research research I was recruited for
| than I had had access to at Uni. I built something (as part
| of a supportive team that understood software dev) in about
| six months, that I had struggled (and failed) to build in
| academia over a couple of years.
| ghaff wrote:
| At some level in industry you have at least the potential
| to have the paradox of choice. Of course, some people are
| perfectly happy and successful with roles that are
| essentially the same in the fundamentals from one company
| to the next. But others largely reinvent themselves with
| each new role both between different companies and even
| within the same one. That really isn't an option in
| academia.
| xtracto wrote:
| For me it was more of a 'good riddance' moment haha .
|
| But I ded finish my PhD and a postdoc, so I didn't leave with
| a feeling of 'I have failed '
|
| I remember though, that feeling when I was doing my PhD and I
| got the quits fever.
|
| I think a lot of people struggle mentally when they quit in
| the middle mainly because of a sense of defeat.
|
| To them I would say scree it. If you found out the stupid
| churn of the academia process is not for you, leave without
| remorse.
|
| It's like game programming. It's fantasized during childhood,
| but once you get in and see the swamp it is, you realize it's
| either for you or it isn't no shame at all in leaving.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I did a PhD and postdoc too. My issue was how drawn out it
| was. I had a 3 year postdoc contract with great pay, so it
| seemed like a really bad idea to quit. Basically I spent 3
| years wanting to quit but knowing I couldn't because it
| made no economic sense. Our group leader didn't care at
| all. He was totally fine with me sitting around earning
| money while doing everything.
|
| I think I would have done far better if I were simply
| fired.
| xtracto wrote:
| Golden handcuffs. I've had them in previous industry jobs
| as well. I understand how frustrating it is.
| swores wrote:
| They aren't claiming their career decision is a monumental
| thing for anyone but themselves, but a complete change of
| career _is_ a monumental moment for the person whose career it
| is.
|
| If you're suggesting that having a dinner party with friends to
| mourn/celebrate the change, and writing a blog post about it,
| is overly "dramatic" then I completely disagree. If, on the
| other hand, you just mean that some of the minor specifics such
| as the invite including " _Dressing in your personal version of
| mourning wear, the more over-the-top the better, is highly
| encouraged but not required._ " then I think you're just not in
| sync with her(his?) sense of humour.
| DeborahWrites wrote:
| The process in my mid-20s of realising I was not going to have
| the career I'd expected since my mid-teens was pretty rough. I
| eventually dusted myself off and pivoted, but it might have
| been healthy to mourn (although I can't imagine myself
| summoning my friends to a gathering for that purpose - but good
| for her, sounds like she had a sense of humour about it)
| Jgrady wrote:
| rip "Frances Hocutt is a scientist by training and computer
| wrangler by trade, with interests that have covered fiber arts,
| dance, martial arts, trauma, embodiment, makerspaces, free
| software and open knowledge, and other kinds of knowledge-sharing
| and mutual support. Frances spends possibly too much time reading
| about queer/trans anything in a long-shot attempt to make gender
| and sexuality add up to something remotely coherent."
|
| https://www.glbthistory.org/events/2020/2/27/following-lou-s...
| emmelaich wrote:
| Reminds me of Sabine Hossenfelder's "My dream died, and now I'm
| here"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKiBlGDfRU8
| roel_v wrote:
| Not to highjack this topic, but she was recommended (like to
| many others of you no doubt) quite a bit in my Youtube feeds
| over the last few months; and the first few videos I watched
| seemed to be solid enough. Yet as I watched a few more, I
| couldn't shake the feeling that she's so out of left field that
| she's not just a 'quirky renegade' anymore, but rather a quack
| who dresses up her quackery with just enough 'real' physics to
| make it all sound very convincing. (By that I don't mean that
| she says factually wrong things, but that her conclusions or
| extrapolations from established facts seem to me, well,
| outrageous). However, I don't know enough physics to be able to
| tell if this is a correct feeling, and the Youtube comments
| are, as usual, one big fanboy fest, which is true for any large
| enough channel - even those of flat earthers and similarly
| delusional content).
|
| So my question is - just how serious should she (and others
| like her, who denounce 'mainstream' academia as much as those
| other fringe groups who go on and on about the corruption of
| 'mainstream' media) be taken? Anyone have an opinion on this?
| Tazerenix wrote:
| As an expert in at least some of the things Sabine makes
| videos about (string theory), Sabine is a contrarian who, if
| you are not otherwise an expert on what she is talking about,
| it would be best to avoid.
|
| Sabine, like many contrarians, takes advantage of the fact
| that there _are_ smart and convincing criticisms of many
| mainstream ideas, and she does her best to rely on those
| criticisms. However like all contrarians she presents a
| biased and exaggerated view of things in order to stoke
| engagement, and unless you are an expert it can be difficult
| /impossible to determine whether the view she is giving is
| balanced.
|
| This is a classic issue with string theory critics, because
| string theory has many legitimate problems with it, but many
| of the critics are intellectually dishonest and you probably
| shouldn't listen to their criticisms on principle (but even I
| must admit it's quite hard to find good quality
| intellectually honest criticism of string theory which is
| digestible, so these contrarians tend to be the only loud
| voice).
|
| In Sabine's case it is not so bad, because it is clear from
| some of her other positions that she is basically a crank.
| MOND and superdeterminism are basically crank physics at this
| point but she supports them purely because she is a
| contrarian. On this evidence alone you should not trust
| anything she says on any other subject, otherwise you're
| falling for a kind of Gell-Mann amnesia.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Likewise. I did my PhD in quantum foundations/information,
| albeit some years ago now. I'm not aware of any serious
| researchers in the field that look kindly on
| superdeterministic interpretations.
|
| It's bizarrely parochial to suppose that every single
| photon is magically correlated with the experimenter's
| future measurement choices in a way that will exactly
| violate Bell's Theorem.
|
| Another way to put it:
|
| > If such a theory did exist, it would require a grand
| conspiracy of causal relationships leading to results in
| precise agreement with quantum mechanics, even though the
| theory itself would bear no resemblance to quantum
| mechanics. Moreover, it is hard to imagine why it should
| only be in Bell experiments that free choices would be
| significantly influenced by causes relevant also to the
| observed outcomes; rather, every conclusion based upon
| observed correlations, scientific or casual, would be
| meaningless because the observers's method would always be
| suspect. It seems to us that any such theory would be about
| as plausible, and appealing, as, belief in ubiquitous alien
| mind-control.
|
| Causarum Investigatio and the Two Bell's Theorems of John
| Bell, Wiseman & Cavalcanti,
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.06413
| prof-dr-ir wrote:
| As another 'mainsteam' academic with relevant expertise I
| think this comment is spot on.
|
| I would like to add that Sabine's video on her academic
| experience was quite a tragic thing to watch. If her
| allegations are true then the behavior of her PhD
| supervisor was completely outrageous.
|
| She also did seem a bit too dreamy-eyed about academia.
| Sure you can criticize everything you want, but she never
| seemed to have understood that tone of voice still matters.
| Academics are busy people with emotions, and not likely to
| engage with someone whose claims appear to have more
| loudness than substance.
| Tazerenix wrote:
| I certainly am not making any comments about her
| experiences for sure! Academia is difficult and full of
| terrible stories, and its not surprising that it causes
| many people to become exceedingly bitter and contrarian
| (Peter Woit is famously of the same ilk as another string
| theorist critic who fell out of academia like Sabine).
|
| Unfortunately a chip (even a legitimately earned one) on
| ones shoulder about the bad parts of academia doesn't
| save you from being criticized for being crank-y.
| beezle wrote:
| Sabine has repeatedly touched the third rail of current day
| physics - the string theory industry and HEP. The comment
| above reflects that.
|
| On the latter, her beef is not that HEP has not made
| signficant discoveries in the past, rather that the costs
| going forward can no longer be justified and starve many,
| many other areas of physics of needed funding. Compounding
| her disdain for future projects are the increaingly lofty
| claims of what will be discovered since inception of LHC.
| Do you really think she is alone on this?
|
| On the former, who is the crank here? The person with the
| advanced degree calling out the failure of a 50 year old
| theory to make one scientifically provable and confirmed
| prediction? (I could say 80 years if going back to the
| beginnings with S-matrix theory)
|
| I'll grant that some maths have been developed that may be
| tangentally useful but other than enriching the publishing
| industry, what has string theory brought? Zilch. It seems
| that the more public this becomes, the louder the cries of
| those with deeply vested interests. I can think of no other
| large theory that has gone for so long with no experimental
| confirmations at all and is not likely to in mankinds
| future either.
|
| As to MOND like theory, Sabine has had varying degrees of
| support over the past twenty years as data has come in and
| theory has changed. Very frankly, the reason to give a
| degree of trust to her on other subjects too is because she
| is willing to be objective and call people out on their BS.
| eru wrote:
| For superdeterminism, see eg
| https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6215
| stdbrouw wrote:
| I'm not a physicist so I can't answer that question, though
| personally I trust in her expertise and really loved her book
| Lost in Math, but many of her most recent videos and tweets
| are not about physics at all but instead about nuclear power,
| capitalism, climate change, not having children, trans
| athletes, AI and so forth. The lure of punditry...
| eru wrote:
| I tend to disagree with her on superdeterminism. See eg
| https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6215
| fruffy wrote:
| >So my question is - just how serious should she (and others
| like her, who denounce 'mainstream' academia as much as those
| other fringe groups who go on and on about the corruption of
| 'mainstream' media) be taken? Anyone have an opinion on this?
|
| I know nothing about her but the video on her experience in
| academia is spot on. It's a pretty common experience among
| STEM academics. You will face the point where you have to
| compromise your academic "purity" and curiosity for trendy
| topics to survive. This also implies publishing "bullshit"
| papers and "bullshit" grants. Only certain types of people
| make it through that.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| I don't think this is generally true and the generalization
| is actively hurtful. Promoting a skewed/miserable
| perspective on academia. It all depends on the institution,
| your funding situation, your field etc. The miserable
| academics are the ones that moan the loudest. There is
| often an online circlejerk of whining academics that wind
| themselves up (esp PhD students). Also the ones that are
| barely scrapping by are the ones that need to resort to
| bullshit. You may be able to game your stats but people can
| smell bullshit from a mile away. Everyone will know you're
| just good at playing the system
| CheddarB0b42 wrote:
| "Complainants and their critiques can be safely discarded
| because they need to git gud."
|
| She states in the first three minutes of the video linked
| above that she was excelling academically. How bizarre to
| observe a lack of research in a thread complaining about
| how the academy has drifted from the conduct of pure
| research. Three minutes. One hundred twenty seconds.
| That's all it would have taken.
| prof-dr-ir wrote:
| Can I ask what you mean with "pretty common"? Do you think
| more than half of all STEM graduate students had a similar
| experience as she did? Do you have actual data to support
| this?
|
| I am asking this because HN neems to be so much more
| negative of academia than what I am seeing around me.
|
| More generally I think it is worth stressing that any site
| like this can be a terrible echo chamber at times.
| Generally there are smart people here, but on some topics I
| suspect that the consensus could be completely misguided.
| fruffy wrote:
| > Do you think more than half of all STEM graduate
| students had a similar experience as she did? Do you have
| actual data to support this?
|
| Yes, her entire description about her experience (safe
| for that weirdness with the textbook sweatshop) is
| relatable. I am not sure what you are looking for but
| STEM PhD attrition rates speak for themselves. Those do
| not include PhDs that decide to leave academia after
| retrieving their PhD. Not to mention the frequently
| discussed mental health crisis that consistently gets
| Nature articles.
|
| HN's negativity is comparable to the negativity I have
| seen with CS, Maths, and Physics PhDs and Postdocs in
| personal discussions. See also PhD comics:
| https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd072011s.gif
|
| If you are an idealist you will of course be worn down by
| the way many academic institutions are set up. There is a
| ton of writing on this, e.g., https://www-
| users.cse.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/decline.txt
| noelwelsh wrote:
| I did a PhD in CS. There were certainly some students who
| had a bad experience, but I don't think it was the
| majority or even near the majority. I think 1 in 5 is a
| reasonable guess. The ones who did do tend to be more
| vocal about it, which is natural.
| adamc wrote:
| Computer science is much, much more marketable than
| typical PhDs.
| xtracto wrote:
| Let me add another point of anectdata. I did my CS PhD
| with a full scholarship in the UK. Then a 3.5 year
| postdoc in a great Leinbiz institute in Germany. Part of
| a huge EU project (in Framework Programne 7)
|
| By all measures, I was "living the life" in academia.
| with both my parents being academics (both researchers
| and pretty published in their fields)
|
| Yet, I left it after the project finished. The prospect
| of having to write papers just because. The amount of
| trash papers I had to review _for free_ but then looking
| at the cost of proceeding books (I got them for free
| through my institution... but what a racket it is!!)
|
| The prospect of the "academic path" ((abitur, lecturer,
| associate prof and then prof) praying the stupid game..
|
| I left it all and turned to the startup world . Maybe it
| was my engineer mind, but I feel way more fulfilled after
| 12 years in industry.
| adamc wrote:
| I was a biological anthropology postdoc for a year or so.
| My office mate used to refer to the process of turning
| one decent idea into as many papers as possible as
| producing LPUs ("Least Publishable Units"). He was
| joking, but it wasn't a joke.
|
| It was depressing. I dropped out. I have love for
| academia, but there is a pretty overwhelming amount of
| gamesmanship in surviving that system. I found becoming a
| developer a much easier career to navigate.
| voxgen wrote:
| I've seen similar reactions and I can't help but think she's
| intentionally communicating provocatively to make people
| engage their brains.
|
| You shouldn't just "take her seriously", you should take what
| she says *critically*. Hear the information and opinions,
| then decide for yourself whether to accept them.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Hear the information and opinions, then decide for
| yourself whether to accept them.
|
| This sounds awfully similar to the "do your own research"
| defense that is often used as a cop-out disclaimer for
| quackery topics.
|
| When someone presents themselves as an expert on a topic
| and invests a lot of time into making convincing videos
| about their beliefs, defending them with a "do your own
| research" feels like a tacit admission that they're not
| actually the expert they present themselves as.
|
| This feels somewhat like the high-brow intellectual
| equivalent of Joe Rogan making confident statements about
| COVID and then defending himself with "I'm just a comedian,
| do your own research". You can't have it both ways.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| No, it sounds like he is promoting hearing somebody out
| and thinking for yourself if they are to be trusted.
| evilduck wrote:
| Her channel has strayed far beyond the topics she has
| credibility in. A physics academic talking about AI,
| sociology, and politics... why should I care? Even of the
| physics topics that she does cover it's all "pop-sci" news
| coverage stuff, she's not even using her actual depth of
| knowledge to make videos that are different than the layman
| takes from dozens of other YouTubers.
|
| Someone speaking provocatively and authoritatively on
| topics they don't have credibility in is where you should
| think critically and turn it off.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > just how serious should she... be taken?
|
| Very seriously indeed if you value higher education and
| research.
|
| Lot's of people do. Over a decade ago now, Ben Ginsberg wrote
| "Fall of the Faculty". Political scientists like Wendy Brown
| have picked apart not only the evidence, but done deep
| analytical work on the reasons for the disintegration of
| academia in the West. Even Peter Thiel (who I profoundly
| disagree with on almost everything) has given knock-down
| commentary that I find impossible to ignore on how academia
| went to seed, and is now unfit for teaching, learning and
| honest research.
|
| From a personal perspective; I worked in universities for
| over 30 years. What we have now is unrecognisable from the
| institutions I started teaching at in the early 1990s. Almost
| all human values have been expunged and replaced by a puppet
| show of performative theatrics, led by MBA educated impostors
| and career administrators. It is fake to the core. I no
| longer recognise these places as universities. I've seen
| brilliant colleagues go crazy, retire early, turn to alcohol
| and drugs, commit suicide, or just wander off to live in the
| mountains and grow vegetables. I refuse to believe all those
| smart and dedicated people are/were "weak". Academia is a
| very toxic place and I would not advise any "smart and
| sensitive" person to go into that life if you value your
| health.
|
| When you consider how much it costs a nation to educate
| someone to PhD level and then look at the churn and
| attrition, it's a massive bonfire of wealth.
|
| I've written numerous pieces in the Times Higher on specific
| failings of universities, but one cannot halt a juggernaut of
| change with words alone. Now I am left only with curiosity at
| how higher education will change and what will come after.
|
| My response has been to conduct and publish my own research
| independently outside the "academic system" and to start my
| own companies for teaching. By my standards, both are
| successful.
|
| edit: grammar
| lll-o-lll wrote:
| I think - no, I fear, fear is the right word - that there
| is much more than just academia disintegrating in the West.
|
| > Almost all human values have been expunged and replaced
| by a puppet show of performative theatrics, led by MBA
| educated impostors and career administrators.
|
| Not just academia.
|
| _This is the way the world ends
|
| Not with a bang but a whimper._
| Miraste wrote:
| Yes, over the past few decades, that sentence applies to
| every institution I can think of. Academia, government,
| business, religion, medicine... I don't know why
| administration has turned into such a plague, but it
| keeps absorbing larger shares of our money, power, and
| time to do less and less with more and more.
| gehwartzen wrote:
| I was going to reply to a go further up but yes this has
| absolutely crept into many other technical areas. I had a
| similar grad school as others here have expressed but I
| didn't stay in academia after school.
|
| I've worked the past 15 years or so for several different
| F100 companies in various technical R&D functions. These
| companies manufacture real things and generally have
| labs, resources, and staff that rival but the very best
| academic institutions. The politics and worldviews with
| which the MBAs have infect the technical teams with the
| last 20 or so years is palpable.
|
| I know there used to be real in-depth research done;
| talking to the old timers and looking through old
| technical reports showed that to me. Doing that now will
| quickly get you RIFed. Now quickly getting to revenue and
| moving onto the next project is all that matters. Nothing
| is retained in classic 20-30 page technical reports that
| help build true institutional knowledge or even allow us
| to repeat projects based on the learnings from 2 years
| ago. If you are smart you quickly learn how to test and
| validate things to make whomever the customer is happy
| (following the $) while providing the bare minimum to the
| lawyers to make a specific marketing claim. In practice
| this means I've become very good at not opening certain
| doors during research (ie the ones that I intuitively
| know have a high likelihood of derailing a project) even
| if they probably should have been. See no evil, hear no
| evil...
|
| It's sad.
| AlanYx wrote:
| Has Peter Thiel ever put his thoughts on higher education
| down in long-form writing? I've seen him speak about it,
| but I'd be interested in a deep dive.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| There was a lengthy interview with Peter Thiel a few
| years back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM9f0W2KD5s
|
| It's interesting and worth watching, but it becomes
| apparent that Thiel is a financier, and science takes
| place on a different timescale. Better seek advice from
| someone who was active when US science was still
| functional, let's say Roy Vagelos.
| andai wrote:
| You're asking the crowd for their opinion on someone who goes
| against the opinion of the crowd?
| gosub100 wrote:
| Can you give any examples of her promoting "quackery"? I
| don't know how you can admit you are weak in physics but
| nevertheless sense she is phony.
|
| My biggest criticism of hers is that she is cynical and
| spends too much time tearing down other ideas rather than
| promoting anything.
|
| But overall she does great things with showcasing the more
| ridiculous side of academia. She is adept at taking published
| research and showing that it is quackery. She shows how they
| manipulate data and mislead the media, often for more
| research money. I also applaud her counterpoint in particle
| physics regarding the waste involved in building yet another
| gigantic particle accelerator. It's a POV I wouldn't have
| considered, but I agree that the money could be better spent
| in other areas.
| kanodiaashu wrote:
| Its interesting to me how you start with career maps. Maybe this
| is advertising, but I made a career mapping app here -
| https://www.moveup.ai/for-individuals - I wonder if you would
| find it interesting.
| avg_dev wrote:
| Very nice read. I remember reading the one she wrote first too.
| Quite moving.
| unwind wrote:
| What is the "alternate career path" the author mentions but never
| explains? I didn't get that part.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| According to their CV, on the same site, they became a
| developer at the Wikimedia foundation.
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| I'm afraid I can't relate. I initially invested a lot of time in
| my first choice of career (over a decade) and just left last
| year. I walked out the door, said goodbye, and the next day it
| was out of my mind. That being said, I think the key is keeping a
| strong mental separation between "passion for a field of work"
| and "predetermined path by society to actualize that passion".
| The latter, in my opinion, is something that one should never get
| attached to.
| esafak wrote:
| If you wanted to become a doctor, say, and flunked out of
| school, how would you find another path to become a doctor;
| start again in another country? Sometimes the cost of failure
| is high.
| mp05 wrote:
| Easy, just apply to a osteopathic medicine program.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I'm not sure that works in many places outside the US.
|
| It's viewed as alternative medicine here in New Zealand, in
| a similar ballpark to homeopathy, though perhaps a bit
| closer to conventional medicine.
| silcoon wrote:
| This article is from 2014, the year should be included in the
| title
| thenoblesunfish wrote:
| I made a similar move and felt a similar sense of loss. I wish I
| had had the mental clarity at the time to throw fun parties
| instead of just trying to keep life together. I'm comforted by
| the fact that in my new career there are great people, just like
| there were in academia, and that my friends who stayed there are
| either (a) truly great scientists (b) struggling basically with
| the same things (money, politics, , people, "work") that most
| people in most white collar jobs struggle with.
| lucraft wrote:
| > "You are formally invited to A WAKE for THE RESEARCH SCIENCE
| CAREER of FRANCES HOCUTT FRIDAY from 7 PM to MIDNIGHT"
|
| When I quit my PhD I had an Ungraduation Party! My wife made a
| cake and everyone sang Happy Ungraduation To You! It was sad and
| happy but overwhelmingly such a relief to get out
| bumby wrote:
| What went into your decision to drop out?
|
| Good on you too not wrap your identity too much in a credential
| to allow yourself that decision and also having unconditional
| support from those close to you.
| lucraft wrote:
| Thanks... I haven't thought about it in a long time, as it
| was difficult, but looking back it seems quite positive.
|
| Three things:
|
| 1. Full disclosure at that time in my life I was rather bad
| at motivating myself to work independently for long periods.
| In hindsight starting a PhD was a bad idea for this reason
| alone.
|
| 2. The university closed the department I was in. I was
| transferred to another supervisor in another department, who
| was nice but saw his role as more administrative. After a
| while he then announced he was retiring so I was looking at
| moving to another supervisor again.
|
| 3. I turned out to be far, far more interested in writing
| software than doing research. E.g I wrote an open source unit
| testing library in Prolog to support my research tooling. I
| was learning Rails on the side. I went to the Hacker News
| meet-up in London, and the startup that was running them
| offered me a job, and the rest is history!
|
| I had sunk multiple years into it so it wasn't easy. But in
| hindsight it was not even a close decision.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| Reading their first post about leaving
| https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/i-didn-t-want-to-lean-ou...,
| I'm not sure how seriously I should take this piece. 'They don't
| tell you ...'. Of course not, but they certainly hint at it. This
| is something that goes well beyond academia...
| ryukoposting wrote:
| > We create meaning around the stress and soften transitions with
| rituals and rites of passage.
|
| I graduated into the height of the pandemic, so I never had a
| graduation ceremony. Instead, they played a shitty video
| presentation over Zoom and my parents cracked open a beer and
| watched it on TV.
|
| By the time I got invited back for a ceremony, I had already
| moved hundreds of miles away from my university. Obviously, I
| turned down the offer. I sometimes wonder if I'll regret that
| choice later on down the line.
| helsinki wrote:
| You won't.
| hemloc_io wrote:
| As someone who also graduated during the pandemic an moved
| across the country.
|
| Maybe man, but honestly it just isn't the same as actually
| getting to say goodbye to your friends.
|
| Out of all of the things that went poorly that year, ppl
| missing their graduations is definitely pretty low on that
| list, but on a personal level it just really sucked having your
| entire social circle just disappear out of your life basically
| randomly.
| dustincoates wrote:
| > Obviously, I turned down the offer. I sometimes wonder if
| I'll regret that choice later on down the line.
|
| I could not tell you a single thing about my graduation
| ceremony.
| icedchai wrote:
| Same. It's been over 2 decades. I was practically a different
| person.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I don't regret skipping college graduation and I barely
| remember high school graduation
|
| I do regret that I didn't join any clubs in college until my
| last semester, and that I didn't make the kind of friendships I
| wanted
| ghaff wrote:
| One of the clubs I belonged to (film committee) is pretty
| much the only college group I stay in touch with.
| eru wrote:
| I didn't join many clubs when I was in university (in
| Germany). But for my first job I lived in Cambridge, and just
| attended clubs at the local university over there, and they
| mostly just let me in.
|
| I have particularly fond memories of the Diplomacy club:
| https://www.cambridgesu.co.uk/organisation/7831/
| bee_rider wrote:
| ^ listen to this person.
|
| The ceremonies at the beginning and the end--not a big deal.
| The part that matters is what you do there.
|
| I think the celebrations are more for the parents, really. We
| live our lives in the bulk, the area, the day-to-day. We
| experience others' lives at boundary transitions, the
| perimeter, the ending ceremonies.
| j_bum wrote:
| > I think the celebrations are more for the parents,
| really.
|
| This is important, and not to be brushed off.
|
| During my PhD, my program had what's called a "white coat
| ceremony". This is typically a medical school ceremony, but
| my grad program does it after the second year of study to
| recognize the transition from being a graduate "student" to
| a graduate "research assistant".
|
| I was a very isolated and focused student, spending the
| majority of my waking time in lab from day one of school.
| By the end of year two, I already viewed myself as being
| fully immersed in research. So, the ceremony felt trivial
| to me, and I didn't plan to attend.
|
| However, at the last minute, my advisor told me he wanted
| me to attend despite my protest.
|
| Due to the last minute change, I didn't invite my parents
| to the ceremony, as they lived several hours away and I
| didn't want them to feel obligated to travel on short
| notice.
|
| As the ceremony started, I immediately realized that it was
| just as much for the parents as it was for the students. So
| many parents were there, with clear pride at their
| children's growth and success (even though most had no clue
| what their kids were even studying).
|
| I immediately and deeply regretted not telling my parents
| about the ceremony. I realized I had made a unilateral
| decision for them, and that my behavior was very self-
| oriented and inconsiderate of their desire to see me
| succeed.
|
| They were disappointed when I told them about it, and I
| apologized for not inviting them and acknowledged that it
| was a selfish thing. They're chill people and didn't make a
| fuss over it, but it was a closed door that could never be
| reopened.
|
| Two years later when I defended my dissertation, that was
| _the_ moment I wanted my parents to be present, and of
| course they were. We had a blast celebrating afterwards, so
| all's well that ends well.
|
| I strongly believe "maturation" happens in discrete
| moments, and the start of that white coat ceremony was one
| of those moments for me. I grew up a lot that day.
| grogenaut wrote:
| I played college football which for the purposes of this
| conversation isn't a brag but call it a club. A big club.
| This was at a D3 non scholarship for the love of the game
| school.
|
| Two weeks before school started I knew 110 students, 15 adult
| employees, and about 10 recent alums. It was great. I had
| easy access to people who could answer all my questions. What
| classes, what professors, what forms, what majors, what
| restaurants, how to move exams, parties, of age people, cars,
| parking, tutors etc. Can't recommend it enough.
|
| My daughter is very indoors and "nerdy" for shorthand (So am
| I I just also do everything and played football). She loved
| DND. We lived about 12 miles from campus so as soon as she
| got in I found that they had DND club. I got her to ask to
| play in the discord early summer. She had a pack of friends
| by the time school started. A few freshmen and plenty of
| older classmates.
|
| Can't recommend it enough. Also it generally accelerated me
| more than the time it took up
| gosub100 wrote:
| For me the graduation was significant because of how
| miserable the previous 4 years were, largely for the reason
| that you mentioned.
| senkora wrote:
| Ironically, several of my friends and I got COVID at our
| delayed graduation ceremony.
|
| And they did multiple years of graduations at once, which made
| it exceptionally long. By the midway point even the professors
| onstage in their regalia were all scrolling on their phones.
|
| I think you made the right choice!
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Having been bored to death at a relatives ceremony, I skipped
| mine and went straight to celebrating with friends at a sushi
| bar.
|
| Grandma was a bit miffed. Rituals are what you make of them. :)
| pradn wrote:
| These ceremonies are meaningful if you invest meaning into
| them.
|
| For my college graduation, the dean did something small to make
| the ceremony more meaningful. He asked us all to stand up, look
| back to our family, and applaud them for supporting us all
| these years. For me, looking back at my parents and thanking
| them for all they've done for me was a beautiful moment. And it
| was a full-circle moment for our family, the culmination of a
| long journey of immigrating to the US, moving around in search
| of stability. We had moved to be able to buy a house and to get
| us good, affordable educations. Both of those dreams were
| fulfilled at that time.
|
| I don't recall much else from that ceremony. Not the speakers,
| but a few of the interactions afterward with my fellow students
| and their families.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| > He asked us all to stand up, look back to our family, and
| applaud them for supporting us all these years.
|
| God I have such a difficult relationship with my parents.
| Yes, their methods worked, but damn, I'll need years of
| therapy.
| _heimdall wrote:
| If it makes you feel better, my college graduation was the only
| one where my school decided to have an outdoor ceremony...in
| May in the deep south.
|
| Needless to say, wearing a black gown over dress cloths is not
| great when its 95F and humid out. For our families of all ages,
| sitting in the football stadium for hours in the middle of the
| day was even worse. Multiple people were taken to the hospital
| for heat stroke.
|
| Graduation was a decent excuse for my uncles and brother to
| come into town for a visit, but I would have happily celebrated
| graduation at a Mexican restaurant with air conditioning and a
| margarita without the big ceremony.
| vampiresdoexist wrote:
| You won't. It's a small day in the grand scheme of things. I
| hope you make time for family and friends tho!
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I can say I did it with a lot less grace as a postdoc but I did
| get my honorable discharge from my PhD program.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Holding a wake for one's career and inviting people strikes me ad
| incredibly narcissistic.
| wy35 wrote:
| I don't agree. It's obviously not a "real" wake, just something
| for friends to hang out and show support. And switching careers
| often means moving to a different city, so it would be nice to
| say goodbye to friends who won't be seen for years (or
| forever).
|
| I've been to a couple "deportation parties" for friends who
| couldn't get their visas renewed, and it's sort of the same
| thing. Mostly lighthearted but a slight somber undertone.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Man, I could see that being somber! That seems like a great
| way to have a goodbye party.
| goldfishgold wrote:
| This is from 10 years ago. I would be curious to know where they
| are now and how they feel now about this career decision and blog
| post.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Looking at the webpage, she is now active in the diversity &
| inclusion space, which is still booming. She gets an
| endorsement from Sumana Harihareshwara, who turned the DEI up
| to 11 in Wikiland.
|
| The talks of the Women in Chemistry section at the recent
| American Chemical Society meeting included gems like
| "Metalloids and mentoring: Life at a PUI as the 'Other" and
| "Transgender chemistry graduate students navigating between
| trans and STEM identities".
|
| All of that sounds nice until you start teaching in Alabama or
| get students from a reservation in New Mexico, then you see
| that what the DEI folks offer is completely useless when it
| comes to deprivation.
| Eridrus wrote:
| Seems like they got into tech, like many people leaving
| science: https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa19/speaker-or-
| organize...
| ziofill wrote:
| A few years ago I left a tenured position and transitioned to
| industry. It was quite a mixed bag of feelings, including grief
| for a career that I had identified myself with. It's very
| difficult not to identify ourselves with our jobs.
| cgearhart wrote:
| Thanks. I needed this today. :-)
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