Nature's take on researcher/grad student working hours

[caedar]

Has anybody seen this recent editorial in Nature about the clash between the "24/7 researcher" and researchers with a work-life balance? When I read it, I felt sick to my stomach. That feeling didnt' go away until I had written up a counter-article, which can be found here. I'm sorry that it's bad form to pimp my personal writing on here, but I feel that this issue is important enough to spread around as much as possible.

What do other people think about how work hours are going and how the grant culture is impacting the working conditions of researchers and graduate students? When is something going to give?

[qbtacoma]

I think this kind of toxic attitude is possible because there are so many qualified people competing. This fundamentally allows people to sort us out by willingness to work, since at some point it becomes meaningless to sort us by qualifications or how closely our interests/experience match whatever research goals our employers have: there are so many of us who match that it doesn't whittle down the applicant pool at all any longer (is that a mixed metaphor?). Hence: this kind of crap.

Tangentially: the dire oversupply of qualified people makes me skeptical of claims some of my friends make that the private market should/will provide employment for academics should government-funded sources be removed. Uh, no. There's already so many people who want jobs in every single field that some of us would be willing to work in the private sector at any price right now - and yet, despite the relatively low cost to firms of hiring extremely qualified people to do research in whatever, those jobs aren't appearing except in industries which already have profitable products (chemistry, engineering, etc.). It is obvious to me that no matter how valuable a given kind of research is to the public (invasive species impact reduction, for instance, or in my field research increasing public knowledge about historically oppressed peoples), unless there is a matching profitable product to go along with it, the private sector will not respond no matter how cheap our labor becomes. The private sector doesn't need to compete with government funding to get qualified people, so the fact that they don't have oodles of Ph.Ds working on things speaks to the fact that most projects simply must have government funding.

Anyway, just had to take a moment there to attack the "free market always does it better" narrative.

[UnlikelyGrad]

Hideous. I have a fantastic advisor who tells me that:

(1) I shouldn't work weekends unless absolutely necessary (she's actually told me to GO HOME AND RELAX) and

(2) I shouldn't spend 5 days a week in lab--in fact, she actually got upset at me last month, because I *had* been spending 5 days/week in lab, and therefore hadn't done substantial amounts of literature reading. She likes her students to be well-read--and I agree, it is helpful.

This brings up the question: if people are in lab 24/7, when do they read scientific journals, never mind ponder what they've read?

[Eigen]

My boss generally assumes we'll be done by about 4pm on Friday... And often asks what our weekend plans are. He doesn't usually expect us to come in and do significant work, unless it's grant deadline time or something.

I think the "hardest" working PI in our department wants his students there from 8-6 or so (counting lunch breaks), and another 5-8 hours sometime else- nights, weekends, etc., so like a 50-60 hour work week.

[UnlikelyGrad]

I think 50 hours a week is perfectly reasonable. I think I put in 40-45 hours/week during regular working hours (I never take time off for lunch--just grab a snack here and there while I wait for the system to equilibrate), and frequently come back to do odd jobs after dinner or on weekends--probably another 5 hours/week there--so I'm guessing 45-50 hours/week on average.

It would be easy for my boss to be a slave driver. My experiments frequently take 10-12 hours to run, so 60 hours a week in lab (5 12-hr days), plus more time in the office for analysis, reading, and writing would be quite easy to ask...but she says she likes her grad students awake enough to think. There have been times when I've done super-duper long experiments which run ~18 hours each...several times in one week...I know I've put in 80 hour weeks sometimes! But if I do, she usually tells me to take it easy the following week--like take a whole day off.

[Eigen]

Not only that, but depending on what you're working with, sleepy grad students can cause a lot of damage. If I'm tired to the point of falling asleep waiting for something to run, I always shut it off and go home- compressed gasses, explosive reagents, or just really expensive equipment I want to work with at my peak, not when I'm tired and distracted.

I figure that my experiments take less time, and usually require fewer re-runs if I take enough time off and get enough sleep that I'm sharp and at my peak when I'm in the lab. Not always possible, but worth it when it is.

[UnlikelyGrad]

Not only that, but depending on what you're working with, sleepy grad students can cause a lot of damage.

OMG, yes. Sometimes I wonder about the value of all the glassware I've broken over the last couple of years--I get very klutzy when tired. I also find I make lots of stupid mistakes (some of which have invalidated the whole day's data) when I'm short on sleep.

[Eigen]

OMG, yes. Sometimes I wonder about the value of all the glassware I've broken over the last couple of years--I get very klutzy when tired. I also find I make lots of stupid mistakes (some of which have invalidated the whole day's data) when I'm short on sleep.

Definitely. We had grant deadline season twice in the last year, and I was essentially working two different jobs- synthesis at one campus, cell work at another. I'd get up around 4 in the morning, go to one campus and do cell work until 8 or 9, then drive to the other campus, do synthetic work all day, then go back to the other campus after dinner, from 9-12 or 12 am.

I ended up being so tired and frazzled after one batch of cells that I swapped an extraction from the control batch with the sample batch... Lost several weeks worth of work. It was after that I really realized how important it was to have enough downtime/sleep that I could stay focused while I was working. I haven't had the same problems since.

[emmm]

I used to fall asleep driving home when I was working 100+ hours/week. I also had some weird "hallucinations," for want of a better word, where my brain tried to convince me that I'd already finished tasks I hadn't even started or that I already knew results I hadn't checked. I'm not willing to work those kinds of hours ever again.

Edited September 13, 2011 by emmm

[juilletmercredi]

Since my work can be done from any place where there is a computer - including at home - there's definitely a danger of working 24/7. When I was a new graduate student I thought I had to be working almost every hour I wasn't sleeping in order to be productive, mostly fueled by a toxic more advanced colleague who seems to believe that productivity can best be measured by how many appointments you have on your calendar (she's one of those people who takes a lot of pride in being "busy" and virtually unavailable unless you schedule with her a week+ in advance).

Yeah, that burned me out really quick. I actually discovered that when I gave myself more downtime, my love for my research was amplified and I was more likely to do good work. I'm also lucky enough to go to a university where the environment is not 24-hour work. My advisor actually tells me to take my birthday off and professors here are notorious for not coming in on Fridays; there are virtually no classes scheduled on Fridays here. Some of them work from home. It's also a ghost town around here on the weekends, even in the research groups that do lab work, at least in my two departments. People are generally gone by 6 or 7 pm.

I wish we could get away from this notion that the only way to be a successful scientist and professor is to work all the time or virtually all the time. I think it especially disadvantages women in science who still have the primary responsibility of caring for their families. I'd like to have a family myself, and I am deliberately aiming towards lower-tier universities and LACs partly because I don't want the time demands of an R1 (and I go to a top R1, so I would have the opportunity to compete for those positions if I chose to).

[ktel]

I am quite pleased to discover that the general start time for most of the grad students in my group right now is 10am. If I come any earlier most of the rooms are deserted. There are also several students with kids and spouses, so it seems like they have a pretty good work-life balance. I always see people taking group breaks in the cafeteria and they have lunch time sports and stuff. I'm at a huge university but our building is very isolated, so it makes for a really close community. We'll see how things go when the semester gets into full swing.

[WornOutGrad]

I've been following this thread from it's beginning, and now I'll throw my hat into this ring.

This particular issue is what is keeping me from pursuing a PhD and going for a professorship in my future. I'm a 2nd year masters student at a pretty lower-tier Meteorology department (which has actually turned out quite a few success stories). I made the mistake of reading the Carriera letter last year and had a nervous breakdown because not only was I mentally unable to have the same kind of "work until you drop" attitude that Carriera expected of his students, but I was unwilling to as well.

I've found that grad school should not be like that and definitely doesn't have to be like that. I have the most hardass adviser in my department, and she is constantly encouraging outside activities and a good balance. She is definitely all business, but she will take a moment every couple weeks to ask me how my long-distance relationship is going and about how I'm doing personally. It goes a long way to encourage me that it's okay and necessary to have other things in my life other than school. Now on the other hand, I have a colleague (and roommate now), who obsesses over school. He goes to the office without fail 7 days a week and is there later than everyone else. For him, it's all about school, and I see the toll it's taking on him (there's a long story behind this, but it's not fair to him if I told it here). I constantly get anxious and feel guilty on Saturday when I'm getting ready to go for a hike or a bike ride or just exploring and he's getting ready to go to the office, but I'm beginning to realize that it's okay to do things outside of school. I think finding that balance is key for true, long term success and happiness.

I'll finish with this: I've thought a lot about what I would want people to say about me when I die. I'll admit, it would be cool is people were to say "WornOutGrad made this discovery... Graduated this many successful students... Was a successful scientist," but I'd rather have people say "He was a great husband... a great father... a great friend... and a great man of God [i'm a religious person]" a million times over, and if academia has a problem with that, I'll gladly walk out the door. Now with that said, my dream would be to wear both hats; to be a good scientist and a great person.

Balance is the key!