Timeline for Why do academics frequently write very short email replies?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
9 events
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| Dec 5, 2015 at 23:17 | comment | added | Matt | @Dirk, This may depend on the field. I can only think of a handful of biology professors who still do benchwork--it's just too time-consuming. Instead, they spend their time training students, technicians, and postdocs to do the work, going over data with the trainees and using it to plan future experiments, and writing the grants/papers needed to support/report those experiments. Those duties are all managerial (even if they're not deans, provosts, etc). On the other hand, many CS or math profs do spend non-trivial amounts of time coding or doing math and some have their "own" projects. | |
| Dec 2, 2015 at 19:01 | comment | added | DVK | Isn't "watching mice" why $deity invented graduate students? :) | |
| Dec 2, 2015 at 18:53 | comment | added | Dirk | The sentence "Beyond a certain point in their careers, academics (in particular tenured professors) are essentially a subspecies of managers." is just misleading. It seems to be a commonly believed misconception and this site should not perpetuate this. Along all the colleagues I know only a few come close to being member of "a subspecies of managers". I would totally agree with "some academics turn more and more to management" but still "management" is not really the point here. It's probably just that many academics tend to be efficient. | |
| Dec 2, 2015 at 18:04 | comment | added | Stephan Kolassa | ... And the second kind definitely has the larger impact, whether you count this as papers coauthored, concepts introduced, Ph.D. students supervised, or overall direction in their research field. I can't help feeling that someone who does not go the managerial route that allows him to multiply his contributions and experience allows at least some of his potentialities to go to waste. | |
| Dec 2, 2015 at 18:02 | comment | added | Stephan Kolassa | @Dirk: care to elaborate? I did not mean this in a derogatory way, and I don't necessarily find it sad as per Thomas S. There comes a time in many people's lives when they can have a bigger impact not by standing in labs, watching mice, analyzing blood samples, or writing code, but by supervising and managing juniors to do these tasks. I personally know professors who consciously decided against the managerial approach, and it appears they are happier that way (I couldn't imagine them in a managerial role, anyway), but I also see professors that indeed went the managerial route. ... | |
| Dec 2, 2015 at 15:54 | comment | added | Thomas Steinke | "subspecies of managers" is sad but accurate as far as I can tell. | |
| Dec 2, 2015 at 15:46 | comment | added | Dirk | -1 from me for "essentially a subspecies of managers". I agree with the rest of the answer, anyway... | |
| Dec 2, 2015 at 13:09 | vote | accept | PetrS | ||
| Dec 2, 2015 at 13:09 | |||||
| Dec 2, 2015 at 12:13 | history | answered | Stephan Kolassa | CC BY-SA 3.0 |