How can you handle your professor not doing his job (as a postdoc)?

Question

For the past two years, I have been working as a postdoc under a new German professor with what I consider to be an atrocious work ethic:

• His presence on campus is limited only to when in-person teaching is involved. The rest of the time he stays at home hundreds of kilometers away.
• He is disorganized, often misses to register grades for students, or respond to their emails (I know this because they contact me instead with "what is happening here?").
• Zero research initiative. He relies on other people to put his name in papers.
• No support for his PhD students; he has had one since 2016 who is supposed to defend this summer, with two workshop papers since 2018, and I have met her and she is not the problem (the field is computer science).
• He is constantly delaying procedures that just need to be signed-off by him, like reimbursements for travels (I've waited for mine for over four months for something that is done in two weeks tops).

Suffice to say, I have worked in universities in four other European countries and Australia, and I have always been the lazier one.

So, I walked to the dean's office and I asked him what the point is of someone having a job that he can't do. He told me that my attitude is not nice, and that this is normal in German universities as they “don’t follow the US model” (whatever that means).

Two months ago, I got a call by the president. He told me that I what I describe is indeed not professional behavior, but nothing really happened after that. In fact, I still see students looking for him and not finding him, missing grades, and so on.

I don’t really know what my options are. The dean basically suggested me to shut up and just do my own work as if I am independent here (I don’t have to involve the professor), but I think that this is nonsense, as I’m not a slave to ignore what is going on in my environment.

I would resign, but I like the city here, and why should I resign anyway for someone else?

Let me know your thoughts, please. Perhaps I have been extremely lucky so far to have worked with dozens of different professors/researchers that had some baseline qualities and work ethic and now I am acting paranoid?

Answer 1

If this doesn't affect your work, I suggest, like the president, to let it go and finish your projects so that you can move on. It is their problem to resolve, not yours.

Pressing it too hard can negatively affect your own future if someone in the system is vindictive, say that professor or the chair.

You will find a lot of unfortunate things in academia that you have no real power to correct, especially as a junior person.

If you want to do something positive, and have the time and energy, do what you can to benefit the students that you see affected.

Answer 2

What you can do for others

Professors in Germany (and other countries) are very difficult to fire. Most failed professors end up without a group, or one or two employees that are come with their professorship instead of third-party funding. They are like a permanent teaching staff with somewhat higher salary.

Complaining to the department, faculty, or similar is not bad, but only if such complaints accumulate can you expect for something to happen, though even then I would not expect too much. Unless you can motivate others to complain too, you probably did all you can do in this respect.

You can also warn people considering to join the group (if such people exist) about what to expect. If required, you can thinly veil this, e.g.: “In this group, you have much freedom to decide the direction of your research, but are also expected to work very independently.”

What you can do for others and yourself

If you have the capacity, use this situation to gather experience and CV points by taking the role of your professor where he is failing, for example:

• Advise other supervisees of your professor in research and writing and earn authorships as well as some supervision experience.
• Publish your papers without your supervisor as a co-author showing that you can do research independently.
• Establish collaborations as you seem fit.
• Take higher responsibilities in teaching and thus gain experience with organising courses etc.
• (Basically what your dean suggested:) Organise your own time and explore your own research ideas.

Ideally, when you are interviewing for a higher-ranking position, you can honestly say that you have experience with these things.

What I wouldn’t do is to get involved in any grant applications as they mostly enable your supervisor to harm more advisees in the future.

General caveat

Many of the above suggestions can obviously backfire when your professor feels attacked and can muster the energy for revenge. It is up to you to judge how likely this is and how much you prioritise security over doing good and a chance to benefit from the situation. On the other hand, an escalation after a serious backfire may be what eventually brings down your professor (in the sense that he cannot find students, supervisees, or funding anymore).

Answer 3

In Germany (like in many other countries), professors are civil servants and it isn't easy to fire them. Therefore, all your efforts to report this behaviour won't probably have any effects.

However, even if they do not have this privilege, I don't see reporting to the dean or the president is the right action. First, it is not your task unless you are directly affected (and here, you complain only about your conflict with him by following the right procedure). Second, it opens the door to many malicious complaints. Third, if the professor decides to complete only his basic duties (according to his contract that I am pretty sure you don't have access to), he is free and no one can complain about it.

As a postdoc, it is recommended to stay professional and not bad-mouth your professor because you don't have the competency to judge him. It is your right not to like working with him and you can simply resign. You mentioned you do not want to do it because you like the city. Are you expecting the professor to be fired and you keep your position because you like the city?

EDIT

he has had one since 2016 who is supposed to defend this summer, with two workshop papers since 2018

Since you are not a professor and I assume not habilitated, you are not allowed to supervise PhD students. How can you assess whether the students deserve the degree or not and judge the assessment of many professors (i.e. Supervisor, the examiners and the members of the PhD committee)???

what I consider to be an atrocious work ethic

Nothing you mentioned has to do with work ethics. I would rather call it "irresponsibility".

Answer 4

Since you've already brought this to the attention of several others, you no longer have to deal with this in secrecy.

So, take the time to conduct 1-on-1 chats with other people who are affected by his behavior - other post-docs and PhD candidates, and possibly junior tenure-trackers. Also talk to the relevant people in the student union.

After those 1-on-1 chats, try to schedule a meeting of several of these people. In that meeting, each person should present two or three cases of "not doing the job" misconduct on that Professor's part. Summarize the meeting in a joint letter to be signed by participants, calling for action to be taken to address the situation - but without demanding specific measures (e.g. don't say "fire him").

Before sending this out, see if someone closer to him can get a draft of that letter in front of his face, so that he has a chance of offer making amends (although he might just lash out at those involved).

Finally, have different people, not just yourself, mail this letter to:

• The head of the department
• The department council or body of senior academic staff
• The student union
• The graduate employee union if you have one
• The senior academic staff union
• The Professor himself

... and post a few copies on the bulletin boards where your research group is at.

An additional measure you could consider - if the university is mulling the affair and claiming they can't do anything - is indicating this may be brought to the attention of donors and funding bodies.

Of course, as I've already hinted - the more of these things you do personally, the more this is likely to gain you the reputation of a trouble-maker, or get that Professor to bad-mouth you to colleagues, or terminate your post-doc early etc. Doing the right thing rarely goes unpunished.