<i>In addition to the usual work-day schedule, I expect all of the members of the group to work evenings and weekends. You will find that this is the norm here at Caltech.</i><p>Then you're doing it wrong at Caltech.<p>We are often quick to assume that MoreHoursWorked = MoreWorkGettingDone. This is true up to a point, but false beyond that point. Personally, I believe that evenings and weekends are usually beyond that point.<p>I used to work 90 hours per week. But when I decided that I needed to get more done, I started working 60 hours per week. Results per hour and quality of results have both improved dramatically, so I'll never go back. And I would never work for anyone who doesn't understand this.
The writer of this letter now has a research group <i>named after himself</i> (<a href="http://www.carreira.ethz.ch/" rel="nofollow">http://www.carreira.ethz.ch/</a>) so lets go with uncurable egomania combined with dangerous levels of political skill and charisma, all co-presenting with a callous disregard for one's fellows, justified by the argument that "people want to work for me." Frankly, we're lucky he's only a scientist and didn't study economics, politics or law instead of chemistry.<p>--- edit ---<p>If naming groups after yourself is normal, then it's not a bad apple, it's a bad barrel! It sounds like academia could only be more feudal if you had to call your professor "my liege."
Non-scientists love to talk about how important science is and how we need more scientists, but the reality is that smart kids with some worldly knowledge practically couldn't do worse than to go into science.
My wife is currently a grad student at a top 10 chemistry university studying under a fairly well-known and respected female PhD (relevant because "respected female chemistry PhD" is rare enough to really be "what's wrong with chemistry now"...not the subject of this article...). This PhD does an excellent job in motivating her students by pushing them for timely results, but I don't think anyone in the lab feels like they are expected to work evenings and weekends (indeed, some of them have brand new kids and a healthy work/life balance).<p>Of course, most weekends the lab has least a couple people in it, but I don't think it reflects the attitude presented in this memo. To be clearer, the motivation to come in on weekends and stay late are not coming from a harshly-worded memo, but from their desire to push their career forward.<p>The plural of anecdote is not data, but I thought I'd throw that perspective in.
This is almost a perfect example of "sick system" (or how to keep people in abusive work/personal relationships):<p><pre><code> Rule 1: Keep them too busy to think.
Rule 2: Keep them tired.
Rule 3: Keep them emotionally involved.
Rule 4: Reward intermittently.
</code></pre>
<a href="http://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html" rel="nofollow">http://issendai.livejournal.com/572510.html</a>
We'd never be so gauche as to send <i>a memo</i> about it. There are much more efficient methods of getting employees to work every night and weekend, and if you do it right, it won't even occur to them that that isn't normal.<p>I forget whether I'm talking about salaryman "we" or tech industry "we"...
I always find it amusing how stunningly naive most people who work over 60 hours a week in salaried positions are. Your 100k job may seem swank but if you're working 60-80 hours a week you're making effectively 30-20 dollars an hour. You'd be better off working 2 separate jobs at $40 an hour at 50 hours a week (or a single hourly job at $36/hr that pays regular overtime) than killing yourself in the death march.
I have a PhD from Caltech in Applied Physics/Engineering. I worked for a physics prof when I felt like it. He didn't even KNOW when I was working for the most part, and I took great vacations.<p>You payz your money and you takez your choice. Different profs, different groups, had different cultures. I was in a group where the cultural values were being really smart and having a great time. This letter is clearly from a group where the cultural value is devoting your life to climbing the ladder.<p>Rejecting the work your butt off model is the wiener way out. Maybe it works better, maybe not. Maybe it works well for some people, and that's why many of them are represented among the full professor faculty at Caltech. I don't care if it works that well, it is not my choice, and I had no problem finding full professors at Caltech who asked for nothing of that kind.<p>R:
Reminds me of a memo that got leaked from my previous employer back in '03. Tanked the stock 20% in a day.<p><a href="http://technocrat.net/d/2006/8/28/7262/" rel="nofollow">http://technocrat.net/d/2006/8/28/7262/</a>
This attitude was the norm when I was in chem grad school in the 90s. Slacking was working anything less than 70 hours a week and with 5-7 years of that kind of work undoable in a word from your advisor you were powerless to do anything about it.<p>Needless to say, I've never regretted my decision to drop out and write software instead.
"This lab is what is known as a '40 hour lab'. You are not permitted to work here for more than 40 hours each week. Sign ins and sign outs will be rigorously monitored as well as periodic spot checks to make sure no research tasks associated with this lab have taken place outside official hours.<p>As you well know there are many, many qualified applicants who would gladly take your place if you feel that you are unable to follow these rules. The simple truth is that if you are unable to get results in the 40 hours provided each week, you will probably be unable to get results period and should look for different employment."<p>Go ahead, professor, post it. I dare you.
I hate this kind of ethic; our competitors have it almost exclusively (from my observation).<p>We are a much smaller company all round with a <i>very</i> relaxed work schedule (like today, our busiest day, we finished early to watch the football) and yet we consistently outperform, outmanoeuvre and beat those competitors into the dust.<p>It's <i>all</i> about work ethic and the ability of a "team" to Get Things Done.<p>I think the leanest and most productive type of companies/groups/teams today tend to:<p>- work flexible hours<p>- work relatively few hours<p>- and most importantly works hard to reduce the hours you need to be productive (this does wonders IMO)
When choosing a field of work, it's important to look at the pay. I want to work at something I love, but I also want to get paid well for it, and no matter how much I love a field, I don't like being abused. If a field is money-poor, it just is. Some industries are awash in money, some aren't.<p>Next thing is how many people are eager to be in the field, no matter the cost. Don't enter a field overcrowded with good people. Sports, acting, anything glamorous. For reasons that escape me, science fits in this category. Find an area where you're genuinely appreciated. If there is no money involved, the appreciation is fake.
If this ever happens to IT, I think I'd rather go work in fast food and write code on the side. I'm passionate about the work but not passionate about being worked to death.<p>I guess some may argue it has happened in some tech circles (startups: at least you usually give us a reason to work hard), but it's never been the norm anywhere I've been employeed.
"Our culture celebrates the idea of the workaholic. We hear about people burning the midnight oil. They pull all-nighters and sleep at the office. It’s considered a badge of honor to kill yourself over a project. Workaholics wind up creating more problems than they solve. Workaholics miss the point, too. They try to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at them. They try to make up for intellectual laziness with brute force."<p>- Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson, "Rework"
I deal with this scenario everyday in a company I work with, where the founder expects everyone to work on weekends and late night (most days). Since it is an advertising agency, he accepts every work that comes his way from clients. He comes from Sales background and somehow believes that more work is equal to more money, which is not true. When it comes to any work where some amount of thinking is involved, Less work (Quality) == more money.<p>Most of the people in the team are stressed and are complaining that they don't have a personal life. They would quit the company, the day they get an opportunity to apply leave, so that they can attend other interviews.<p>Very soon, I am going to buy him a book called "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams". It's an amazing book, and is a must read for people who are or want to manage teams.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware_%28book%29" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peopleware_%28book%29</a>
Is this a US thing? a CalTech thing? or just one crazy professor? I know several research scientists in various places in Europe and they have nothing like this. Sure, when deadlines need to met they work longer or they get swept up in their work they end up sitting until 3 am and sometimes you have to drop by the lab on a weekend to check on an experiment, but all that is an exception rather than a rule.
Organic chemistry - particularly total synthesis - is the Marines only without the warm and fuzzy personal development. It's full of the bad crazy.<p>(My background's theoretical solid-state which is a lot less savage.)
I don't know any chem PhD/Grad students to ask this question, but I'm curious: is this work schedule specific to Chemistry researchers? From my experience in college chem classes (I was premed before CS) their research involves lots of experimentation and waiting on reactions to run; a lot of butt-in-seat time might be necessary for them to do their research.
Bad idea. Reward people for "putting in hours" and suddenly they'll figure out ways to be present in the office without doing actual work.<p>Some employers avoid falling into this trap by refusing to make a record of how long employees work, only their results.
I'm actually surprised that HN-ers aren't more sympathetic to the professor.<p>Let's suppose the prof is, himself, so passionate about his work that he's devoting all of his time to it. He's made an effort to recruit people who are equally dedicated, because when the colleagues he depends on go home before him, that puts a bottleneck on his output. Furthermore, if most of his grad students are content sacrificing their personal lives for this work, doesn't it sour morale to have one guy who's always last to arrive and first to leave, yet who expects equal status?<p>Plus, while other commenters have suggested that this professor is mainly motivated by ego, it's also plausible that he's doing life-saving research, thst he decided long ago that he has a moral responsibility to sacrifice every waking hour to his work to save others from years of pain and sadness.<p>Again, I don't know if any of the above is true, but it's easy for me to imagine circumstances under which this memo would be totally reasonable. Surely anyone who's worked at a startup knows how important it is for everyone's workload expectations to be aligned?
Do associate professors really have that much clout over there that they can do this? Maybe I'd expect something like that from a department head. Is that what this is?
Professors who treat their grad students like slave labor almost always create their own comeuppance.<p>See, one day, that grad student will be a PhD. And because you abused him like slave labor, instead of being a peer you can collaborate with, he becomes your competitor.<p>You find yourself getting less funding and less people willing to go in on grants with you because some young, hotshot upstart took own of his PhD level ideas you don't own and turned it into something valuable. And you're scrambling to catch up.
The thing that's being missed here is that it's a chemistry total synthesis group. Organic chemistry's pretty bad, but total synthesis is evil.<p>Total synthesis (designing programs to build molecules from scratch) is a global never-ending footrace - first to make the molecule wins. That's almost uniquely startuppy/pressure-cookery among science; even among chemistry. I was a postdoc in one of the world's leading chemistry departments, but that was in chemoinformatics, which was less crazy. Before that I did my PhD in a prestigious earth sciences department, working on problems in mineral physics, and that was fine.<p>Total synthesis is unique.
In the end, it is irrelevant whether the bureaucrat is right or wrong about the work week and productivity.<p>The bottom line is that the market dictates whether it's a buyer's market or a seller's market. In the case of the letter in question, it's clearly a -perceived- buyer's market at the time the letter was written.<p>No point in being outraged by the letter. The quick and easy solution is to quit - why would any sane person want to continue to work in such a toxic environment?
Trying to find some sense in this, I guess the chemistry work was focus on developing new types of drugs, which should have make him so rich, that he got mad thinking about the money's about to earn.<p>Otherwise, I see no reason for a person to be that nasty.
I'm fairly certain that this is illegal in CA. This letter would certainly be very useful in a lawsuit demanding retroactive payment for overtime hours worked.
My startup is working really closely with comp sci grad students in a lab at a local university. I wish I could get their advisor to encourage this behavior. ;)