Would You Hire Her?

Below is a slightly edited excerpt from a recent e-mail from a reader. Some details have been generalized to make the scenario a bit more.. general.

I'm a 30-something Physical Science PhD. I finished my PhD a few years ago, just before my middle child was born. Since then I have been primarily a stay-at-home mom, but I have remained involved with my collaboration in a low-level way - I've worked with my collaborators to finalize our analysis and to write and publish the associated paper, given some seminars, and traveled to give talks at conferences. Last year, my former advisor noticed that I had been doing quite a bit of work for free and offered to pay me by the hour, so I am currently working 0-10 hours per week. Recently, I have been writing a paper and looking into the possibility of a new analysis.

My third (and final) child is now over a year old and I am applying for postdoc positions. My CV doesn't exactly have a "gap" - I have papers and/or talks for every year since my PhD -- but my unusual situation obviously requires some explanation. I have added "stay-at-home mother, no employer" to my CV and I explain in more detail in the cover letter.

I'm wondering how all this is going to be viewed by the professors with whom I'm applying to work. I was a good student in a high-ranking department, my thesis was a high-profile analysis, and my advisor tells me that his letter of recommendation is quite enthusiastic, so I should be a strong candidate unless people see the time with my kids as a deal breaker. I'm curious how you would feel about an application like mine and if you have any thoughts on how I am handling the topic in my applications. It would be very helpful to hear any concerns you might have about hiring someone in my situation - especially things that you wouldn't actually bring up with a candidate.

I would hire her, and I would have no hesitations or concerns about doing so.

Her record or accomplishments and research potential is strong, the letter of recommendation from the PhD advisor is apparently strong, and the evidence for an ability to get things done is impressive. I have had single, childless postdocs who got less research done while employed (by me) full-time than what this woman has done while being a "stay-at-home" mom with three kids.

Of course the final decision (relative to other candidates) would rest on the quality of the work etc. etc., but my answer to the hypothetical question of whether I would hire this person or whether the stay-at-home mom episode was a deal-breaker is an empathic yes, I would hire her.

In terms of the mechanics of the application, I don't think she should dwell much on the "unusual" situation. It's fine to account for a gap in employment in the CV, but additional explanation need not be lengthy and certainly should not be defensive or be the first thing in the cover letter.

The recommendation letter from the advisor could be worded to turn this situation into an example of the impressive abilities of his former student; what might seem like a liability could be a strength. This woman apparently has superpowers when it comes to being focused and productive.

Would you hire her? Why or why not?

And: What (if anything) would you like to see in the application materials in terms of an explanation for the stay-at-home mom "gap" in employment?

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Insecurity as Motivator

Today in Scientopia, I consider an ethical dilemma involving a PI and a research scientist who hates to write.

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Half Time

Today in Scientopia, I discuss a reader's question about whether science professors (and others) would be receptive to the idea of a half-time postdoc.

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In the Course of Human Events

As long as universities continue to avoid taking the lead on making policies about family leave for graduate students and postdocs, it's going to matter what individual professors (PIs) think about such things. So, if you are a graduate student or postdoc who is concerned about work-family issues, presumably you would prefer to work with a professor who has a constructive attitude about such things.

How do you find out in advance which professors have which philosophy?

If you are a graduate student or postdoc who wants to work with a professor who will be accommodating (as much as possible) for "family events", such as the birth or adoption of a child, I don't think you can predict from the gender of the professor what their philosophy about such events will be. Whether an advisor is sympathetic to "family events" that distract their students/postdocs from their Research has nothing to do with gender.

I think that both male and female advisors can be more or less accommodating depending on their personality, life experiences, career stresses, funding situation, and mysterious factors no one can predict. It is not necessarily the case that female advisors will automatically be more "humane" about these situations; similarly, I do not believe (as some do) that female advisors are less understanding, especially if they are the dreaded single, bitter, and old FSP. And ditto for older male professors who don't know what it's like to have a wife with a career and/or who don't respect young male professors who want to spend time with their kids (and spouse). Such people exist, but there is no general rule about gender or generation that will reveal to you someone's likely advising philosophy.

Whether a professor is also a parent also isn't a good indicator of their advising philosophy re. advisees who start families. For example, advisors who are also parents may or may not be sympathetic to their advisees who become parents. In fact, I know some advisor/parents who are less understanding about work/life challenges because they are afflicted with the "I suffered, so you should too" syndrome. I, for one, don't want hear for the nth time the story about an intrepid female colleague (or a male colleague's wife) who went to a conference or taught a class or was back in the lab within minutes of giving birth. (I am exaggerating, but not much.) These are not likely to be people who will understand if someone needs to rebalance their time re. when they are in the office/lab vs. at home.

And of course there are many advisors (female and male; old and young; with and without kids), who are very sympathetic to the fact that some graduate students and postdocs want to start families during their graduate/postdoctoral years.

So how do you find out in advance which professors have which philosophy? I suppose you could ask potential advisors/PIs directly, but you might harm your chances of being accepted if you started asking about future research disruptions before you even start, so you might want to be cautious about this approach. If this is your #1 issue, though, then you might as well be direct so that everyone knows where everyone stands.

If the direct approach is not for you, you might be able to figure out a professor's track record with previous advisees, or at least try to figure out what a professor's general advising philosophy is. That's important information to know anyway, whether or not you are anticipating a "family event" during your graduate or postdoctoral program. Ask around, chat with current and former advisees, look at personal webpages etc.

Or perhaps readers have other general suggestions or personal anecdotes of the constructive, illustrative sort. Have any of you used direct or indirect methods to investigate the family-friendliness of a potential advisor/mentor?

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Fire Away

Perhaps it is time to discuss again the topic of "firing". I have previously discussed the topic of students (essentially) firing their adviser (in most cases by moving on to another adviser) and have also touched on topics involving the termination of postdocs and grad students by advisers.

Today's specific topic stems from some comments on yesterday's post, including interesting comments involving firing trends over time.

I know that "firing" is a touchy topic for some because of the what-if-that-were-me-being-fired anxiety it can generate (unless the subject of the firing is clearly someone else), but termination of advising/supervising relationships is a fact of academic life, it occurs for a wide variety of reasons (some good, some not), and is something many of us grapple with in our research groups, departments, and beyond.

In particular, it's interesting to consider whether advisers are more or less likely to "fire" advisees before tenure vs. after. I would guess that the general trend would be one of greater reluctance to fire during early career stages, when it is essential to demonstrate an ability to be a successful adviser and to minimize disruptions of a research project.

But perhaps we have to separate "willingness" to fire from what really happens. For example, I think I was less willing to fire advisees early in my career, but in reality I terminated more advising relationships early in my career. To the extent that I can conclude anything from a small dataset, hypotheses to explain this trend in my advising career include:

- before I established my reputation in my field, the students I recruited were not as good as the ones I was able to recruit later in my career;

- bad luck;

- poor advising by me.

I think it was a combination of all those things, although I hasten to add, in my own defense, that I don't think that more advising experience could have helped some of the students and postdocs who arrived in my research group with severe emotional and/or substance abuse problems. Nevertheless, I was left wondering for a long time whether I drove my advisees crazy or whether I was somehow a magnet for troubled people.

Owing to complexities like these, career/firing trend data might be difficult to interpret. We can try, though, or at least make things up that sound interesting.

So: for those of you who have advised for more than a few years,

- Are you more or less willing to terminate advising relationships now than you were at an earlier stage of your career?

- Have you in fact terminated more or fewer advising relationships at a later stage of your career compared to an earlier stage?

And do you have any explanation for your person firing trend, if one exists?

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Throw Them Out?

A recent post about a colleague's postdoc who is disrespectful (in more than a casual way) to female postdocs, but not to female professors or students, attracted many comments, including some from those who felt that the postdoc should be immediately fired.

I am curious about the demographics of those in the 'fire him immediately' camp vs. those in the 'give him a chance to change' camp.

My hypothesis, which we may or may not be able to test, is that the different responses relate more to academic position than to gender. That is, I think that those who have experience advising postdocs and graduate students might be the ones who are more interested in finding a way to change his behavior and attitude, while at the same time protecting his female peers.

In contrast, those with less advising experience might focus more on the fact that, in some fields, there is an oversupply of talented postdocs, so why waste time on one who has behaved reprehensibly? That is, if this postdoc cannot behave in a professional way towards all colleagues, he should be fired without being given a chance to change, and immediately replaced with someone without these problems.

This hypothesis may well be wrong, of course, but if amount of advising experience relates to the various responses to the 'peer sexism' anecdote, this is interesting because it conflicts with the view of many of my early-career readers who feel that professors aren't as humane as they could be in their dealings with postdocs and students. That is, professors should be more aware that graduate students and postdocs don't arrive fully trained and perfect, and should be less inclined to fire and fail those who don't meet our high standards (yet). We professors should work harder on the training and mentoring aspects of our jobs.

Holding that belief and the "fire him immediately" point of view requires making a distinction between the "how to do research" aspects of training and "how to get along with others" aspects. It requires being more patient with those who struggle with the first aspect, and less (or not at all) with the second. I see them both as elements of my job as an adviser, although I think many of us are very challenged by the second aspect of the advising job.

It is important to note that the specific case described in my earlier post does not involve violence, intimidation, physical contact, or any other serious situations in which immediate firing would obviously be well justified. The unprofessional behavior of this postdoc is unacceptable and should not continue, but, in my opinion, does not rise to the level of immediate firing without first giving the postdoc a change to change his behavior.

Although my influence on the employment status of a postdoc supervised by another professor at another university in another country on research in which I have no involvement is quite low, I have talked about the situation with the postdoc's supervisor, and know that he is taking it seriously. It would be unacceptable if no action were taken and if there were no negative consequences for the postdoc if he does not change. I do not believe that will be the case. The postdoc has recently been alerted to the fact that his behavior is unacceptable, not only to the female postdocs, but to his supervisor, and he has been given the opportunity to change; on what time scale and by what means of evaluation of progress, I do not know.

The question I asked earlier was whether readers believed the postdoc could change. Today the question is: Why do some people think the postdoc should be fired without any effort to find a way to change his attitude and behavior? If there is much evidence that this postdoc is a thoughtful, sincere, and nice person in other aspects of his professional life, why not try to build on that? Wouldn't we all benefit if this postdoc can change? Isn't it the responsibility of his supervisor to try to effect such a change? The supervisor is also responsible for some of the female postdocs involved in this situation, but if he believes he can protect them and mentor the problem postdoc, shouldn't he try?

Although I feel optimistic about this particular case, overall the situation is depressing. I am very weary of the apparently limitless supply of sexists of all ages, although I know from long experience advising that few of us are perfect in our interpersonal relations, and some people can change (for the better).

If, after efforts to fix the problem, this postdoc continued to show no signs of being able to work with female peers, his contract should be terminated, no matter how talented he is at research and no matter how respectful he is to women who are not his peers. Such termination is the right thing to do for many reasons, including the very practical reason that his inability to work with everyone on his research team (and creation of a hostile work environment for some) harms the research.

I hope it doesn't come to that, but the situation nevertheless make me wonder: Is a desire for the elimination of sexism (and similar problems) in academia incompatible with a wish to educate and reform the perpetrators? I don't think it is.

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Peer Sexism

A colleague at another institution has a postdoc with whom I have interacted from time to time. My colleague's research interests are very broad, and this particular postdoc's research field is quite different from mine. Nevertheless, when I work with this colleague or when we attend the same conference, I also interact with the postdoc. As part of a research group of 4-6 people, we talk about Science, have dinner in conference cities etc.

I have always found this young man to be extremely nice, friendly, respectful, funny, and interesting. He works hard, cares a lot about his research, and is curious about research topics beyond his own specific field. In short, I like him personally and have been very impressed with his work.

Recently, however, I found out that this young man systematically offends, alienates, and/or harasses the female postdocs in his research group and in associated research groups. One by one, these women have complained to my colleague as each one has encountered the postdoc. This was not some organized effort to complain; in fact, some of these women are at different institutions, working on different projects, and have never met each other. This postdoc seems to have a perfect record of offensive behavior towards his peers who are female.

This shocked me. My assumption, which was clearly flawed, was that I would be able to detect such traits in a person, even if they were respectful to me because I am older and a professor. I assumed that anyone who was so dysfunctional in their professional relationships with women would not distinguish based on age and position but would have a more systematic problem with women.

It's possible that I could be oblivious to some clues, but I have thought a lot about this, and have spent some time with this young man after learning about his disturbing behavior. I see absolutely no sign that he is being insincere in his respect for me. All my other colleagues involved in the research project that tangentially relates to this postdoc's research are male, and I see no difference in how he interacts with them vs. me. When it comes to interacting with his peers, however, he clearly has a major problem, although I have never seen him in action, perhaps owing to the all-male (but me) nature of the research group subset in which I interact with him (and because, according to my colleague, he reserves his most offensive behavior for times when senior professors are not around).

His supervisor has thus far dealt with the problem by keeping this postdoc away from projects involving other women scientists. Fortunately and unfortunately, this has not been difficult to arrange.

I told my colleague, however, that I hoped that this is only a short-term solution. His postdoc has to learn how to behave in a professional way towards women of all ages and academic job classifications. My colleague agrees, but is not sure how to accomplish this. My colleague also thinks the problem will be somewhat resolved by the fact that the postdoc's girlfriend, who was living in another country, is now living with him. I personally find it disturbing if this is viewed as a solution to the problem.

A complicating factor is that the half dozen people thus far most involved in this situation and in these discussions come from almost as many different countries, and although we all work together well (with the glaring exception of the problem described here), most of us have limited understanding of how to deal with such problems in the context of each other's different institutions and cultures.

For example, at my institution, I could send this postdoc to a sort of 'sensitivity training' workshop, and my department chair could make the continuation of his position contingent on his not harassing women. This young man has a major problem that he is clearly not solving on his own, so he needs his supervisor (mentor) or institution to step in if at all possible. If there is no structure to do that, however, (as seems to be the case here) then the adviser has to figure something out, although most of us are not well equipped to deal with this type of situation.

Another colleague who is also part of this extended research group thinks that the postdoc's selective sexism makes the situation more insidious than if he were pan-sexist. There is an insidious aspect to it because the selective nature of the postdoc's problem made it difficult to detect, and might lead some people to underestimate or dismiss the problem.

Nevertheless, I remain optimistic that the problem can be solved if it is dealt with aggressively but constructively. I do not believe that this young man is a hard-core sexist who will never change, but his supervisor and all of us who care about the situation have to make it clear that to the postdoc his future career as an academic depends on his changing his behavior towards women.

Question: Can peer sexists be reformed? That is, without knowing more details of the people or the situation, do you share my optimism or do you think that sexists, even of the selective sort, have a deep problem that probably can't be fixed?

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Those Happy Golden Postdoctoral Days

Subtitle:

Happy Postdocs : Not An Oxymoron

Disclaimer: I have no direct experience with postdocs in biomedical or other life sciences fields. My point of view derives entirely from experiences in the physical sciences.

Context: In the physical science academic niche with which I am familiar, postdoctoral fellowships are desirable, respected positions. Doing a (successful) postdoc gives the additional experience needed to make the transition from being a student to being a professor at a research university.

My experience: Aside from a few harassment issues I could have done without, I was happy as a postdoc. I enjoyed the responsibility, respect, and higher salary, and, although I had a lot of freedom in my research as a grad student, I felt even freer as a postdoc because I finally had the time and ability to develop some of my own research ideas at a more intellectually satisfying level.

Nevertheless, being a postdoc is not 24/7 good times. To help examine some of the pros and cons, let's compare the professional lives of postdocs and assistant professors:

Job security: Although some postdocs (or equivalent positions) have a contract of a similar duration as that of an assistant professor before tenure evaluation, postdocs live with more uncertainty about whether all these years of training will lead to the career they want. Although most postdocs who do well in my field ultimately get a faculty position if they want one, you never know. And, more typically, postdoc contracts are only for 1-2 years. Assistant professors may have some anxious years before tenure evaluation time, but they can achieve job security with tenure. Assistant professors clearly have the advantage in this respect.

Salary: Assistant professors typically make more than postdocs, although the difference narrows for more senior postdocs. In addition, assistant professors with significant postdoctoral experience can typically negotiate a higher starting salary, so the postdoctoral years 'count' in determination of future salary.

In what might be a rare situation, a former postdoc of mine recently took a pay cut (to $48k) when moving to a teaching position at a small university. He wanted a teaching-focused job, but was worried that the lower salary would make life more difficult for his family of four (his is the only income), but, when he asked me for advice, I said that I hoped he would take the job anyway because of the career opportunity and potential future job security. He did, and so far he is doing fine and is very happy in his new job.

Assistant professors in general have an advantage over postdocs with respect to salary, but not in all cases.

Benefits: In my field, health insurance benefits are typically similar for both postdocs and professors, but situations vary from institution to institution regarding whether the institution/PI contribute to retirement benefits. Some institutions make no retirement contributions for postdocs or assistant professors in the first year or two; some contribute to the retirement funds of assistant professors but not of postdocs; and others contribute to both. I am currently contributing to the retirement fund of a postdoc, as are many of my colleagues for their postdocs, so it certainly does happen. This factor works out about equally for postdocs and assistant professors in the institutions/departments with which I am familiar.

Independence: This one varies a lot. Many of us had a lot of independence as postdocs to pursue the research we wanted, but others are mostly/entirely confined to doing a project conceived and directed by a PI. Assistant professors have freedom to take the lead on research projects, although with that freedom comes a lot more responsibility (and management tasks) than postdocs typically have to deal with.

I think this factor is comparable for postdocs and assistant professors. There are certainly very controlling PIs who restrict the independence of postdocs, but there are also assistant professors whose research topics are constrained by various factors.

Time: Many of us think back on our postdoctoral experiences as the time in our academic careers when we had the most uninterrupted time to focus on research. One colleague of mine says that, for him, being a postdoc was even better than having a sabbatical (without the career anxiety, I suppose) because the professional service expectations and time spent managing grants and people was so much less.

According to that postdoc world view, postdocs are fortunate because they are not afflicted with the stresses of being a student (exams, classes) and typically doesn't have to do the same kind of professorial time management feat of balancing research, teaching, advising, managing, service etc. As a postdoc, you may help mentor grad students or undergrads in a research group, and you may also manage your own grant and start to be asked to review manuscripts and reviews, but all of this ramps up to a higher level when you become a professor. That's part of why spending time as a postdoc is a good transitional experience between being a student and a professor.

As a postdoc, I definitely felt anxious about the future. There were very few academic jobs in my field at that time, and I was very aware that I might not get one of those few.

Nevertheless, I was doing what I wanted to be doing. I enjoyed the intellectual freedom and the unrestricted time to think and write and do research. I was relieved to be taken (a bit) more seriously as a scientist than I had been as a grad student, and I enjoyed starting to gain visibility and build connections in my field. I was not ready to start a faculty position at a research university directly after finishing my PhD, but my postdoc time, followed by a teaching position, gave me the experience I needed once I was fortunate enough to get a tenure-track job.

Postdocs win in the 'time' category.

Summary: Being a postdoc has its stresses, even in the best of systems, but there are also very positive aspects of being a postdoc. Many faculty take seriously their jobs as mentors of postdocs, and many postdocs use well their year (or two or three) of research experience to launch their subsequent careers.

Happy postdocs exist. That fact doesn't help those who are in a postdoctoral form of hell; some fields clearly need to reform their postdoctoral systems. Nevertheless, I think it is important to present a positive case for postdocs, at least in some of the physical sciences, and to stop equating all postdoctoral fellowships with all the worst aspects of academia.

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Dodging a Postdoctoral Bullet

In general, I am not a particularly sadistic person; at least, no more than the average professor. Every once in a while, though, as I am mulling over a potential blog post topic, I think to myself "This one is going to freak out the [select one or more: undergrads, grads, postdocs, assistant professors, associate professors, professors, administrators, adjuncts, social scientists, reptiles]", and then I do the post anyway. With a few exceptions, I don't deliberately try to upset anyone, but there are certain topics (letters of reference, tenure, interviews) that lend themselves to freak-outs among certain segments of the academic population.

Today's target topic: postdocs, as told from the point of view of a supervisor of postdocs.

First, some context: In my field, postdoctoral researchers are well respected, are paid a decent salary with benefits, have a lot of independence, and typically spend 1-3 years in this position before moving on to another job: a faculty position, a job in industry, a researcher position at a national lab or a government agency, or something else entirely.

Postdocs can be hired in a number of different ways. In my case, I can either acquire funding and then seek a postdoc, or I can identify a postdoc candidate (possibly when one contacts me) and then one or both of us can seek funding for a project.

Sometimes I get e-mail from postdoc candidates or I meet one at a conference. Some of these possibilities are interesting enough to pursue further.

You would think that it is easy to identify excellent postdoc candidates -- or, at least, easier than trying to guess which applicants to graduate school will succeed and which will not -- but it is surprisingly difficult. For example, I have supervised apparently promising postdocs who never published anything, or did so only under torture (or if I wrote most of the paper). How did they get a PhD in the first place? Did their advisers write their thesis and/or papers and not happen to mention this in the recommendation letter? One wonders.

I have been thinking about this recently because a few times in the past year I have had semi-close calls with postdoctoral aspirants who seemed quite promising, but on further inspection turned out to be much less so. If I hadn't happened to find out some information that is not typically included in a reference letter, I might have ended up with a(nother) disaster postdoc.

Some of you may be thinking: What if this so-called "information" about these prospects was wrong? What if these were really talented people and you denied them a career opportunity for no good reason? These are valid points, but be assured that I wouldn't dismiss a person based only on a vague rumor from someone I didn't know.

Example 1: A postdoc candidate e-mailed me, I wrote back asking some questions to get a better sense for what his ideas and interests were, and he responded a while later.

There were some possible red flags in his e-mails. For example, when writing to a potential postdoctoral supervisor, it's probably not a good idea to complain about how much work you have to do and how busy you are and why you took so long to respond. Why would I want to work with someone who easily whines and is may already be having difficulty managing their time?

But these were little, ambiguous red flags, not big, obvious, glow-in-the-dark ones. Perhaps he was just trying to convey how industrious he is, and it didn't occur to him that he would seem to be complaining and incompetent. Maybe he thrives on being extraordinarily busy and is actually intensely intellectually engaged in his thesis research but just didn't express this clearly. I was willing to overlook the apparent whining and not over-interpret at this stage.

There was enough that seemed possibly promising in his academic background, so I wanted to know more about him. I asked a longtime, trusted colleague (and supremely nice person) who knows this student well, and, after a bit of reluctance and vague hmmming, he sighed and told me about this PhD student's bad attitude, laziness, apathy, poor quantitative skills, and marginal qualifications even to be a graduate student. There were also apparently some ethics issues. If I just went by my correspondence with the postdoctoral candidate and his CV and even the reference of his main adviser, I would never have known he was such a (potential) disaster.

Perhaps in the course of getting more than one letter of reference, some of this information would have come to light anyway, but I decided not to pursue this opportunity any further.

Example 2: A finishing PhD at Prestigious University with exactly the right background and interests for someone who could be a happy and productive member of my research group introduced himself to me at a conference. We had a brief chat that established that we had some mutual research ideas that might be the nucleus of a future proposal, and agreed to talk more. In the meantime, I casually mentioned this person to some people I know well at his current and past academic institutions, and every single one said "Hmm.... well.... there are some things you should know..." (there followed long -- but consistent -- lists of strange, unpleasant, disturbing behavior that resulted in great disruptions of research efforts by the student and everyone else in his immediate surroundings). Another dead end.

I know there are excellent postdocs out there -- I have even worked with some -- but it is not safe to assume that anyone who makes it through a PhD program and who wants to pursue an academic career is automatically well suited for postdoctoral research. And it can be very difficult to predict this just based on a written application or even a conversation or exchange of e-mail with the candidate.

I have brought postdoc candidates to campus for interviews in the past, but the applicant pool is typically international, and therefore some of the interviews are by phone or Skype, which is convenient, but not the same as spending a day or two with someone.

Letters of references are also not as candid as they should be. I know that various candidates for various positions spend a lot of time worried about their letters of reference, but 99.76% of such letters are positive. It is rare to find one containing the information that my colleagues divulged to me in person in the examples above.

Certainly we have to be careful not to ask the opinion of someone who is unobjective, uninformed, and/or vindictive, and we need to filter information for bias or personal views on issues or characteristics unrelated to a candidate's qualifications for a job (e.g., being female, having young children etc.), but candid, accurate information can be a life-saver for me and the rest of my research group, so that we don't spend large amounts of time and money on someone who cannot or will not be a productive member of the group.

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Being There, Postdoctoral Edition

How much do you work? More than you want to? As much as you want to? Whatever your answer, do you get to decide or do you feel you have no choice, either because someone else is determining how much you work or because you are trying to meet certain expectations of productivity for your career stage and trajectory?

We could discuss whether professors work too much (to get tenure, to get promoted) or too little (for the amount they are paid, especially once tenured), or even whether graduate students work too much (according to them) or too little (according to their advisers). Those topics have been discussed here before.

But what about postdocs? Although some postdocs are funded by fellowships, many postdocs are supervised by and accountable to the professor (PI) who is paying their salary from a grant. There is likely to be a written contract setting out the salary for a year or more of the postdoctoral position, but other important things, like expectations of working hours/day and productivity, vary considerably from professor to professor.

There is, in theory, a framework that specifies the amount that graduate students work, and there is an administrative structure that oversees the education and training of graduate students. Whether or not those hours are reasonable (too much/too little) or enforced is another topic. Nevertheless, students are the responsibility not only of individual advisers but also of departments and other administrative units that deal with aspects of graduate education. There are graduate program advisers, deans, and so on.

It is more rare for there to be an administrative structure that oversees a university's postdoctoral researchers. Such things do exist; some universities do indeed have an Office of Postdoctoral Education or Affairs or Services or whatever. In some cases these are just 'resource centers' and in others they have some oversight role in the hiring practices and supervising of postdoctoral researchers.

Ideally, the postdoc and supervising professor(s) will discuss issues such as expectations and working hours and so on, perhaps even before the postdoc is hired. Does anyone want to guess as to how often these conversations occur in advance? In most cases? Rarely? I think my best guess would be closer to 'rarely' than 'often'.

So what do you do, then, if you are a postdoc and your faculty supervisor tells you, for example, that you must work at least n hours every day (including weekends), and n is a rather large number (say, 11-12 or so)? What if those hours are specified -- e.g. "Be in the lab/office every day from 8 AM to 8 PM or 9 AM to 8 PM" (or whatever suits the faculty supervisor best)?

This post is in response to an e-mail describing exactly such a scenario.

Maybe specified hours are OK with you and you were going to work those hours and more anyway. But what if you feel that you are getting a lot of work done but you want/need to leave the office at, say, 6 PM every day? Whether or not the postdoc is risking their future career by working less than their PI's preferences depends a lot on the attitude and philosophy of the professor.

I personally don't care what specific hours my postdocs work as long as they get some interesting and useful work done and are obviously making progress with their research. I would like to talk to them and otherwise communicate with them regularly, but they certainly don't have to work the exact same hours that I do.

Years ago, I had one postdoc who was an extreme morning person. I am an extreme nocturnal person. It was often the case that we overlapped for an hour or so in the middle of the night, just as I was finishing up working for the day and the postdoc was starting the day. This was very convenient and efficient when we were working on something together.

And as for how many hours someone should work: that varies depending on the working style and efficiency of each individual. Some people can get as much done in 8 hours as others can in 12 or more. It makes more sense to me to agree on some (reasonable) expectations as to what needs to get done by when. These are topics for continual discussion and reconsideration as a research project progresses in its typical non-linear fashion.

If you feel you are being forced to work unreasonable hours, in number or at specific times, I don't have any good advice except to gauge the flexibility/sanity level of the professor specifying these hours. Perhaps once you have established yourself as a good and hard worker, you can have a chat about a more flexible schedule. If you can continue to do excellent research and be available for communication (in person or electronically) for an acceptable number of hours each day, a reasonable person would let you work out your own schedule.

If the supervising faculty is inflexible, this is useful information to pass along to others contemplating working with this person, not as an undermining criticism, necessarily, but as information you may wish that you had had prior to accepting your position. And then, most likely, you probably need to just work those hours, do a great job, get a great job, and become an excellent mentor to your own postdocs and grad students, allowing them more flexibility than you were given.

Question: Have any of you readers made use of a university Office of Postdoctoral Stuff to deal with work-related issues such as working hours?

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Mentor v. Supervisor

For various reasons related to my serving on an insane number of committees that review an insane number of CVs from faculty in many different academic disciplines, I see a lot of different CVs that vary considerably in their content and style.

Fortunately, most such committees have diverse membership so that there is almost always someone who can explain certain 'cultural' differences in CVs.

Sometimes, however, no one knows what to make of certain elements of a CV. For example, lately I have been wondering whether there is a difference in meaning as to whether someone "mentors" or "supervises" a postdoc.

Are these synonyms? If so, presumably the word "mentor" is chosen to indicate that the faculty-postdoc interactions involved a range of activities such as one might encounter in the new NSF-mandated postdoc mentoring statement that accompanies proposals that include funding for postdocs?

Or does "mentoring" mean that someone worked with a postdoc who may have acquired their own funding, whereas "supervised" means that the faculty got the funding for an idea they developed in a proposal? In this case, could "mentoring" include a broad range of levels of interaction, from "I gave the postdoc some advice from time to time" to "I was the primary faculty member interacting with this postdoc"?

What started me wondering about this was a CV that involved the "mentoring" of some postdocs, but the "supervising" of others. Without additional information, it's difficult to know what that means. It seems likely that "mentoring" in this case means interacting with postdocs who are funded by some source other than the faculty member's grants, whereas "supervising" means that the faculty member was more involved in the hiring of the postdoc for a particular project.

But I'm not sure. Has anyone used these terms, either as synonyms or as distinct terms implying different types of interaction?

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