Name: Disciplined Minds
ISBN: 9780742516854

Disciplined Minds

In this book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is inherently political and is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school where professionals are trained.

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pdfernhoutNov 2024

Thanks for your informative post. Related background on why that has happened by Dr. David Goodstein of Caltech from 1994: https://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html

    "The period 1950-1970 was a true golden age for American science. Young Ph.D's could choose among excellent jobs, and anyone with a decent scientific idea could be sure of getting funds to pursue it. The impressive successes of scientific projects during the Second World War had paved the way for the federal government to assume responsibility for the support of basic research. Moreover, much of the rest of the world was still crippled by the after-effects of the war. At the same time, the G.I. Bill of Rights sent a whole generation back to college transforming the United States from a nation of elite higher education to a nation of mass higher education. Before the war, about 8% of Americans went to college, a figure comparable to that in France or England. By now more than half of all Americans receive some sort of post-secondary education. The American academic enterprise grew explosively, especially in science and technology. The expanding academic world in 1950-1970 created posts for the exploding number of new science Ph.D.s, whose research led to the founding of journals, to the acquisition of prizes and awards, and to increases in every other measure of the size and quality of science. At the same time, great American corporations such as AT&T, IBM and others decided they needed to create or expand their central research laboratories to solve technological problems, and also to pursue basic research that would provide ideas for future developments. And the federal government itself established a network of excellent national laboratories that also became the source of jobs and opportunities for aspiring scientists. Even so, that explosive growth was merely a seamless continuation of a hundred years of exponential growth of American science. It seemed to one and all (with the notable exception of Derek da Solla Price) that these happy conditions would go on forever.

    By now, in the 1990's, the situation has changed dramatically. With the Cold War over, National Security is rapidly losing its appeal as a means of generating support for scientific research. There are those who argue that research is essential for our economic future, but the managers of the economy know better. The great corporations have decided that central research laboratories were not such a good idea after all. Many of the national laboratories have lost their missions and have not found new ones. The economy has gradually transformed from manufacturing to service, and service industries like banking and insurance don't support much scientific research. To make matters worse, the country is almost 5 trillion dollars in debt, and scientific research is among the few items of discretionary spending left in the national budget. There is much wringing of hands about impending shortages of trained scientific talent to ensure the Nation's future competitiveness, especially since by now other countries have been restored to economic and scientific vigor, but in fact, jobs are scarce for recent graduates. Finally, it should be clear by now that with more than half the kids in America already going to college, academic expansion is finished forever.

    Actually, during the period since 1970, the expansion of American science has not stopped altogether. Federal funding of scientific research, in inflation-corrected dollars, doubled during that period, and by no coincidence at all, the number of academic researchers has also doubled. Such a controlled rate of growth (controlled only by the available funding, to be sure) is not, however, consistent with the lifestyle that academic researchers have evolved. The average American professor in a research university turns out about 15 Ph.D students in the course of a career. In a stable, steady-state world of science, only one of those 15 can go on to become another professor in a research university. In a steady-state world, it is mathematically obvious that the professor's only reproductive role is to produce one professor for the next generation. But the American Ph.D is basically training to become a research professor. It didn't take long for American students to catch on to what was happening. The number of the best American students who decided to go to graduate school started to decline around 1970, and it has been declining ever since. ..."

Also on that theme from a different direction by Philip Greenspun originally posted in 2006: https://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

    "The picture so far is pretty bleak. The American academic scientist earns less than an airplane mechanic or child support profiteer, has less job security than a drummer in a boy band, and works longer hours than a Bolivian silver miner. ... Does this make sense as a career for anyone? Absolutely! Just get out your atlas. Imagine that you are a smart, but impoverished, young person in China. Your high IQ and hard work got you into one of the best undergraduate programs in China. The $1800 per month graduate stipend at University of Nebraska or University of Wisconsin will afford you a much higher standard of living than any job you could hope for in China. The desperate need for graduate student labor and lack of Americans who are interested in PhD programs in science and engineering means that you'll have no trouble getting a visa. When you finish your degree, a small amount of paperwork will suffice to ensure your continued place in the legal American work force. Science may be one of the lowest paid fields for high IQ people in the U.S., but it pays a lot better than most jobs in China or India. ..."

That last part may be less true two decades later giving rising standard of living in China and elsewhere.

That said, like the lottery, the PhD system does work out for some people.

But in general, the PhD process is a deeply broken system that chews up most people who go through it. Freeman Dyson has written on this as well. One example: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/freeman-dyson-phd-...

    ""Oh, yes. I’m very proud of not having a Ph.D. I think the Ph.D. system is an abomination. It was invented as a system for educating German professors in the 19th century, and it works well under those conditions. It’s good for a very small number of people who are going to spend their lives being professors. But it has become now a kind of union card that you have to have in order to have a job, whether it’s being a professor or other things, and it’s quite inappropriate for that. It forces people to waste years and years of their lives sort of pretending to do research for which they’re not at all well-suited. In the end, they have this piece of paper which says they’re qualified, but it really doesn’t mean anything. The Ph.D. takes far too long and discourages women from becoming scientists, which I consider a great tragedy. So I have opposed it all my life without any success at all.""

Also related From the Village Voice from 2004 about Humanities PhDs who generally have it even worse than STEM PhDs: "Wanted: Really Smart Suckers: Grad school provides exciting new road to poverty" https://web.archive.org/web/20050228044956/http://www.villag...

    "Here's an exciting career opportunity you won't see in the classified ads. For the first six to 10 years, it pays less than $20,000 and demands superhuman levels of commitment in a Dickensian environment. Forget about marriage, a mortgage, or even Thanksgiving dinners, as the focus of your entire life narrows to the production, to exacting specifications, of a 300-page document less than a dozen people will read. Then it's time for advancement: Apply to 50 far-flung, undesirable locations, with a 30 to 40 percent chance of being offered any position at all. You may end up living 100 miles from your spouse and commuting to three different work locations a week. You may end up $50,000 in debt, with no health insurance, feeding your kids with food stamps. If you are the luckiest out of every five entrants, you may win the profession's ultimate prize: A comfortable middle-class job, for the rest of your life, with summers off.

    Welcome to the world of the humanities Ph.D. student, 2004, where promises mean little and revolt is in the air. In the past week, Columbia's graduate teaching assistants went on strike and temporary, or adjunct, faculty at New York University narrowly avoided one. Columbia's Graduate Student Employees United seeks recognition, over the administration's appeals, of a two-year-old vote that would make it the second officially recognized union at a private university. NYU's adjuncts, who won their union in 2002, reached an eleventh-hour agreement for health care and office space, among other amenities.

    Grad students have always resigned themselves to relative poverty in anticipation of a cushy, tenured payoff. But in the past decade, the rules of the game have changed. Budget pressures have spurred universities' increasing dependence on so-called "casual labor," which damages both the working conditions of graduate students and their job prospects. Over half of the classroom time at major universities is now logged by non-tenure-track teachers, both graduate teaching assistants—known as TAs—and adjuncts. At community colleges, part-timers make up 60 percent of the faculties. ..."

If all that is not bad enough, here is an even worse aspect of it all: "Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt": https://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/

    "Who are you going to be? That is the question.

    In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."

    The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.

    Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue one's own social vision in today's corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job."

One reason I am for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) is so everyone who wants it has a chance to live like an impoverished graduate student and pursue their intellectual dreams in cooperation with others of their choosing and without being exploited by an academic pyramid scheme.

Anyway, having passed through three PhD programs (in Industrial Engineering, Civil Engineering, and Ecology and Evolution plus essentially visiting another in Computing/Robotics for about a year), there is a lot more I could say on this (and have elsewhere).

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shooJul 2023

see also: Jeff Schmidt's book Disciplined Minds

> In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict "ideological discipline."

> The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professional's lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.

https://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/

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stakhanovMay 2023

I've tried many times, with many different approaches and many different people over the course of a 20-year career.

The variation in outcomes was absolutely zero.

To anyone who wants to believe that bosses are fundamentally capable of tolerating independent thought among their underlings, I would recommend the book "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt [1].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Disciplined-Minds-Critical-Profession...

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chimpanzeeApr 2023

You might be interested in:

Disciplined Minds by Jeff Schmidt: https://ia800103.us.archive.org/22/items/jeff_schmidt_discip...

The Crisis of Democracy: https://ia800305.us.archive.org/29/items/TheCrisisOfDemocrac...

Both address the issue of education in the context of democracy and the current economic order.

The first being a proper critique and the second being from the perspective of the elites and power-holders, particularly the Trilateral Commission, helmed by Rockefeller. And its concerns and conclusions can be interpreted as being antagonistic to the goals and interests of the populace. It’s the origin of the phrase “an excess of democracy”. An “excess” according to who? one should reasonably ask…

Edit:

I says to myself, why not submit these to HN and maybe get a little discussion going?

And so I did…

Disciplined Minds: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35643885

Crisis of Democracy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35643916

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kepler4243Jan 2023

That sounds pretty similar to another place I worked that I have very mixed feelings about. There are a lot of paradoxes that need to be resolved there that weren't quite worked out.

For example: While an IC could technically just start doing something that he felt should just get done even if no manager had assigned him that task, it would have taken time away from tasks managers had in fact assigned. Now, while managers weren't allowed to reprimand that IC for doing unassigned tasks on their own initiative, they could reprimand him for not making enough progress on the assigned tasks. Some managers would do this systematically: Like if some work done by one of their underlings popped up somewhere that seemed to have taken a lot of time, they check extra hard (and push extra hard) on whether that individual is also making enough progress on assigned tasks. So, the individual is facing a choice of: Either I don't do any tasks from my own initiative and work normal hours, or I show a lot of initiative and work crazy hours. And people were working "all-in" contracts where they couldn't claim overtime pay.

Prima facie, it's still nice for people who are young and eager to prove themselves by working crazy hours. But the effect isn't what you'd think, namely that they'd get stellar careers out of it. Rather, it made managers less accountable when doing things like incurring technical debt and let them "off the hook" with regard to getting work done that's necessary to do but also a thankless task where the relationship to business objectives is not so visible. For example: automated testing, tooling, code quality, and so forth.

Managers always pushed extra-hard on super-tight project scopes and timelines, incurring technical debt and leaving it to individual developer initiative to pay back the debt. For example, towards the end of a project an IC might say to a manager "Okay, the functionality is there. Now let me just spend another week here to write some unit tests." The manager might say: "Sorry, no can do, I have another important project I need you to do and get started with right way."

We basically had one IC who worked himself silly keeping the test suite in good shape, writing unit tests for everybody else who hadn't written any. He was doing incredibly important work. But all the people around him got much better careers out of just doing highly-visible high-impact work that important managers needed to get done. When that IC, predictably left, unit tests were simply no longer maintained.

It's like when Bill Gates comes into a 3rd world country and just starts running healthcare out of his own pocket, and the government of that country is like: Thanks man. Now we (the "legitimate" rulers) no longer have to take care of this stuff, and are free to send even more of that tax money off to our swiss bank accounts.

There is also a paradox around "working in the open" and "overcommunicating" while being receptive to "gentle redirects", namely: What you actually want from bottom-up-ness and from empowering individuals is a pool of many people thinking independently and bringing their individual creativities to the task. But what you actually end up with is installing "group think" in every individual's mind. Because an IC who works openly in a way that goes against the grain of what managers want will just start hearing a lot of noes, sometimes soft-noes ("redirects"), sometimes hard noes ("vetoes"), and whenever that happens it works against that person's career. So the IC starts to internalize their managers' (or the whole group's) thinking, and starts to only do things that line up with that groupthink. -- See the book "Disciplined Minds" for a deeper explanation of how that comes about.

In one cycle, I even got performance feedback as part of the yearly performance evaluation which was saying "Unfortunately, we can't give you a raise this cycle. With regard to your stated career objective of stepping up from IC to manager we need to unfortunately tell you that this will not be happening this cycle. Here are some of the reasons: ..." And then the stated reasons are basically opinions that I have voiced that go against groupthink. Like if I spent a lot of time writing unit tests while everyone else thinks unit tests are a waste of time, it might say "You need to learn to be more pragmatic and waste less time on unit tests." I can't tell you how mad this made me. You can't, on one hand, preach this openness rhetoric and encourage people to always voice their opinions, and then use their opinions against them and punish them for "thoughtcrime".

Game-theoretically, the the strategy of playing as a "political animal" dominates the strategy openness. So it creates better outcomes for you, regardless of whether others are also playing as political animals or are being open.

So, personally, I really felt I got suckered into playing the "openness" game, making myself vulnerable, while the people in the informal/actual power structure just exploited my vulnerability to cement their own power and impose their will on everyone. It's not an experience I care to repeat, and I won't make that mistake again.

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bmitcDec 2022

Institutionalization in action. You might me interested in the book Disciplined Minds.

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