Hero

It doesn’t matter the industry you’re in the Schmooze class will be there to make sure you have to bow to them.

It’s always hilarious how excited project managers are about sending their socially awkward developers to conferences like Pokémon off to battle

That just what being a member of society is, lots of overhead.

Autistic people often face these challenges even outside of science.

"How do we stop the world's smartest people from realising what we're doing?"

"Let's make them fight among themselves and call it a meritocracy; we'll limit their funding and let them keep themselves busy with political infighting!"

This is why good teams are essential. One person to do all the bullshitting, and the rest of the team to actually get stuff done while the bullshitter deflects all the other bullshitters.

This "have to play political games to get ahead" bullshit seems to apply almost everywhere.

Not an academic, but this is spot on for how I’ve felt as a top performer getting nowhere. This realization helped me reorient my aspirations to what I find truly matters to me: my family and hobbies. I’m a solid individual contributor. Over the years, my work has saved us millions and been adopted across the country, which is reward enough. The speaking engagements and schmoozing, I’ll leave that to the extroverts in the boys club.

The fact that this is considered brutally honest is part of the problem. I think it's just regular honesty. Academia's standards for honesty are too low.

Read some Foucault for an explanation, that's just being human. You don't stop being human just because you follow scientific ideals. All human endeavors will follow human dynamics.

Meritocracy? In my academics?

No thank you!

I'm all about the bureaucratic fiefdoms and intrapersonal drama politicking!

This is the fucking world. Like it or not it's about putting yourself out there and networking. Doesn't matter how bright you are. I wish it wasn't but it is.

This world is very difficult for people like me who are a little on the spectrum, since moving and shaking is what gets you places

Isn't it great when the social institutions regulating people who want to do science promote people with the skills of salesmen over people with the skills for doing science.

Yet another flawed system run by humans. Humans always ruining nice things.

Sorry, unless you start your own sovereign country, you have to participate in society. Not everyone likes promoting themselves, disagreeing diplomatically, etc. Still, we play the game, even though I wish we didn't all have to...

Yes but didn't we all know that at some point before choosing that career? How do you get roughly 22 years into it - a PhD - and not know that academia is essentially a political rodeo and your research is going to be affected heavily by it? Didn't anyone whisper it to you confidentially in the back of some elective?

It most definitely shouldn't be, it's clearly poisonous to the idea of science, but it wasn't like a secret either. Like, it's "not ok" that that's the case, it's not something we should wave away as "just human things" - it should be addressed, it should be fixed. But it wasn't unknown.

Sadly not just the USA.

Isn't this true for all jobs? Specially corporate jobs? It's still horrible, but that's capitalism for you.

why underline the whole thing

I'm arguably good at a lot of those things but didn't want to persue a PhD because you can see the writing on the wall when you're deep enough into academia. There's a system in place and boy it can get dark and shitty in a hurry.

I wanna do a PhD so bad I even started publishing during my undergrad But the publishing fees is too much just too much 100$ in a third world nation is a lot even after that the research is kept under a paywall, so disgusting

Sabine Hossenfelder has a video on this problem.

My dream died, and now I'm here. Why academia sucks.

Seeing this, it applies everywhere including something as trivial as a retail job. I wonder if that's why I too dislike that sort of backroom politicking so much.

And this is actually a good thing that it's taught at Penn, as it doesn't lie to you and say, "just get high grades and you'll be the best in the world!"

Would have been nice if my university taught us that

I've got bad news about...pretty much every career path.

My supervisor talked of Barnum and Bailey. He wasn't wrong, but glad I got out.

Science should be a worthy endeavour, currently it's not. Sell out for more...

"bUt PaRtIcIpAtInG iN sOcIeTy!", people with imposter syndrome who don't believe enough in their own abilities to be comfortable with the idea of merit alone judging advancement.

Underline tip

Throw a [ in the margin

For highlighting, highlight the tldr of each [ section, skipping over words deemed unnecessary to understanding it

This is why socialism is the answer.

Lucky, not hero.

This is a person saying they don’t like what everyone else on the planet deals with daily.

Fortunately they were published enough to not have to care.

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Not a scientist but I have been reasonably successful by proving my worth to the ladder climbers and then they pull me up behind them.

These are just people skills. Of course you're gonna have to make people like you if you want to work with people. Half the brain is dedicated to networking with other brains.

And it's not actually that hard to agreeably disagree with someone. You say your thing, and then you do your little song and dance to make sure they know you respect them, and you go on your way.

A little bit of humility goes a long way. Hard scientists aren't above a little compassion, a little bit of care for explaining themselves to the public and to money movers.

I SE>

that's how it workes everywhere

Sheldon Cooper?

Why did she work for Pfizer than tho.

I think we can all broadly sympathize with the complaints about politicking, but this rant also includes a lot of red flags. For example, saying that you have “never had any interest” in things like “being agreeable when you disagree” suggests that this person is just another one of the big ego assholes in the department, a full-of-themselves “rockstar academic” who can’t even be bothered with basic human kindness.

What's the point of underlining like that? I mean you highlight something to make it stand out, but when everything stands out nothing does. If you really must highlight such an obscene amount of text, maybe draw a vertical line next to the paragraphs instead, and add a note in the margin about why you marked it. If you need to find the passage again you could also put a postit on the page. But underlining with a pen? That's just poor style.