Working Hours

[Naira]

I need to vent a bit so here it goes:

I've been a PhD candidate for about two years. Things with my supervisor sometimes go well and sometimes not but that is expected from all working relationships.

A major issue between us are my working hours or, more correctly, the hours I spend in my office at the University. My supervisor insists I should spend at least 8 hours in my office. I agree that I should *work* 8 hours every day and possibly more. However, due to many practical reasons, it is much more convenient and productive for me if I spend around 5 hours at the office and then work at home.

Bear in mind, that these 5 hours are enough to meet with my supervisor whenever needed and plan our work. The issue is that my supervisor does not believe that I actually work at home! This is very frustrating, feeling that a working partner does not trust you (especially when your history does not give any right to anyone to doubt your devotion to what you do).

Anyway, here I am at my office, not being able to think productively enough at the time...

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Some industries are more keen on the whole "working from home" thing than others. The last company I worked at would let me work from home one day a week, and more if circumstances dictated. The place I work now isn't so big on that, though. There's a trust issue there. They aren't used to people working from home. They did let me work from Indiana for a couple weeks, though.

I think a lot of it is just the office culture. It varies from place to place and some bosses trust their employees more than others.

 

[iguana_tonante]

I understand your disappointment. I really do. During my PhD, I worked about 10 hours a day, sometimes more. Sometimes, a lot more. It's expected, and I never complained. However, there were some days that it would have been much more convenient and more productive for me to work from home. Yet, my supervisor made it clear that I needed to be at my desk during office hours, even if it actually detracted from my performance.

It has always been my opinion that it's just plain silly to demand to an academic to work with the same schedule of a desk clerk: I was much more productive in random bursts of intuition than during long hours of droning on just to meet my hours. At the same time, a job is a job. You do what your are told, and live with it.

So my only advice (if you want to call it so) is to suck it up, comply with your supervisor, and stop worrying about that. You are never gonna win, so just accept it and hope your next boss is more open to a flexible schedule.

Good luck with your dissertation!

 

[JoeZhang]

My supervisor insists I should spend at least 8 hours in my office. I agree that I should *work* 8 hours every day and possibly more.

Why? I did a PhD part-time while doing a full-time job and I never did stupid hours*. I tend to find people who work a lot of hours need to look at their working practices, they are often spending a lot of time ineffectively.

* The exception here is sciences where lab work often means a PhD student does hours unheard of in the social sciences or the humanities.

As for your Supervisor, he's a dickhead - a PhD is where you show you have the basic skills to be an academic, if you can't manage your own time, you'll waste in the office as much as at home.

 

[TheBrew]

If you are getting your work done for the day, it really shouldn't matter where you work. If something has to be done in the office, then you need to be in the office, but if you are doing research or writing, that can be done at home as well.

 

[doubleohfive]

If you are getting your work done for the day, it really shouldn't matter where you work. If something has to be done in the office, then you need to be in the office, but if you are doing research or writing, that can be done at home as well.

How wonderful a world it would be if this were the case. Unfortunately, (and I admit - this may only be from my own personal experience) it seems to me that there are always going to be people at whatever job in whatever field one enters who simply will not believe you've done your work unless they actually have the ability to watch over you as you do so. It's a stupid, elementary school mentality, but it's also still quite true.

I never thought I'd say this, but sometimes I long for the good old 9-5 schedule I used to have back east. I love what I do now, don't get me wrong ... but line up a couple of fourteen-hour days in a row, and you definitely appreciate your time off a lot more. Fortunately, my schedule hasn't been that hectic in a while, but you never know when it will be again...

 

[scotpens]

If you are getting your work done for the day, it really shouldn't matter where you work. If something has to be done in the office, then you need to be in the office, but if you are doing research or writing, that can be done at home as well.

Exactly. It's results that should count, not the geography of where the work gets done. This reminds me of a Hollywood anecdote about some studio boss who thought the writers were goofing off when he didn't hear the noise of typewriters coming from the writers’ building. He didn't understand that the “work” of writing is done inside a writer’s head. The typing is just putting it on paper.

 

[AMQ]

Bear in mind, that these 5 hours are enough to meet with my supervisor whenever needed and plan our work.

I think that's the most important thing. You are there for consultations, planning etc.
Everything else, where you work or when, is not important as long as you are "productive" and getting work done.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

If you are getting your work done for the day, it really shouldn't matter where you work. If something has to be done in the office, then you need to be in the office, but if you are doing research or writing, that can be done at home as well.

Exactly. It's results that should count, not the geography of where the work gets done. This reminds me of a Hollywood anecdote about some studio boss who thought the writers were goofing off when he didn't hear the noise of typewriters coming from the writers’ building. He didn't understand that the “work” of writing is done inside a writer’s head. The typing is just putting it on paper.

Yeah, that's just not how it works most places. I work a professional job where I don't have anyone watching my every move, and regardless of how much or how little work I get done they expect me to clock my 7.5 hours a day. Granted, the way the time system works I could easily fudge my hours, but still--they want assurances that I worked X hours per week and seem to care more about that number than how much work I got done. That's exactly why I'm more productive than many of my coworkers, who put in a lot more hours than I do. (Not that they get paid for them.)

 

[Shatnertage]

As for your Supervisor, he's a dickhead - a PhD is where you show you have the basic skills to be an academic, if you can't manage your own time, you'll waste in the office as much as at home.

Absolutely true. As an RA, I checked in with my advisor once a week, or when I had something neat to report. I was doing research on microfilm, and the whole point of him writing for the grant was so that he didn't have to sit in the microfilm room. So I had a lot of freedom, and pretty much self-reported on my hours.

As far as my dissertation work went, I was completely on my own. I just checked in whenever I had a question. At this level, you're really not punching a clock, you should be more product-oriented.

 

[Spot's Meow]

My boyfriend, whom I live with, is in his third year of a PhD program now and he works really long hours, usually every day of the week. I would prefer that he could do some work at home so that I could see him more often, and maybe he would prefer that too, but unfortunately he doesn't have a choice. He is working in Physics and doesn't work at a desk but rather in a lab doing experiments all day long, sometimes all night long. He just finished with an experiment that required someone there to log data every hour, with several people gone for summer vacation. That was no fun!

It is nice to have the option to work at home. Your advisor might only believe you when he starts seeing concrete results from your home work. He shouldn't need convincing, but it sounds like he has his own trust issues that have nothing to do with you and your work ethic.

 

[Holdfast]

I think a lot of it is just the office culture. It varies from place to place and some bosses trust their employees more than others.

This is pretty much it.

Personally, I lack the patience to deal with any kind of boss, precisely because of inefficiencies like this. And there's never a level where you can escape it, if you stay an employee. Just do the time so you can collect enough money and/or letters to do what you want for yourself as soon as you can.

You'll find that if you're good at what you do, you should be able to earn the same amount independently in a fraction of the time you would as an employee. Your quality of life will be so much better for it, too.

 

[iguana_tonante]

I did a PhD part-time while doing a full-time job and I never did stupid hours*. (...)

* The exception here is sciences where lab work often means a PhD student does hours unheard of in the social sciences or the humanities.

Yeah, that was my case. I did a thesis on statistical astrophysics, and most of my work has to be done directly on the mainframe of the institute. Luckily, while I needed to show up at office everyday even when I had only paperwork to do, I could adjust my hours depending on the load of work (sometimes I showed up at 2pm and went home at 2am, which was great for me since I work better on those hours than the regular 9am-5pm schedule).

 

[TorontoTrekker]

If you are getting your work done for the day, it really shouldn't matter where you work. If something has to be done in the office, then you need to be in the office, but if you are doing research or writing, that can be done at home as well.

Exactly. It's results that should count, not the geography of where the work gets done. This reminds me of a Hollywood anecdote about some studio boss who thought the writers were goofing off when he didn't hear the noise of typewriters coming from the writers’ building. He didn't understand that the “work” of writing is done inside a writer’s head. The typing is just putting it on paper.

It's not just writers who work that way. I'm a programmer, and at one previous job, I had a manager who would do nothing but walk around the office all day with his hands clasped behind his back like he was Prince Philip. One day, while I was thinking about how to solve a problem, he came up behind me - and I have a tendency to jump when I'm deeply focused on something and I'm interrupted suddenly - and yelled, "Why you are not typing??" (I didn't mistype that - that's really how he talked.) I looked over my shoulder and said, "Because I'm thinking," then turned back to the computer.

I guess he thought that if I wasn't actually writing code, I should have been typing random gibberish until I came up with a possible solution to what I was working on.

I've always been one of those people who works until I come to a logical stopping point. Most people in the office just get up and leave the second the clock ticks over to 4:56. Most nights I'm there until 5:45, 6, 6:30 or even 7. (Tonight I was there until about 7:45, but I've been working on something tricky and there were other people working late tonight too, so I kind of failed to notice how late it actually was.) But I still catch hell if I'm not at work by 8:30 in the morning.

There are two drawbacks to this: one, I don't get paid overtime (though I also don't waste an hour or more in the mornings trying to recreate my thought process from the previous day), and two, I'm usually so tired by the end of the week that I'll sleep until 2 or later on Saturdays (last Saturday I woke up at 3:30).

 

[Captain Ice]

He shouldn't need convincing, but it sounds like he has his own trust issues that have nothing to do with you and your work ethic.

I think she's hit the nail on the head here. Unfortunately there seems to be a preponderance of people in managerial positions who seem to think that if they cannot see you, you are slacking off or lying outright about the hours that you work.

 

[sidious618]

Do you get tenure at your university? Once you get that you could have sex on your desk office and they can't really fire you.

 

[JoeZhang]

He shouldn't need convincing, but it sounds like he has his own trust issues that have nothing to do with you and your work ethic.

I think she's hit the nail on the head here. Unfortunately there seems to be a preponderance of people in managerial positions who seem to think that if they cannot see you, you are slacking off or lying outright about the hours that you work.

The thing to bear in mind here is that, a PhD supervisor isn't suppose to be a manager - they are suppose to advise you not tell you where and how to work. If a supervisor is acting as a manager, something has gone wrong somewhere.

 

[Naira]

Why? I did a PhD part-time while doing a full-time job and I never did stupid hours*. I tend to find people who work a lot of hours need to look at their working practices, they are often spending a lot of time ineffectively.

* The exception here is sciences where lab work often means a PhD student does hours unheard of in the social sciences or the humanities.

It's a full-time PhD (and I work part-time so it's the other way around for me) and I realized a long time ago that things do not move smoothly if you don't spend many hours thinking and trying things out (I am a Computer Scientist). I don't mind working a lot, I just find it stupid not being left alone to organize my time as I feel better.

He shouldn't need convincing, but it sounds like he has his own trust issues that have nothing to do with you and your work ethic.

I think she's hit the nail on the head here. Unfortunately there seems to be a preponderance of people in managerial positions who seem to think that if they cannot see you, you are slacking off or lying outright about the hours that you work.

I agree with both of you, my supervisor (who is a she btw) is like that with everyone, but as I said above, it still bugs me.

It's nice feeling the support from you guys!

 

[Crusher Disciple]

Personally, I lack the patience to deal with any kind of boss, precisely because of inefficiencies like this. And there's never a level where you can escape it, if you stay an employee. Just do the time so you can collect enough money and/or letters to do what you want for yourself as soon as you can.

You'll find that if you're good at what you do, you should be able to earn the same amount independently in a fraction of the time you would as an employee. Your quality of life will be so much better for it, too.

I love you- will you marry me?

If not, I'll just tell people you're my therapist and you told me this in therapy.

 

[Holdfast]

Personally, I lack the patience to deal with any kind of boss, precisely because of inefficiencies like this. And there's never a level where you can escape it, if you stay an employee. Just do the time so you can collect enough money and/or letters to do what you want for yourself as soon as you can.

You'll find that if you're good at what you do, you should be able to earn the same amount independently in a fraction of the time you would as an employee. Your quality of life will be so much better for it, too.

I love you- will you marry me?

Damn, I'm on fire today; you're the third person to jokily say that to me, no lie (actually one of them was just the promise of a steamy snog, but what's the difference, right? )

Careful, my ego is already large enough as it is! I should warn you though that marriage to me would not be easy. Sure, the evenings would be fun, but I would insist on being provided with all the trappings of an idle and decadent life...

If not, I'll just tell people you're my therapist and you told me this in therapy.

I knew there was a reason I just renewed my medicolegal indemnity insurance....