So adjuncts have zero right?

[hamburger]

Why do people keep feeding this noxious "Hamburger" troll?

He sounds like an invention of Sasha Baron Cohen.

If you don't like to read my posts, you don't have to. Nobody is forcing you.

[Puget]

I have never said that I am smarter or better than others. However, I strongly believe that people who have devoted so many years and dedicated their lives to go through all the hardships to get a PhD in a used to be very difficult research area should get higher preference in employment than those average Joe who just want to jump in any field just because of the hype. Maybe I am old but I grew up under the saying that those who study hard would be rewarded by having a good stable job. Sadly, the world has changed.

Serious question: why do you think this? Employers do not hire people to reward them for hard work, they hire people to do a job, as well as possible, with as little cost and headache as possible. I don't think this has ever not been true.  You can be angry all you want at this reality, but that won't change things or put food on the table. No one is going to hand you a job as a reward for having earned a PhD. You can either continue to resent that while being unemployed, or you can accept that reality and take steps to build a better life for yourself starting now. So far here you've shown zero inclination to do the latter, which is why people are getting annoyed with you.

[clean]

I strongly believe that people who have devoted so many years and dedicated their lives to go through all the hardships to get a PhD in a used to be very difficult research area should get higher preference in employment than those average Joe

Unfortunately, or Fortunately, the Labor Theory of Value has long since gone by the wayside.  People  hire others to do things that they can not do for the same costs.  They hire people to get results. It doesnt matter how long it took to become one (a PhD), it matters what you can bring to the table. 

IF A PhD has allowed someone to bring better results, faster, then they will be hired first. IF the 'average Joe' can do it just as well, why should the Average Joe be disadvantaged? 

A manager once said, "I dont care if you have more degrees than a thermometer.  Your raise is effective when You Are!" 

[Kron3007]

It's a serious question.
And I would love to hear theories why people are humoring/leading on/feeding this troll.

I recognize that hamburger is unlikely to take any of the advice that is given based on his history here. However, there is always a chance it is helpful for him.  Additionally, I have benefited from reading many posts that were not about me so even if Hamburger ignores everything it may be useful for someone.

[the_geneticist]

I have never said that I am smarter or better than others. However, I strongly believe that people who have devoted so many years and dedicated their lives to go through all the hardships to get a PhD in a used to be very difficult research area should get higher preference in employment than those average Joe who just want to jump in any field just because of the hype. Maybe I am old but I grew up under the saying that those who study hard would be rewarded by having a good stable job. Sadly, the world has changed.

You certainly act as though you are better than anyone who doesn't have a degree, or doesn't have your degree, or earned their degree after you earned your degree.

The bolded part have never been true.  "Studying hard" isn't a marketable skill.  Having skills that are in demand, networking, and being a good colleague mean you have a chance at a good job.  Part is your skills, part is your location, and part is market demand.
Look, no one wants to hire a bitter, angry, jealous person with an oversized ego and an outdated skill set. 
Start over.

[Stockmann]

Hamburger, you're acting in much the same way as students who complain about their grades by saying "But I worked so HAAAARD!" or "I studied SO MUCH for the test!" Yes, student, but your answers are still wrong. Ironically, you're not the first academic I encounter with that attitude. You seem to expect a job given to you simply because you worked hard on your PhD. You're also perhaps not considering that other people who didn't do PhDs might also have worked very hard on their careers, just not on doing a PhD. It's never been the case that hard work necessarily is rewarded - it's always been the peasants who starve. Yes, it used to be way, way easier to get a good academic job with a PhD. No, it's not fair that the jobs largely went to others through their judicious choice of year of birth. But the world will not change to suit your preferences or your notions of fairness; the world will not adapt to you, you're the one who needs to adapt to the world. Also, in all fairness, it seems you've not been research active lately - if your heart isn't really in research, as that would suggest, and you hate teaching, why the hell are you even trying for an academic job in the first place? There is no shame in not being passionate about research, nor in hating teaching - but if both are true of you, and you've been an academic for crummy pay, then it makes no sense to seek another academic job.
My two cents, for what it's worth, is to read Voltaire's Candide - I've been sort of where you are, and may be again, and it really helped.

[hamburger]

You have to take care of yourself and your family, but likely the best way will be in a stable career that will allow you to provide for yourself and them.

Thank you. Keeping that in mind.

[AvidReader]

My CC terminated my email account and all free software cannot be used. Does it cost that much for them to keep my account and access to software for at least one more semester? So no contract for one semester and I lost everything. I think it was not like that before. How about other adjuncts?

I don't need MatLab, but I appreciated local public libraries a lot when I was between jobs (or at jobs with poor libraries). Some would work to get academic articles for me, and I was surprised that a tiny, small-town library where I once lived would do ILL with the the flagship state university.

I worked retail in high school & college, & some between jobs. I have always loved it because there is no unpaid work (grading, lesson prep); one gets paid for exactly the hours one has worked and has substantially more free time per week (or gets paid extra). I wonder if you could find a retail or service job (IT support, security guard, groundskeeping?) at your CC that would pay you hourly, give you access to some of the uni resources again, and leave you with more hours per week for the research and things that really excite you.

AR.

[polly_mer]

1) People do ML activities all the time with free, open-source software that anyone with an internet connection can download.  Even the proprietary codes like Hadoop, Apache Spark, and AWS are available for no cost for those who can do a websearch.  No one needs MatLab, even though that might be someone's preference.  Someone who is serious about a career that involves coding should be able to learn Python or a similar popular modern language used everywhere.

2) The important question for either starting a consulting business or becoming a salaried worker is what problems can you solve for which people will pay money.  To use Wahoo's words in a different context, the applications of ML are not esoteric knowledge reserved for the elite. I have books on my shelves that are often used in middle-school software camps because using scikit-learn is just not that hard.  The hard part is the scientific thinking in stating the problem in ways so the tools are useful.  Generally, the scientific thinking needed is not CS; it's physical, social, or life science to know how to use ML tools to address a well-formed question.

3) The actual tool development for ML is a somewhat more specialized endeavor.  However, the catch is being bleeding-edge knowledgeable about what doesn't currently exist and finding someone with money who either needs that tool or is willing to support more academic endeavors. Even then, the necessary knowledge is more a matter of having a scientific problem that needs a new tool and the ability to write code than a CS expertise in how ML generally works.

4) I keep engaging with hamburger because

(a) Many people are stuck in the adjunct groove and may be more willing to absorb a message that isn't personal.  An adjunct union institution by institution isn't nearly as useful as 'everyone' refusing to work in crap conditions so that the system is forced to offer professional conditions.  If nothing else, insisting on a good personal job means individuals have good jobs and that's in their control.

(b) hamburger could retool and have a successful professional career in his broad field, unlike many adjuncts who would need very different skills to make the change.  My employer has gone in for ML in a big way so I have direct observations that could help hamburger adjust to more realistic expectations.

[mythbuster]

I was at a scientific talk yesterday that made me think of hamburger. This talk was by a graduate student in genetics who had developed a machine learning algorithm to evaluate and quantify various phenotype traits of a particular vegetable crop. He used the algorithm as a tool to pair with genome sequence analysis to identify potential crosses in the vegetable to produce a better quality crop. The thing that stuck out was how honest he was about learning the programming for the analysis though one class and several sessions of googling how to do things. It was a tool that could be easily adapted.
    I think this well illustrates Hamburger's dilemma. The research group that I just heard from wouldn't be interested in hiring someone who only knew about Machine learning- they would need to know about plant genetics as well. In their mind, the plant genetics part would actually be more important, as their research is focused on that and just sees machine learning as a tool to an end.
     I think this is very much like what happens with statisticians. Most of us know just enough stats to get by. While we probably should consult with statisticians more often, if they lack the knowledge of the limitations of your field, their recommendations are of little help. The best statisticians that I know are as knowledgeable in biology as they are in stats. So I think this is a case of needing to be a dual expert for the purposes of application.

[spork]

Similar example: a friend who is an electrical engineer, on the hardware side, did a machine learning project for the admissions office of his university's school of engineering, to better identify prospective applicants and boost the number of applications. He learned the programming component on his own.

[Caracal]

I have never said that I am smarter or better than others. However, I strongly believe that people who have devoted so many years and dedicated their lives to go through all the hardships to get a PhD in a used to be very difficult research area should get higher preference in employment than those average Joe who just want to jump in any field just because of the hype. Maybe I am old but I grew up under the saying that those who study hard would be rewarded by having a good stable job. Sadly, the world has changed.

Right, but this is what I mean about unhelpful scripts going through your head. There's a pattern in your posts where you get caught up on issues of fairness and respect and it seems to keep you from being able to effectively solve problems and make changes. Ok, some of your students are jerks, but are there ways you could head off common complaints and save yourself trouble? Ok, You don't like the way you are treated by your employer, so do you need to find another job?

Or, in this case, apparently your doctoral degree is less valuable than it used to be in certain fields. I don't blame you for being annoyed about that, but you seem to just be stuck on the idea that it isn't fair. Maybe you can do things that people without your training can't and you need to figure out how to explain that to potential employers. Maybe, if you went into consulting there's a market for someone with more rigorous training. Maybe there's some adjacent field you could get into. But, the problem is that you just get stuck on the fairness of it all.

[mleok]

I have never said that I am smarter or better than others. However, I strongly believe that people who have devoted so many years and dedicated their lives to go through all the hardships to get a PhD in a used to be very difficult research area should get higher preference in employment than those average Joe who just want to jump in any field just because of the hype. Maybe I am old but I grew up under the saying that those who study hard would be rewarded by having a good stable job. Sadly, the world has changed.

There is a fundamental difference between academia and industry, as an applied mathematician, I might be better at developing fundamentally new approaches and algorithms if the existing methods are lacking, but for most applications, the existing methods are perfectly adequate to the task, and all one needs is a person who can program well and use the existing computational tools, and many of the undergraduate students I teach would be far more adept at those things than I would be. For better or worse, the existing computational frameworks for machine learning are highly developed, and if you're a small company, you're not going to develop a fundamentally better software package for most workflows than what you can get from Tensorflow, even if you hire a Ph.D. or two.

Yes, the world has changed, and you need to change with it. For better or worse, the field of machine learning is extremely fast paced, so even if you have a Ph.D., that credential becomes dated very quickly if you're not keeping up with the field.

[jimbogumbo]

[quote author=hamburger link=topic=1772.msg45823#msg45823 date=1601070429

I might be better at developing fundamentally new approaches and algorithms if the existing methods are lacking, but for most applications, the existing methods are perfectly adequate to the task, and all one needs is a person who can program well and use the existing computational tools, and many of the undergraduate students I teach would be far more adept at those things than I would be.

mleok's comments (a snippet above) with an appropriate substitution for "program" and striking  "computational" are true in so many areas of applied knowledge in STEM and business that they should be hammered into every graduate student's brain. I'd recommend it being played on a loop while one sleeps.

[Stockmann]

The thing that stuck out was how honest he was about learning the programming for the analysis though one class and several sessions of googling how to do things. It was a tool that could be easily adapted...

I get the impression that occasionally CS people forget that for everyone else computing is just a tool, a means to an end, and therefore any time spent learning how to do any specific computing task is a cost, a loss. That's why programmers are sometimes told to assume the end user is an idiot - you want even your least computer savvy employee to hit the ground running.

I think this is very much like what happens with statisticians. Most of us know just enough stats to get by. While we probably should consult with statisticians more often, if they lack the knowledge of the limitations of your field, their recommendations are of little help. The best statisticians that I know are as knowledgeable in biology as they are in stats. So I think this is a case of needing to be a dual expert for the purposes of application.

This. I one looked for online advice from statisticians on certain statistical analysis and they were pretty unhelpful - it was like asking someone for a screwdriver and instead of getting "Slot or Phillips?" getting a lecture on the fine details of screwdriver manufacturing. I then turned to a friend who is not a statistician (nor even a mathematician) but who does extensive data analysis, and he was vastly more helpful, even though we work in different fields (but you can know to ask "slot or Phillips" without knowing the fine details of what I need the screwdriver for). If I had to do extensive statistical analysis in the future, I'd seek to collaborate with him or someone like him who uses statistics but isn't a statistician. So hamburger might indeed benefit from asking himself how he might be helpful to people who need ML and aren't, and have no intention of becoming, CS experts (handing the right screwdriver to people who have no intention of going into screwdriver manufacturing).
A somewhat analogous experience: In my previous job, it was a huge challenge to remain research active. However, I struck a collaboration with other folks who were miuch better established, although in a different field - but I knew enough of the techniques they used to be a useful pair of hands, and I was willing to do grunt work in exchange for being a co-author, all while applying for grants and working on getting my own research off the ground. My point is, I think I was better served by being willing to do work outside my field and being willing to do work "beneath" what would require a PhD than had I fixated on the fairness of it.