The Curse of Increasing Marginal Work Utility, or Why I Work So Much

Re:The Curse of Increasing Marginal Work Utility, or Why I W... by mooreds on Wednesday October 08, 2014 @09:49AM (#8426823)

Marginal utility to whom? The author? His university? Society? It seems to me in almost every case (except possibly the first) that everyone would be better served hiring someone to take care of the incidental work that consumes the first 60 hours (or as much as possible) and letting the professor work on his research.

The fact that this isn't so points to a couple of possibilities.

1. Only the professor gets much utility out of his research--the organization which employs him would prefer him to spend his time on managing phd students and teaching.

2. Universities are organized to optimize for organizational utility and not for each professor's maximal utility.

Incidentally, this story reminds me of many developers who are promoted to be managers and then are removed from what they loved about their profession in the first place. Similar to the author, such managers often have side projects at home to keep coding.

Unfortunately, the professor doesn't have the option of 'dropping out' of management like the developer-turned-manager does.

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Re:The Curse of Increasing Marginal Work Utility, or Why I W... by nopinsight on Wednesday October 08, 2014 @10:52AM (#8427163)

There could in fact be greater marginal utility when most of those activities reside in one head and one person, instead of a team. Students attend prestigious universities to study directly with highly regarded researchers themselves instead of their TAs or adjuncts. Reviewing papers and serving in a conference committee requires one to know the ins and outs of a field. And so on...

Maybe most researchers could produce more/better research on their own without these responsibilities, but research-only positions are much fewer, especially in academia. Feynman also argued that teaching gave him ideas for new research.

I guess we should conduct studies to find out how best the society should organize research; optimal models might be dependent on the field or sub-field.

Incidentally, two of the Chemistry Nobel laureates this year made their discoveries when working in an industry lab and in his own private company.

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Re:The Curse of Increasing Marginal Work Utility, or Why I W... by JoeAltmaier on Wednesday October 08, 2014 @10:47AM (#8427125)

I thought the same. Its a straw man argument - the marginal utility increases because the author wrote it that way.

A secretary or assistant (what are all those graduate assts doing anyway?) would change the whole story. Also changing priorities. Also learning to empower the whole cohort. Or delegating.

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Re:The Curse of Increasing Marginal Work Utility, or Why I W... by judk on Wednesday October 08, 2014 @10:35AM (#8427061)

Or, research, teaching, and management are ALL important and interconnected, and have increasing marginal utility.

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Re:The Curse of Increasing Marginal Work Utility, or Why I W... by mooreds on Wednesday October 08, 2014 @10:48AM (#8427136)

That's a possibility, but then why does he prioritize teaching and management over research?

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Re:The Curse of Increasing Marginal Work Utility, or Why I W... by chongli on Wednesday October 08, 2014 @01:04PM (#8427970)

Because teaching and management are on a more urgent timetable?

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Re:The Curse of Increasing Marginal Work Utility, or Why I W... by mooreds on Wednesday October 08, 2014 @01:36PM (#8428215)

Urgency is not the same as importance.

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Re:The Curse of Increasing Marginal Work Utility, or Why I W... by chongli on Wednesday October 08, 2014 @05:31PM (#8429575)

Right, hence the dilemma in the article.

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