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Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 14th, 2023
  • Rolando@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•humble, introverted self asks for your advice about human behavior at the workplace. Please read below:
    8·
    4 months ago

    I don’t know if you have a techical mindset, but think of this formally.

    Let’s say we have individuals A, B, C, and D, where you are A. Maybe you can learn things about B, C, and D, but what you’re really interested in is the pairwise behavior: (A,B), (A,C), (A,D). Because B may behave differently with A than they may with C.

    But B may also behave differently if D is present. So the behavior of B in the setting (A,B) is going to be different than in the setting (A, B, D). Imagine that D is the workplace manager, and you can see why.

    However, professional and personal context will also play a role. Think of professional contexts a = in a work meeting, b = at work but in the cafeteria for lunch, c = in the parking lot on the way home. Think of personal contexts x = a loved one is terminally ill at home, y = their neighbors initiated a lawsuit against them, z = their sibling just had a child. In each individual’s case, they will react differently to those personal and professional contexts.

    Finally, all of this is “noisy”, meaning each individual is working with limited information, and likely to misunderstand why a given person is acting the way they are. So imagine the setting (B, D) where B knows that D is going through a messy divorce. Compare it to (B, D) where B thinks that D is just annoying. Clearly this will change the behavior of B, and therefore of the interaction.

    All of this may seem overwhelming, but in fact it’s fascinating. @Today@lemmy.world recommended “just follow basic social norms” and that’s great advice. Cultivate a baseline way to act professionally, accept that you may never really know why someone acts the way they do, and take a detached but interested approach to the complexities of human interaction.

  • Rolando@lemmy.worldtoPrivacy@lemmy.ml•Privacy in academia?
    5·
    4 months ago

    Hey fam, I don’t fully share your perspective, but I respect it. Here are some thoughts:

    • as a student: if you want to be a leader in your field, you really should publish, and get your name out there, and talk to people, etc. However, if that’s not important to you, then (usually) you only really need to “publish” your dissertation. This may vary by field and university, and will greatly depend on your advisor. In the US, a younger faculty member will want their students to publish a lot (to increase their own prestige), though a more senior faculty member may not care as much.
    • I haven’t heard of people publishing under pseudonymns. But you could do something like: if your name is “John Paul Jones”, and you’re usually known as “John Jones”, then maybe you could publish as “Paulie Jones” and then go back to “John Jones” again after graduation.
    • in security they say “define your threat model”; what threat is it you’re defending against? Is there a threat that can take advantage of the fact that you are currently a student at XYZ university? I decided that risk was minimal. Is there a threat that can take advantage of an email that you published in a paper? I decided the risk of phishing attacks was real, so I used an email address that I only accessed on a “non-work” computer. etc.
    • once you graduate: a lot of people here are talking about “academics” and it sounds like they basically mean university-based researchers. But universities aren’t the only places where research is done. There are many industry labs that don’t publish, or only publish internal documents. Likewise in the US there are government-funded labs that conduct research that is not circulated; if you’re from .nl there may be the same in Europe.
    • similarly, you can use your PhD to get a good non-research job in industry or the government. A lot of times this involves understanding cutting-edge research well enough to apply it or analyze it, and keeping up with the state of the art. (i.e. you have to be able to understand research, though you’re not doing the research yourself.) These usually do not involve publishing.

    Anyway good luck with the PhD!