During my PhD, my fellow students reported radically different experiences with their supervisors.
One person (studying biology) reported they were staying late every day, working seven days a week, and got cursed out by their supervisor for not coming in on christmas day.
Another person (studying maths) reported they could only do about 3-4 hours of productive maths a day, leaving them with loads of free time, and they still had enough contributions for their thesis in their second year.
Needless to say, for the first guy almost any job in industry would be an improvement in working conditions. For the second? Not so much (although he is now happily working in industry)
> e.g., being grossly neglectful of the student's professional development
In my industry, while employers will provide some professional development, you'll have a better time if you don't depend on it.
Oh, they're generous in a sense - they pay for the training, and pay you to attend it as well - but it'll only develop the skills you need for your current job, and at the same rate your peers are developing theirs.
And you need to develop the skills for your next job, not your current job.
Thank you for this. I should have been clearer in my post -- with respect to "professional development", I meant primarily "dedicating time to finishing papers describing the students' work." Of course, publishing papers is directly in the interests of both supervisor and student.
The difference, though, is that the supervisor might publish four papers a year where he was the primary supervisor of the work, while the student might have a single first-author paper that he spent three years on. That paper is critical for the student to graduate and progress with his career, but for the supervisor, that one paper doesn't matter nearly as much, especially after hitting tenure. Both in my lab and others, I've seen projects stall for months or years because the supervisor is unwilling or unable to devote the time to revising a paper and preparing it for journal submission.
One person (studying biology) reported they were staying late every day, working seven days a week, and got cursed out by their supervisor for not coming in on christmas day.
Another person (studying maths) reported they could only do about 3-4 hours of productive maths a day, leaving them with loads of free time, and they still had enough contributions for their thesis in their second year.
Needless to say, for the first guy almost any job in industry would be an improvement in working conditions. For the second? Not so much (although he is now happily working in industry)
> e.g., being grossly neglectful of the student's professional development
In my industry, while employers will provide some professional development, you'll have a better time if you don't depend on it.
Oh, they're generous in a sense - they pay for the training, and pay you to attend it as well - but it'll only develop the skills you need for your current job, and at the same rate your peers are developing theirs.
And you need to develop the skills for your next job, not your current job.