These guidelines have been written to the benefit of PhD students (first and foremost), interns, engineers and (to a lesser extent) post-docs. They reflect the normal expectation of work in the group; take them as the “default” (unless explicitly over-written).
Flexibility with respect to all these is possible. However, the person taking some flexibility is responsible of making sure this does not lead to negative consequences (or is responsible for them if any arise). Colleagues may, but do not have to, accomodate requests to fit your particular case.
Office hours
You are expected at the office at office hours, with 9-5 or 10-6 being the most usual.
The scientific life of the team happens at the office: discussions, scheduled or unscheduled; asking questions from colleagues; seminars etc.
Exceptions hold for teaching, illness, business trips, legal holidays, or unavoidable administrative business; for the latter, you are supposed to catch up on your free time.
Seminars
You are absolutely expected to attend group seminars. They are part of the scientific life of the team, too.
Meetings
You’re the one supposed to ask for meetings. By default, you’re the one supposed to write meeting notes.
An obvious advantage of writing down what has been settled (or we thought so 🙂 ) in a meeting is that you produce scientific text on which we can then give feedback, so that eventually you are able to write scientific text alone (this is what a PhD is supposed to lead to! 🙂 )
If the junior person does not write stuff, we cannot give feedback.
Asking to write things that have been (at least we hope) conceptually fought and solved together is simplifying the junior person’s task while preserving the necessary writing exercise.
Working on the draft
The most junior author is the main person supposed to work on the shared draft.
Usually;
– just before the end of a meeting, the next meeting is set
– immediately after the meeting, the junior person writes the meeting notes. This is the only way your co-authors have a written trace of what happened in the meeting.
– immediately after that, in the sequence of working hours, you propagate to the draft the points on which there has been agreement. This is the only way your co-authors can advance it between two meetings.
– after that, you think about the stuff that is still open for the next meeting.
It is unacceptable that a week would pass by and you would leave a comment (whose resolution is clear / has been already decided) unaddressed.
Because the junior person is supposed to have the problem in mind during all the office hours, that person is also supposed to detect and fix minor things by herself, and/or raise exceptions for non-minor things: either physically catch a supervisor, or schedule a voice call if this involves a remote supervisor, or write a short clear e-mail saying: “We have a problem, here it is, what do you think?”
Minor details can be fixed by a subset of the authors; the big picture and especially the state (where are we now, what is the next task?) need to be maintained for all participants to a project.
Everyone may do this (send a recap mail, recall the state in the meeting notes etc.); but the most junior author is normally supposed to. So if it’s not done, you do it.
Time management
Senior people often have twenty to thirty work items at a particular time, between papers of all students, project deliverables, teaching duties, team or management duties (project meetings, group reporting), hiring tasks (publishing available positions, screening candidates, hiring-related bureaucracy which is also significant for the person hiring, not only for the one being hired), long-term research planning, science-related socialization (setting up collaborations and invitations), trip planning and actually going there, conference or journal paper reviewing or chairing etc. Twenty to thirty is not an exageration.
Therefore, senior people tend to manage a pile of TODOs and work on the item at the top of the pile.
To have some fairness between student projects, senior people try to put each student’s project at the top of the pile at regular intervals. If that project is in a state such that it cannot be worked on (as in: the draft has not changed since last week/month, or it is unreadable, or cannot be understood), the draft goes at the bottom of the pile and will wait for its turn to come again.
Due to the higher complexity of their scheduling, advisors will not schedule their work around the student’s availability.
Moreover, it is sometimes hard to predict when a particular project will be at the top of your advisor’s pile. This may also be impacted by external events, as in: the other student being unavailable for discussion; a new idea or some new understanding hitting your advisor; unexpected but urgent requests from upper management etc.
Thus, to maximize the probability to get some work from the advisor on your project:
- it is a good idea to always have something that can be worked on. Committing changes frequently and cleanly (commit only parsing, understandable stuff) is a good way to get that. (There is no point in writing un-parsing, un-understandable stuff anyway 🙂 )
- It is a good idea to deliver new stuff at predictable, if possible regular intervals. If you do not deliver anything for 2 months, when you do, you may still need to wait another interval for your work to get at the top of the pile, and then it may get only the usual slot of attention, because all the other work items of your advisor are still there.
If this looks too one-sided:
- Recall that the student works toward a PhD while the advisor has already got one, and advises the current PhD.
- Some decent mutual accomodations may be found by discussing. However, it is not a work relationship between equals (see item 1 above).
End of contract formalities
The end of a contract you have with INRIA is a moment where some administrative book-keeping is necessary (may involve giving back the badge to the assistant or other such things).
She assumes she can find you on your last day at the office, unless she is warned of the contrary. She may have papers for you to sign, related to your next contract, reimbursements, trips etc.
It is your responsibility to warn her explicitly of any change she cannot foresee, e.g. that you will leave a few days before the end of your contract.
Golden rules of a PhD
IPP has made a small document detailing management golden rules both to PhD students and PhD directors that you can find here: EDIPParis-GoldenRulesPhDSupervision-final
