I think I'm done

[heathpack]

With my career in vet med.

Some of you might remember that I left my life in LA just under three years ago to join academia.

The good news is that I have head great success in my research, and no one is more surprised by that than me (who has no research background). I've managed to get 3 first or supervising papers published in top journals and each one has changed the scientific thinking in my area of research focus. Our most recent paper was cited within 3 weeks of publication by a top research lab in Europe- which means their paper was already likely fully accepted and they "stopped the presses" to add a paragraph to their discussion to relate our work to theirs. We have a 4th paper currently under peer review, which I expect to be the most impactful yet. It will definitely change the scientific conversation with the potential to lead to work that would improve the lives of millions of dogs worldwide, no exaggeration. I got a nice sized grant for more research in this subject. Part A is done, which will be impactful. Part B is coming along. I have 5 mentee projects going. Zero idea how I did it, but I got my research pipeline up and running and productive.

But academia is killing me. It makes no sense whatsoever. Its a zero sum game. Resources are scarce and the people who have been at the university the longest (ie the tenured faculty) grab the resources and won't give them up, no matter the effect on their colleagues. This means that hospital resources are "first come, first served". Access to critical resources (for my specialty) like anesthesia and advanced imaging are not triaged by medical necessity. I run around in circles trying to do the basics of my job which consumes all of my energy while accomplishing nothing. Support staff are not held accountable and pass their buck to the doctors without consequence. You're a receptionist not sure what to do? Call the faculty specialist whenever you're unsure, their time has no value. I routinely have to close my service to new emergency cases because our throughput is so low. Its hard for the student to learn in the chaos.

And any support service university wide provides no support but instead seems intent on obstructing progress. It took me 4 months to figure out how to purchase gift cards in Europe to reimburse European study participants. And that only happened because I hired an outside research assistant to get it done. Committee to approve my consent forms is a nightmare- don't reply to routine emails for 3 weeks sometimes. Animal use committee requires preapproval by consent form committee and then somehow always send me back to the consent form committee for another excruciating lap. My most recent "Animal Use" doom loop was to do what highly invasive procedure?? You won't believe it. Take various measurements of a working dog to define its body shape- gasp! With a tape measure.

My tipping point this week was an IT debacle that was presented to me as an urgent update but in fact was something that could have been done any time in the next 6 months. Yet whatever they did rendered my computer non functional and I've lost 2 days of work.

But the thing that gets me is that there's no will to change anything. You might point out a solution to the appropriate person that's perfectly doable and reasonable but there's no energy to implement it. Instead the suggestion is to do less. WTF? Its so weird but I have this successful research program and my vibe is that my dept head is not pleased but annoyed- because I require resources every now and then. The stagnation and lack of possibility of change is messing with my head.

TL/DR I'm taking a week and a half off to make a big decision- whether I retire now or hope for improvement. But realistically I know that improvement is not on the horizon!

 

[CalGalTraveler]

Sorry to hear of your pain and challenges. The silver lining is that you get to decide and will not suffer if you decide to retire. Many people don't have that choice.

Have you considered what you would do if you retired? Can you use your position at the university to segue into something you would enjoy? i.e. quietly quit and use your position to network with other colleagues, travel to conferences, and build a connection to your next adventure.

Good luck with your decision. Please keep us posted as to what you decide.

 

[easyrider]

If you currently enjoy some aspects of your career you might consider milking it . It kind of sounds like that's the game others are playing.

Bill

 

[b2bailey]

If you currently enjoy some aspects of your career you might consider milking it . It kind of sounds like that's the game others are playing.

Bill

I spent less than a year working at our local State University in an Administrative position. I had never before experienced the game you describe. But it was real -- and disgusting.

 

[b2bailey]

With my career in vet med.

Some of you might remember that I left my life in LA just under three years ago to join academia.

The good news is that I have head great success in my research, and no one is more surprised by that than me (who has no research background). I've managed to get 3 first or supervising papers published in top journals and each one has changed the scientific thinking in my area of research focus. Our most recent paper was cited within 3 weeks of publication by a top research lab in Europe- which means their paper was already likely fully accepted and they "stopped the presses" to add a paragraph to their discussion to relate our work to theirs. We have a 4th paper currently under peer review, which I expect to be the most impactful yet. It will definitely change the scientific conversation with the potential to lead to work that would improve the lives of millions of dogs worldwide, no exaggeration. I got a nice sized grant for more research in this subject. Part A is done, which will be impactful. Part B is coming along. I have 5 mentee projects going. Zero idea how I did it, but I got my research pipeline up and running and productive.

But academia is killing me. It makes no sense whatsoever. Its a zero sum game. Resources are scarce and the people who have been at the university the longest (ie the tenured faculty) grab the resources and won't give them up, no matter the effect on their colleagues. This means that hospital resources are "first come, first served". Access to critical resources (for my specialty) like anesthesia and advanced imaging are not triaged by medical necessity. I run around in circles trying to do the basics of my job which consumes all of my energy while accomplishing nothing. Support staff are not held accountable and pass their buck to the doctors without consequence. You're a receptionist not sure what to do? Call the faculty specialist whenever you're unsure, their time has no value. I routinely have to close my service to new emergency cases because our throughput is so low. Its hard for the student to learn in the chaos.

And any support service university wide provides no support but instead seems intent on obstructing progress. It took me 4 months to figure out how to purchase gift cards in Europe to reimburse European study participants. And that only happened because I hired an outside research assistant to get it done. Committee to approve my consent forms is a nightmare- don't reply to routine emails for 3 weeks sometimes. Animal use committee requires preapproval by consent form committee and then somehow always send me back to the consent form committee for another excruciating lap. My most recent "Animal Use" doom loop was to do what highly invasive procedure?? You won't believe it. Take various measurements of a working dog to define its body shape- gasp! With a tape measure.

My tipping point this week was an IT debacle that was presented to me as an urgent update but in fact was something that could have been done any time in the next 6 months. Yet whatever they did rendered my computer non functional and I've lost 2 days of work.

But the thing that gets me is that there's no will to change anything. You might point out a solution to the appropriate person that's perfectly doable and reasonable but there's no energy to implement it. Instead the suggestion is to do less. WTF? Its so weird but I have this successful research program and my vibe is that my dept head is not pleased but annoyed- because I require resources every now and then. The stagnation and lack of possibility of change is messing with my head.

TL/DR I'm taking a week and a half off to make a big decision- whether I retire now or hope for improvement. But realistically I know that improvement is not on the horizon!

Life is too uncertain to live a tortured existence -- when you dont.the have to.
I seem to recall from a recent post that you are financially able to bring
this chapter to a close.

A recent conversation with a friend suggested that HOPE requires
something more than wishful thinking.

I wish you the best.

 

[Patri]

I am impressed with your accomplishments. We are dealing with greatness here, folks. I agree that the system won’t change. Why would it? So is there enough joy, pride, personal connection with others to make the stress worth it? Is there anyone higher up to vent to, who may want more efficiency in the department? I hope you can weigh this against other opportunities and have rewarding years ahead. And thank you on behalf of dogs everywhere!

 

[Snazzylass]

TLDR.. but just the subject line let me know this was about your job... been there! Well, sort of. Even if you don't change your job in Corporate America, the job changes around you. It's not the job you interviewed for. And, now you got a peek under the covers, a look inside the sausage factory. So sorry and thanks for sharing! Only you can decide when is your last day. At least now you know what academia is like. Your research is valuable and that's something to pat yourself on the back.

 

[Hindsite]

Yep that sounds just like academia. The closest I got was on the large corporate side and even that drove me mad. There is a reason Corporations separate their "Research" organisations from the day to day Operational delivery and it because the "nature of" the work and people is soooo different it quite freaks out those of us with a process centric operational delivery focus.

Some individuals are so well seasoned at playing the game that they have turned it into a long spanning career, as you are experiencing. Metrics relate to individual performance relating to publications with no care as to who or how they messed up along the way or any measure of actual outcomes. My brain interprets that behaviour as unethical and a disgrace. I couldn't, or didn't want to, try and "fix" it, and perhaps it doesn't need what I call "fixing", so I bailed to something a little more suited to my core capabilities.

If there is enough reward from the outcomes you are generating then see if you can find coping strategies for the unpleasant bits, but at the end of the day do what is right for you.

 

[heathpack]

I am impressed with your accomplishments. We are dealing with greatness here, folks. I agree that the system won’t change. Why would it? So is there enough joy, pride, personal connection with others to make the stress worth it? Is there anyone higher up to vent to, who may want more efficiency in the department? I hope you can weigh this against other opportunities and have rewarding years ahead. And thank you on behalf of dogs everywhere!

The thing about this research is that I am uniquely positioned to do it. The research focus is to use dachshunds to demonstrate how to improve spinal health in dogs through breeding. It really requires a person with neurology specific expertise (to understand the problem), wide contacts internationally with breeders, first hand knowledge of the constraints of dog breeding (ie being a breeder), decades of experience talking to pet owners, contacts in corporate vet med to eventually scale things up, and in general a career's worth of reputation-building so most people know who you are and "take your call". And funding. I'm literally THE person in the world to do this work. No one is going to pick it up when I'm gone. Even if they wanted to, they'd run into some stumbling block that they can't solve due to not having all of these pieces in place.

We are writing these papers with unassailable well-supported data and facts. But I also understand the implications of the data and how it should be applied by dog breeders. So even though I must speak in scientific language in these papers I also am making sure that the data relates to the specific questions they have. As a result, all three of these papers have >4000 views in a short period of time. This is more than the number of scientists in my field. So we are writing science that is being read by lay people. My university is a land grant institution. This is exactly the mission of a land grant university: to put research results into the hands of "the people".

It is beyond frustrating that I am the living embodiment of the mission and the response to me is: do less.

I also come from a background of private specialty practice. I am well versed in the business model. One thing I would never do coming from that model is ask for a change that with undoable. Everything I would ever ask for will work for the other guy and be financially viable. But that does not matter in the Zero Sum game. In the Zero Sum game, the guy with the resources just holds onto them for no reason other than they can.

 

[Tia]

Not on this level but years ago, 30ish, working at a VA hospital a coworker left and later said how great it is working outside the Veterans Administration system. She said if you have an idea your not told 'this is the way we do it here', but someone would actually listen to ideas and allow implementation.

 

[CalGalTraveler]

Three ideas:

1) Have you considered getting external sponsors to fund your research? Universities love profs who get external funding and those profs get to call the shots. Of course expect that the university will take a large share in overhead but you get to do what you want and they won't bother you. I have worked with a private university and sponsored professors are king (or queen).

2) have you considered applying for a Fulbright to teach 3 -12 months abroad? They are due Sept 15 and many apps need an invitation. However you can work on that in conferences over next year if this years deadline is too close.

3) Is there another university that would value your work and provide you the tools you need if you transferred?

 

[heathpack]

Three ideas:

1) Have you considered getting external sponsors to fund your research? Universities love profs who get external funding and those profs get to call the shots. Of course expect that the university will take a large share in overhead but you get to do what you want and they won't bother you. I have worked with a private university and sponsored professors are king (or queen).

2) have you considered applying for a Fulbright to teach 3 -12 months abroad? They are due Sept 15 and many apps need an invitation. However you can work on that in conferences over next year if this years deadline is too close.

3) Is there another university that would value your work and provide you the tools you need if you transferred?

1. Grant money is hard to come by these days. For someone with my training and qualifications, my main contribution to university finances are by making them money in the teaching hospital. This also provides necessary clinical teaching for the vet students and house officers. This is my primary mission. The type of funding that you are envisioning (that could support my salary) would come from the NIH. NIH funding has been slashed. Now the people who normally seek NIH funding are competing for traditional veterinary courses of funding like the AKC Canine Health Foundation. Because they have research teams, they write better grants more quickly than I can. But the grant cycle is very long. If I wanted an AKC CHF grant, I’d have to preapply this fall, in the spring they’d tell me if I could even submit a full grant and then if I was lucky enough to be invited, I’d have a 2% chance of success. I submitted a pre proposal last September, was invited to a full grant proposal last Nov and then in April, my full proposal was thrown out on a technicality that should have been caught in the preproposal stage. It was a huge waste of time. Mostly because my primary mission is clinical teaching, it’s not feasible or expected for me to obtain external grants to support my salary. But even then, they’d need to hire someone else to do the clinical work. We an open faculty position x 4 months now with zero qualified candidates.

2. Fulbright - no idea if I’d be competing but with 4 dogs and a spouse I’m not super interested in going abroad

3. Yes I could easily get another faculty position, there’s many open ones. However I’m 60 years old, just did a cross country move 3 years ago. I might consider it but by the time I got things up and running, I’d be retiring anyway. It probably doesn’t make much sense to bother. Especially since my current university would probably hire me back for various temporary jobs (but not research) if I stayed in town. It would pay well and be easy but frustrating

 

[bizaro86]

Could you leverage staying into better resources/working conditions? It seems like (given they already have an open position) that it might be difficult for them to replace your clinical contribution.

 

[heathpack]

Could you leverage staying into better resources/working conditions? It seems like (given they already have an open position) that it might be difficult for them to replace your clinical contribution.

It will be a big problem for them if I leave. They will no longer be able to train residents and will have to help assist moving our residents to different institutions. This is much easier said than done, and could be impossible.

The remaining work will be too much for one faculty and they will have to go to a part time neurology service in the hospital. This is also easier said than done because patients need ongoing care. We also have long waits to get in, even with full time coverage. This will worsen if we are only open part time, and hospital revenue will drop a lot.

The remaining faculty member may burn out and leave, and then the students will get no neuro training.

So there’s a lot of negative repercussions since my leaving starts a potential death spiral. In a rational system, all of those could be leveraged for change. But in an irrational system committed to the status quo at all costs, it’s unlikely anything will change even if they say it will.

A friend left a neighboring institution after a full highly respected career, for similar reasons. I was talking to him awhile back and as much as I he hated to say it, his opinion was that the current system just needs to spectacularly fail, come crashing to the ground. Because until that happens, real change is unlikely.

 

[bizaro86]

It will be a big problem for them if I leave. They will no longer be able to train residents and will have to help assist moving our residents to different institutions. This is much easier said than done, and could be impossible.

The remaining work will be too much for one faculty and they will have to go to a part time neurology service in the hospital. This is also easier said than done because patients need ongoing care. We also have long waits to get in, even with full time coverage. This will worsen if we are only open part time, and hospital revenue will drop a lot.

The remaining faculty member may burn out and leave, and then the students will get no neuro training.

So there’s a lot of negative repercussions since my leaving starts a potential death spiral. In a rational system, all of those could be leveraged for change. But in an irrational system committed to the status quo at all costs, it’s unlikely anything will change even if they say it will.

A friend left a neighboring institution after a full highly respected career, for similar reasons. I was talking to him awhile back and as much as I he hated to say it, his opinion was that the current system just needs to spectacularly fail, come crashing to the ground. Because until that happens, real change is unlikely.

I think I'd try and leverage leaving to get change, simply because the end-state is the same either way.

If you leave without trying you're in the same place as if you first try and leverage change and that fails, you've left. But if you try and leverage for change and succeed you're better off.

Unless the option to come back part-time etc has significant value to you.

 

[heathpack]

I think I'd try and leverage leaving to get change, simply because the end-state is the same either way.

If you leave without trying you're in the same place as if you first try and leverage change and that fails, you've left. But if you try and leverage for change and succeed you're better off.

Unless the option to come back part-time etc has significant value to you.

I will give this some thought. There are a few specific changes I could suggest that would make my life better and they’d have a decent chance of being implemented.

However I can tell you it’s not the way at this university to say “it’s my way or the highway”. There would likely be resentment and consequences.

Also a lot of it cannot be changed. I have no sway over making procurement answer emails in a timely manner, for example. Or insisting that IT does not blame the victim. This mindset is university wide and are a big piece of the dysfunction.

It’s for example super common at my university for you to try to reach someone via email for a week, only to be told they don’t “do email”, you need to TEAMs them. Not even an apology but you’re supposed to read their mind as to their preferred form of communication. You TEAMs the next person only to be told, “I don’t do TEAMs or email, you should text me”. I am not making this up, this is a stupid loop I have been in with 3 different people with within the last 30 days. Not to mention that sometimes you’re supposed to “open a ticket” and not email, TEAMs or text. And no, no one answers a phone call, ever. The basic concept here is: if you make yourself very difficult to reach and the overall culture is to not be very productive you can get away with doing very little work. Not to mention that you can blame the person trying to reach you for leaving something “to the last minute” to now explain why the thing they’ve been trying to reach you about can’t be done at all. Because now the deadline has been missed. Does this actually happen? All. The. Time.

So I could attempt leverage and maybe I will. But I don’t think it’s going to solve a lot of it and I will be stuck in a lot of stupid loops.

 

[bizaro86]

I will give this some thought. There are a few specific changes I could suggest that would make my life better and they’d have a decent chance of being implemented.

However I can tell you it’s not the way at this university to say “it’s my way or the highway”. There would likely be resentment and consequences.

Also a lot of it cannot be changed. I have no sway over making procurement answer emails in a timely manner, for example. Or insisting that IT does not blame the victim. This mindset is university wide and are a big piece of the dysfunction.

It’s for example super common at my university for you to try to reach someone via email for a week, only to be told they don’t “do email”, you need to TEAMs them. Not even an apology but you’re supposed to read their mind as to their preferred form of communication. You TEAMs the next person only to be told, “I don’t do TEAMs or email, you should text me”. I am not making this up, this is a stupid loop I have been in with 3 different people with within the last 30 days. Not to mention that sometimes you’re supposed to “open a ticket” and not email, TEAMs or text. And no, no one answers a phone call, ever. The basic concept here is: if you make yourself very difficult to reach and the overall culture is to not be very productive you can get away with doing very little work. Not to mention that you can blame the person trying to reach you for leaving something “to the last minute” to now explain why the thing they’ve been trying to reach you about can’t be done at all. Because now the deadline has been missed. Does this actually happen? All. The. Time.

So I could attempt leverage and maybe I will. But I don’t think it’s going to solve a lot of it and I will be stuck in a lot of stupid loops.

It probably depends on how far away you are from being the decision maker on the issues that matter to you. I agree you'll never change the culture of the whole place or get widespread changes outside your department. But something like more resources internally to your department might be possible.

I definitely sympathise about universities - there were a couple of support staff in my faculty who never answered any form of conmunication when I was a student. Mostly because they stood in an outdoor alcove smoking 8 hours per day then went home. Once I needed something and the prof told me the way to get it was to go and find them in the alcove outside and ask in person, as if that was a reasonable way of accomplishing an administrative task.

 

[zentraveler]

I will give this some thought. There are a few specific changes I could suggest that would make my life better and they’d have a decent chance of being implemented.

However I can tell you it’s not the way at this university to say “it’s my way or the highway”. There would likely be resentment and consequences.

Also a lot of it cannot be changed. I have no sway over making procurement answer emails in a timely manner, for example. Or insisting that IT does not blame the victim. This mindset is university wide and are a big piece of the dysfunction.

It’s for example super common at my university for you to try to reach someone via email for a week, only to be told they don’t “do email”, you need to TEAMs them. Not even an apology but you’re supposed to read their mind as to their preferred form of communication. You TEAMs the next person only to be told, “I don’t do TEAMs or email, you should text me”. I am not making this up, this is a stupid loop I have been in with 3 different people with within the last 30 days. Not to mention that sometimes you’re supposed to “open a ticket” and not email, TEAMs or text. And no, no one answers a phone call, ever. The basic concept here is: if you make yourself very difficult to reach and the overall culture is to not be very productive you can get away with doing very little work. Not to mention that you can blame the person trying to reach you for leaving something “to the last minute” to now explain why the thing they’ve been trying to reach you about can’t be done at all. Because now the deadline has been missed. Does this actually happen? All. The. Time.

So I could attempt leverage and maybe I will. But I don’t think it’s going to solve a lot of it and I will be stuck in a lot of stupid loops.

You have my sympathy. I have been in academic medicine my whole career and decided very early on that research was not for me. Luckily I had no real interest in it, but I knew for sure that I have no interest at all in grant writing and all of what comes with that, including the dreaded "approved but not funded". That said, I am very grateful for those of you who do it and make advances in all of the medical fields for those of us primarily clinicians to use with patients. And I am sorry about this kind of career issue for you so late in the game. Academic institutions are really having a time of it these days.

 

[JudyH]

This all sounds so familiar. The combination of cuts in funding, the old boy tenured game, the unspoken but real lack of interest in and support for teaching in academic medicine has continued for decades. Those who have both tenure and support thru outside funding are the only survivors in this system. I left the medical school for private practice and didn’t look back. Can’t private industry use your unique expertise?

 

[heathpack]

This all sounds so familiar. The combination of cuts in funding, the old boy tenured game, the unspoken but real lack of interest in and support for teaching in academic medicine has continued for decades. Those who have both tenure and support thru outside funding are the only survivors in this system. I left the medical school for private practice and didn’t look back. Can’t private industry use your unique expertise?

Yes I’ve worked in private specialty practice for decades previously. But I’m done with that too. Being done with that is why I’m in academia.

 

[jp10558]

IDK how much of this is about medicine , or vets specifically, but I honestly think academia doesn't have to be that way. I know what some people don't see is you should probably extrapolate your issues out the chain. I.e. admin is probably working under a bunch of rules you're not aware of, some good, some legal mandates, and some stupid. They have to send stuff out on an approval loop too. IT has their own loops they have to go around and sometimes changes are hard scheduled and there's very little ability to defer. There is also the funding issues you've identified - if you're not getting grants, the University isn't paying for it in today's climate. Grants are much scarcer due to all the funding cuts. That's a political problem, not an academia problem. I'll also say that all the current concern with hacking/phishing has all sorts of changes throughout the institution. And buying gift cards internationally is also a well known method to scam people out of money. I'm not surprised there were extra rounds of verification about that.

Now, people who actually just smoke for 8 hours and then go home are a problem, and it is hard to deal with that in academia, but my sister works for a consulting firm and they have a negative value consultant who no one likes to work with, yet it's not possible to fire them either. Corporate doesn't mean none of these issues. Government might be worse TBH. One thing though is also that everyone is trying to do more with less employees so at a certain point, service just suffers. Like you say, if you're down to one faculty member, you close sometimes - they have to sleep. Well, if you're down to a small number of admin employees, or IT people or facilities - well, you get in line like everyone else, and most of the time people are waiting till the service people can get to their issue.

What should be solvable, though I know no one likes conflict, would be to have a standardized expectation and method of communication. Where I work, that's tickets, because they are tracked in real time and reminders or hand offs happen as people go on vacation, or get ill, or move on to a new task. Teams is a "nice to have" but not expected to be read - though we all do our best. Texts are not a method at all for normal communication, that's management for after hours issues. Phone calls on a call tree for emergencies, along with a ticket to be worked. Direct e-mail for interacting with other units if they don't have their own ticketing system. If I were king, I'd push for e-mail being primary, teams secondary and auto replies expected to be set up if you don't like that method of communication that tells people HOW to reach you. Tickets usually trump all of that as you can have teams work the tickets, but I realize that applies to less situations than straight e-mail.

 

[heathpack]

IDK how much of this is about medicine , or vets specifically, but I honestly think academia doesn't have to be that way. I know what some people don't see is you should probably extrapolate your issues out the chain. I.e. admin is probably working under a bunch of rules you're not aware of, some good, some legal mandates, and some stupid. They have to send stuff out on an approval loop too. IT has their own loops they have to go around and sometimes changes are hard scheduled and there's very little ability to defer. There is also the funding issues you've identified - if you're not getting grants, the University isn't paying for it in today's climate. Grants are much scarcer due to all the funding cuts. That's a political problem, not an academia problem. I'll also say that all the current concern with hacking/phishing has all sorts of changes throughout the institution. And buying gift cards internationally is also a well known method to scam people out of money. I'm not surprised there were extra rounds of verification about that.

Now, people who actually just smoke for 8 hours and then go home are a problem, and it is hard to deal with that in academia, but my sister works for a consulting firm and they have a negative value consultant who no one likes to work with, yet it's not possible to fire them either. Corporate doesn't mean none of these issues. Government might be worse TBH. One thing though is also that everyone is trying to do more with less employees so at a certain point, service just suffers. Like you say, if you're down to one faculty member, you close sometimes - they have to sleep. Well, if you're down to a small number of admin employees, or IT people or facilities - well, you get in line like everyone else, and most of the time people are waiting till the service people can get to their issue.

What should be solvable, though I know no one likes conflict, would be to have a standardized expectation and method of communication. Where I work, that's tickets, because they are tracked in real time and reminders or hand offs happen as people go on vacation, or get ill, or move on to a new task. Teams is a "nice to have" but not expected to be read - though we all do our best. Texts are not a method at all for normal communication, that's management for after hours issues. Phone calls on a call tree for emergencies, along with a ticket to be worked. Direct e-mail for interacting with other units if they don't have their own ticketing system. If I were king, I'd push for e-mail being primary, teams secondary and auto replies expected to be set up if you don't like that method of communication that tells people HOW to reach you. Tickets usually trump all of that as you can have teams work the tickets, but I realize that applies to less situations than straight e-mail.

I have been in my field for 31 years have have spent 7 in academia, 17 in privately owned specialty practice and 7 in corporate specialty practice, and 17 of these years was spent building and running a multi-doctor department that was open 24/7/365 with service-dedicated nursing and support staff and >$1.25 million dollars' worth of imaging equipment under my oversight, not to mention producing 19 new specialists in my field. I am well-versed in how all of these facets of specialized vet med work. There's not a bunch of "secret" rules or constraints of which I am unaware. I am not 25 layers removed from the decision makers.

Admin and IT are fully staffed. The university is not trying to do more with less- except for being critically short of people with my credentials. Someone with my credentials training the next batch of specialists is the only way to make more specialists and that mostly happens in academia, and those new specialists are the pool from which you draw your future faculty. So you get yourself into a doom loop if you don't keep me in the game of training new specialists, not to mention the training of general practitioners. Do you want your vet knowing the minimum about neuro when your dog has a seizure? Well that's what is coming out of vet schools that lose their neuro department. Some vet schools now deliver didactic-only neuro experiences for vet students, with lectures often given by non-neurologists (your most available option if you lose all of your neuro faculty).

Yes people should not do no work. Doing no work in IME is most common in academia, uncommon in corporate vet med except for some of the management, and rare in private specialty practice. Yes people should respond to emails. Sorry but tickets are stupid, only 1 party has a record of prior communications and an email has a timestamp too. TEAMs is also stupid but is the preferred form of communication for our hospital but not the overall university.

So no, its not just a matter of me not knowing the constraints that others are operating under. I have an excellent grasp of both the big picture and the granular details of my field.

 

[jp10558]

I have been in my field for 31 years have have spent 7 in academia, 17 in privately owned specialty practice and 7 in corporate specialty practice, and 17 of these years was spent building and running a multi-doctor department that was open 24/7/365 with service-dedicated nursing and support staff and >$1.25 million dollars' worth of imaging equipment under my oversight, not to mention producing 19 new specialists in my field. I am well-versed in how all of these facets of specialized vet med work. There's not a bunch of "secret" rules or constraints of which I am unaware.

My point is all our views are necessarily narrow. Do you know the NIST Cybersecurity 2.0 framework and how it massively changes requirements from 1.1 for IT teams, institution risk management and ability to get Cyberliability insurance so the entire institution doesn't go bankrupt the next time the wrong sort of hack occurs? Do you think the university board is going to go "well, this is a lot of bullcrap" if they're uninsurable? Or the latest round of random grant rules and reviews being changed out from under the university and PIs? You said yourself before that you're not close to the grant process "and shouldn't have to be". Well, the rules have changed at least 5 times in the last 2 years, and they are material changes where the grant can be pulled or not awarded.

Admin and IT are fully staffed. The university is not trying to do more with less-

I guess your university is one of the few then - as more requirements are piled on, "fully staffed" can become not enough IMO. That said I can't really talk about your institution. But I have seen teams shrink and consolidate and suddenly stuff that used to be easy is now a ticket to an unrelated service group and waiting 2 weeks. Sometimes I'm doing nothing because the equivalent to the electricity is off. I've called the "electric company", now what do you want me to do? I think it's bad management to set up these sorts of things, but up front doing so always seems cheaper so admins love to do it. You see it in companies all the time - like "we tried to replace half the company with AI, whoops now it's not actually able to do what we thought and it's somehow also costing more than the employee salaries we 'replaced'. Guess we have to go try and hire those people back."

I see something like it all the time with small practices too - they have one front desk person, and they're great but there is absolutely no thought about the "bus factor", or what happens if they just want a vacation. And as a patient I'm left with - does having the better (doctor,dentist,vet) matter if I often literally cannot get an appointment? Is getting seen or questions answered in a timely manner better than nothing even if the provider is mid at best? I really don't know. I also think it's sad that "good management" usually means chasing out the "good providers" and I don't know what to do about that - seems systemic. You might be the unicorn good provider and good manager of booking etc, but ... I'm pretty sure that's a unicorn.

except for being critically short of people with my credentials. Someone with my credentials training the next batch of specialists is the only way to make more specialists and that mostly happens in academia, and those new specialists are the pool from which you draw your future faculty. So you get yourself into a doom loop if you don't keep me in the game of training new specialists,

This does just seem endemic of the US in the current day. I've always seen that if you wait till the week before someone retires or leaves, in any job, even if you otherwise have the best processes etc, you will just lose a huge amount of institutional knowledge and experience. Like you say, you always lose some experience when someone leaves, but if you manage to plan and have someone come on a couple of years in advance, they can actually get some real knowledge transfer and have some training wheels of the veteran employee being there to guide or step in. But the country mostly seems to think all employees are interchangeable cogs like Bic pens or something. And short term thinking in general. I don't know why this is - it seems like problems in this have been obvious for at least 50 years at this point, but I guess it hasn't all collapsed quite yet so ...

Yes people should respond to emails. Sorry but tickets are stupid, only 1 party has a record of prior communications and an email has a timestamp too.

I think you just don't understand tickets, and maybe the systems you have worked with are poorly configured. The purpose is so that instead of you e-mailing someone and it falling into a black hole if they're out, or if they look at it and are like "not my responsibility, issue, whatever", or it gets shunted to SPAM and they never see it, or it gets lost in a bazillion other similar e-mails, or the person forgets about it because they happened to be the last one they opened on a Friday at 5... it goes into a system that the entire team can see, often there's a method for routing the ticket to make sure it's assigned to the right person, tracks that it's followed up on, and can be easily re-routed if the problem needs a new person because it cuts across responsibilities, or skills, or one person goes on vacation, etc. A good ticketing system will also notify you with most updates and changes and communication. A functional ticketing system means you send a ticket to "I need help", or maybe "I need computer help" or "I need facilities help". E-mail requires you to understand that you might need to contact networking, electrical, desktop, and cleaning to set up and re-arrange a new office.

This again comes down to management though - they have to set up the systems to work. And they need to staff enough employees to do the routing and tracking and accountability. I see failures of that all the time. But that doesn't mean the concepts of tickets are stupid.

TEAMs is also stupid but is the preferred form of communication for our hospital but not the overall university.

This is a management issue - universities struggle with getting uniformity and often for good reasons. Do you know why the university and the hospital are different? Often it's HIPAA or 24/7 operation or other security rules hospitals have that universities generally don't. Often the hospital has set up a system with the needed security and availability well before the university gets around to it. On top of that, often automation and other tools get built on top of things like Teams, and changing is a lot more work than going to slack vs teams app lets say. Not to mention the end employee resistance to learning a different tool.

 

[Elan]

My point is all our views are necessarily narrow. Do you know the NIST Cybersecurity 2.0 framework and how it massively changes requirements from 1.1 for IT teams, institution risk management and ability to get Cyberliability insurance so the entire institution doesn't go bankrupt the next time the wrong sort of hack occurs? Do you think the university board is going to go "well, this is a lot of bullcrap" if they're uninsurable? Or the latest round of random grant rules and reviews being changed out from under the university and PIs? You said yourself before that you're not close to the grant process "and shouldn't have to be". Well, the rules have changed at least 5 times in the last 2 years, and they are material changes where the grant can be pulled or not awarded.

I guess your university is one of the few then - as more requirements are piled on, "fully staffed" can become not enough IMO. That said I can't really talk about your institution. But I have seen teams shrink and consolidate and suddenly stuff that used to be easy is now a ticket to an unrelated service group and waiting 2 weeks. Sometimes I'm doing nothing because the equivalent to the electricity is off. I've called the "electric company", now what do you want me to do? I think it's bad management to set up these sorts of things, but up front doing so always seems cheaper so admins love to do it. You see it in companies all the time - like "we tried to replace half the company with AI, whoops now it's not actually able to do what we thought and it's somehow also costing more than the employee salaries we 'replaced'. Guess we have to go try and hire those people back."

I see something like it all the time with small practices too - they have one front desk person, and they're great but there is absolutely no thought about the "bus factor", or what happens if they just want a vacation. And as a patient I'm left with - does having the better (doctor,dentist,vet) matter if I often literally cannot get an appointment? Is getting seen or questions answered in a timely manner better than nothing even if the provider is mid at best? I really don't know. I also think it's sad that "good management" usually means chasing out the "good providers" and I don't know what to do about that - seems systemic. You might be the unicorn good provider and good manager of booking etc, but ... I'm pretty sure that's a unicorn.

This does just seem endemic of the US in the current day. I've always seen that if you wait till the week before someone retires or leaves, in any job, even if you otherwise have the best processes etc, you will just lose a huge amount of institutional knowledge and experience. Like you say, you always lose some experience when someone leaves, but if you manage to plan and have someone come on a couple of years in advance, they can actually get some real knowledge transfer and have some training wheels of the veteran employee being there to guide or step in. But the country mostly seems to think all employees are interchangeable cogs like Bic pens or something. And short term thinking in general. I don't know why this is - it seems like problems in this have been obvious for at least 50 years at this point, but I guess it hasn't all collapsed quite yet so ...

I think you just don't understand tickets, and maybe the systems you have worked with are poorly configured. The purpose is so that instead of you e-mailing someone and it falling into a black hole if they're out, or if they look at it and are like "not my responsibility, issue, whatever", or it gets shunted to SPAM and they never see it, or it gets lost in a bazillion other similar e-mails, or the person forgets about it because they happened to be the last one they opened on a Friday at 5... it goes into a system that the entire team can see, often there's a method for routing the ticket to make sure it's assigned to the right person, tracks that it's followed up on, and can be easily re-routed if the problem needs a new person because it cuts across responsibilities, or skills, or one person goes on vacation, etc. A good ticketing system will also notify you with most updates and changes and communication. A functional ticketing system means you send a ticket to "I need help", or maybe "I need computer help" or "I need facilities help". E-mail requires you to understand that you might need to contact networking, electrical, desktop, and cleaning to set up and re-arrange a new office.

This again comes down to management though - they have to set up the systems to work. And they need to staff enough employees to do the routing and tracking and accountability. I see failures of that all the time. But that doesn't mean the concepts of tickets are stupid.

This is a management issue - universities struggle with getting uniformity and often for good reasons. Do you know why the university and the hospital are different? Often it's HIPAA or 24/7 operation or other security rules hospitals have that universities generally don't. Often the hospital has set up a system with the needed security and availability well before the university gets around to it. On top of that, often automation and other tools get built on top of things like Teams, and changing is a lot more work than going to slack vs teams app lets say. Not to mention the end employee resistance to learning a different tool.

Great post. A lot of what you've mentioned is quite similar to what I experienced throughout my 35yr engineering career (tickets, Teams, IT/CAD support, succession, etc).
I had comprehensive expertise in my field that nobody else in the company (53k employees) possessed. What bothered me the most was not that most of my management hierarchy didn't adequately value me specifically, but more that they were too lazy/disinterested/ignorant to even attempt to understand what I did. Unfortunately, good engineers were often promoted into management and most made poor managers. To be fair, this is largely a problem without a solution, but there could have been some outside management profiling consultation employed to mitigate the issue.
At the end of the day I got to the point where the frustration at the glacial pace of progress overcame job satisfaction, even though I was saving the company tens of millions of dollars. The company was there when I started and they'll be there long after I'm gone. In retrospect, I should have walked away earlier.

 

[jp10558]

It is nice to hear that it's seen at companies too. Far too often I see posts online that seem to assume that corporations are paragons of efficiency, yet I saw some stupid stuff just for the 2 years I worked for Best Buy in the Geek Squad. Not to mention the things I hear from other employees. The problem is large institutions I think, and whether thats academia, corporate, or government - a lot of the same things happen.

On the outside consultation for management - the problem IME is simply that for whatever reason, the career / promotion pipeline stalls out for many unless they go into management. When in reality I think management is just another career specialty. It's not something you "graduate" to, it's a different skillset entirely. The only problem with having managers who only ever did management however is when like you said they're completely disinterested in the what and how of the employees / systems / services they're ostensibly managing. You might not need to understand the finest details, but you need to understand if the employees are ending up in untenable positions or are blowing smoke. It would really help if you at least had some idea of why some processes are in place - not every task fits every process method obviously. At the very least, you should be getting a feel from your team what they can do with what resources in what timeframe and understand if there are bottlenecks or other obsticals to getting things done. Maybe you can work towards improving things from there.

At the end of the day I got to the point where the frustration at the glacial pace of progress overcame job satisfaction, even though I was saving the company tens of millions of dollars. The company was there when I started and they'll be there long after I'm gone. In retrospect, I should have walked away earlier.

One thing is this issue might be why the OP sees people "not working" - I hinted at it above, but there might be literally nothing for them to "bust their ass on", or at least they want to fill the 40 hours and without any guidance or accountability on priorities, if the SLA is 1 week, well if you only have 5 10 minute tasks, it might make a lot of sense to do one a day. You meet the expressed need, you have a relaxing week. Or it might make sense to do all 5 on one day and then have a completely free week after. And if the entire process is glacial, well - I bet plenty of people do what they need to do to not get fired, and that's about it. Philosophically, I'm not even sure I can argue with that - many jobs don't give bonuses or profit share or something - so when I go to Wal-Mart and buy a chicken I don't expect to get mashed potatoes with it because I should be getting a meal - I expect to get the thing I paid for. No reason for labor to be different.

I have a lot of "things I could do" but we are sort of a recharge org, so unless I can get someone to let me bill them for it, I really ought not do it. Even though then the time is billed to Overhead - it's just not how people think. Budget people get kinda mad about paying for something for someone else, but are fully OK with paying their share of required overhead even if in option 1 something gets done and option 2 you pay for people sitting around.

It again comes down to management at some level - some people disliked IT deciding if someone needed a new computer, so eventually it went recharge and now it's just like Best Buy except we only stock 4 models - you buy whatever your budget lets you buy when you feel that make sense. With one other difference, IT can decide they're not supporting a computer anymore if it's too old, which Best Buy is less likely to do - they love billing you money even if the thing is unfixible. And if it's a risk to the rest of the network we'll take it off the network - but if you want a new computer every year - that's on your budget, IT doesn't care.

Is this a good model? Probably depends on how the budget allocations work out and how good at planning the people in charge of those budgets are. Usually the budget holders are supervisors where I work and so usually know more about the employees needs and tasks than IT ever did.