For some reason I can still chat... anyway - one parting piece of advice - don't allow cyberbullying (either directly or in the case here, tacitly) - not a very good public image.

Is academia really not that different than industry in terms of workload? I have a feeling it is, but it seems to be the diplomatic answer on SE to say its not, for example the answer to this question: academia.stackexchange.com/questions/59118/…

@user1938107 In academia, work hours are totally not 9-5, in the sense that nobody cares if I roll into work at 2PM on a day when I have no morning meetings.

Flexibility is a blessing (I'm an adult and I can still sleep till noon if I feel like it!) and a curse (nobody tells me when to come to work, but nobody tells me when to leave either)

The work in academia tends to be very open ended. It can grow to consume all your time if you let it.

You may also find this interesting:

@ff524 right, what I am saying is, I think it is different, but it seems many times the answers here are along the lines of, working alot is not unique to academia, to quote the answer (upvoted 24 times) i linked to "Well, it is indeed somewhat common, at least in the U.S. But this is by no means unique to academia;" . To me it seems pretty unique, your answer suggests it is unique, so this other answer threw me off

@user1938107 I don't think long hours are unique to academia. I live in NYC, many graduates of my university go on to work in the finance industry (huge industry here.) That's an industry that's infamous for overwork. So are big law firms.

But academia is fairly unusual in how open ended the work hours are.

@user1938107 also, I'm not sure how you got "overwork is unique to academia" from the answer I linked to.. I posted links to some studies at the end which found that the PhD students who were the subjects of the study didn't actually work excessive hours, for the most part.

II actually linked that answer to support my point about flexibility: the most common answer in the survey is that the expectation is "no set amount of time as long as you're getting things done."

I guess I was speaking to the expectation of working, as the survey showed only 5% were expected to do the 9-5 hours. I do see the point about the bankers, I was just comparing the answers against workplace SE.

@user1938107 Working hours vary wildly both in industry and in academia, and can change a lot along the career. Those among my friends and acquaintances who have a high-level job in industry, absolutely work many more hours than the canonical 8: some of them work no less than 10-12 hours per day, with peaks of 14-16 hours, sometimes in harsh environments. Instead, I know many people in academia who work much less.

When I was a PhD students, since PhD in Europe has a typical duration of 3 years, I knew that in those 3 years I should have done my best to have a better chance to get a permanent position (tenure) after those 3 years, and I used to work also up to 80 hours per week. But it was not a problem: I was young and motivated, eager to learn, and my colleagues were just wonderful, friends rather than colleagues. Spending some nights in the lab was not a issue.

Now, I surely work much less, I don't need to overwork, and it's the same of many colleagues around me.