Mu-ming Poo’s 2002 letter to his students

Prof. Dr. Mu-ming Poo is a successful neuroscientist with an impressive publication list.

Our fields are closely related. But still, for the hell of me, I would not want to work for him:

1. Every one works at least 50 hr a week in the lab (e.g., 8+ hr a day, six days a week). This is by far lower than what I am doing every day and throughout most of my career. You may be smarter or do not want to be as successful, but I am not asking you to match my time in the lab.

2. By working, I mean real bench work. This does not include surfing on the computer and sending and receiving e-mails for non-scientific matters unrelated to your work (you can do this after work in the lab or at home), and excessive chatting on nonscientific matters. No long lunch break except special occasions. I suggest that everyone puts in at least 6 hr concentrated bench work and 2+ hr reading and other research-related activity each day. Reading papers and books should be done mostly after work. More time can be spent on reading, literature search and writing during working hours when you are ready for writing a paper.

(That last part is so generous! )

However, in his defence, he does understand if you’re not willing to completely enslave yourself for work. He lets you opt out:

But if you do not like to follow the rules because it is simply a matter of choice of life style, I respect your choice but suggest you start making plans immediately and leave the lab by the end of January 31. I will do my best to help you to locate a lab to transfer or to find a job.

For the record, though – this sort of schedule is not unusual in a research lab. My daily “bench work” easily exceeds eight hours and I find next to no time to read, which is bad. This week, I’ve been working for 60 hours, including today (Saturday), and 12 hours on Thursday, which was my birthday. It did include some surf-time, a quick chat and the whole of 30 minutes lunch each day. And not every week is as crazy as this one – sometimes I do get to do office work during my work time and pay my private bills.

By the way, I am paid for 20 hours. I actually have to fill out a sheet every month with my daily work schedule pretending I am working my paid 20 hours and not a minute more or less – it is ridiculous. Every months again, it’s like the gods of employment are laughing at my face and I feel terribly ridiculed when filling out this sheet. But that’s academia for you.

I admit to having some basic principles that don’t go with Mu-ming Poo, despite easily meeting his required work time (I begin around 7:30am and end between 6-8pm). My boss only wished that his employees would take an example in the Poo-lab – he sent the email around two years ago with a wink, insinuating that we wouldn’t have to work as much as the Poo-lab-members… just almost as much.

I’m done working in about 2 hours, and then I’ll get to buy groceries and maybe some Christmas presents – which needs to be done today since all stores in Germany are closed on Sundays.

Happy Saturday, everyone.