I’ve noticed that my expectations as a professor are sometimes quite different from those of my postdocs. This is not about research experience, etc., and not about culture, but rather basic work matters; things that go for me without saying. At first, I thought it was just me, but apparently colleagues have encountered similar issues as well.
Therefore I’m starting to wonder whether this is perhaps due to generational differences between #GenX (professors) and #Millenials (postdocs).
So, question for other #GenX professors: Do you have similar experiences? And if yes, any good approaches for dealing with it? #university #research
@tschfflr Hmm, it’s obviously hard to give concrete examples… One issue is the “works for me” attitude. Example:
Me (after having finally found a slot for a short meeting with a millenial): When you’ve got long meetings in the morning and the afternoon, you’ve got to put them in the team calender.
Millenial: Why? We only needed two e-mails to find a slot for a meeting.
@tschfflr @fpianz Maybe this was a bad example… It’s not about calendar usage!
I only picked this example because it’s relatively harmless, and it seems (to me) to illustrate an attitude that I’ve encountered in other cases as well. To put it a little bit more bluntly, it seems to me that the issue isn’t *not knowing* that the prof’s calendar is maybe different from your own, but *not caring*.
@arockenberger @true_mxp Ok but: I don’t want to see or manage my group members’ calendars... Our shared one only has the central group meeting and longer absences (holidays, conferences). Plus if I shared all my calendar items I might scare people. I mostly try for fix meeting times at regular intervals so no emails. #genX I think
@tschfflr @true_mxp I think it comes down to personal preference - and perhaps a workplace convention. I’d rather people check when I’m available instead of starting a back-and-forth email conversation. I have spend on average 15h per week in meetings. I don’t want to spend an equal amount of time scheduling them via email. :)
@tschfflr @arockenberger That’s my approach as well. It’s just that I realized that when someone sits in their office but has an all-day Zoom meeting, it would be good to see this in the calendar as well: they’re effectively away.
@true_mxp What do you mean, do you have any examples of these expectations?