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Is 8:00 AM an unreasonable time to meet with my graduate students and post-doc?
I am a recently graduated PhD, but for the past few years I have been on an 8:00-16:30 schedule with a lunch break at noon.  I arrive between 7:45-8:00 and get started immediately.
Now I am on as a continuing research scientist and have been assigned to supervise two graduate students and another post-doc that's new to the field.  It's important for our schedules to overlap, so I've instructed them to meet me at 8:00 to get started.
To clarify the frequency, this type of "meeting" would be once a week for the next 13 weeks. I use quotes because it's really just the time we agree to get in the lab and start work together, which is still a meeting but not the one we often think of when we see the word.
Someone I am close to, who has both graduate school and office (industry) experience, tells me this is unreasonable.  According to her, even in formal business environments, the first [half-]hour is reserved for checking your email, getting settled, going through voicemails, etc.
As I like to tell people, I was a student for 25 consecutive years, so I know the ropes regarding when academics typically wake up and get started.  I'm not asking if starting work at 8:00 AM is typical, but rather if it is unreasonable and why I should or shouldn't change my policy.

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It is not unreasonable, but it might annoy your graduate students. I myself wouldn't like it because it would mean that I have to get up an hour earlier than my girlfriend.
Maybe one should set the question the other way round: What is your disadvantage if you meet at nine? Is it important for you to meet your students first thing in the morning?
Comparing your need and your students needs, you should find a sensible compromise.

I would rephrase this: "It is unreasonable, since it probably will annoy (some of) your graduate students."

@Turion "Grad student annoyance" is a pretty low bar for unreasonableness. People get annoyed by all sorts of things, but that doesn't make those things unreasonable by default.

@Matt, of course something is not unreasonable just because it might annoy someone. But if it will annoy someone, and there is otherwise no good reason to do it (and alternatives at hand), then it's unreasonable to cause that annoyance.

Its not just waking up earlier than your spouse or... but when I was a grad student I had a hard time arriving in school sharp at 8:00AM due to several reasons. Using the public transportation was the most contributing factor! Being too tired from the night before (cause I had worked in the lab until midnight) and nee...eeding coffee (and ofcourse a long line in the coffee-shop) was another reason! (I myself am a strict 7:30AM person at work. so when my boss arrives at 8:00 I'm all set for my day!)

@Turion What if accommodating that one person's annoyance causes annoyances to more than one other person involved? Is it unreasonable to accommodate that one person and annoy 2 or more others?

@Zack, of course you shouldn't choose an option that annoys more people over another. But nothing in the question suggests that meeting later causes an annoyance or any other problem.

You don't want to get up a different time than your girlfriend ... but you want a PhD.

@jwg I don't know if you intend to make fun of me or if I just misunderstood you, but to make that clear: There are things that annoy me, but this does not mean that I don't do them. I am not a "morning person" but I ran through much worse things to get a PhD (which I already have) than getting up early.

@Matt If something annoys the majority of participants and there is no good reason for it apart from personal preference of one person, then yes it's a perfectly valid reason. I'm usually at work at 8:00 at the latest but I do know that several of the people I manage prefer to come in later, so if there's no good reason I won't set meetings earlier than 9am. It seems that some people here think that being in a position of power makes it alright to dictate terms to your underlings. That's horrible managerial practice and will just lead to conflict, dissatisfaction and a bad work environment.

Graduate students are not really in a position where people care much for what annoys them.

It depends entirely on whether you have consulted the other meeting participants. There is nothing inherently wrong about an 8 a.m. meeting if it is convenient for everyone involved.
If you have set the time without consulting the other participants, there are two serious problems.
You may be giving one or more of them a practical problem. For example, consider a parent whose child's school starts at 8 or later. You may be disrupting carpool arrangements. It may conflict with a class one of the students wants to attend.
The other problem is more subtle, and applies even if none of the participants actually has a problem with the meeting time. Setting the time for a small meeting without consulting the other participants and considering their views is very disrespectful. It tells them that you consider your schedule, your convenience, to be so much more important than theirs that you don't need to consider them at all. That sort of message is not good for a working relationship.

I especially appreciated the sensitivity to the parent's role in this answer, which no one else mentioned.

+1 for emphasizing that "reasonable" means reasonable for the people involved, which many other answers seem to avoid.

Amen. I was all set out to write "You must not be a parent" scathing rebuttal to the OP, but your answer puts it perfectly. Kudos.

You seem to be getting some "amens" for the parenting point. I just wanted to mention, there are plenty of other ways this could be nuisance, even if everyone involved was single and childless. (For example, some people like to work out in the mornings. An 8am time might also be inconvenient when winter rolls around, depending on the geographic area.)

I strongly agree with @J.R. I just picked a fairly arbitrary set of examples of practical problems. The parent one came to mind because I have known parents who had that sort of hard time requirement. An early meeting would have been difficult to arrange.

Same with people who depend on public transportation to get to work. 8am might mean taking the bus that arrives at 7:01 while a meeting at 8:15 will allow them to take the bus one hour later and thus allow them an extra hour to do other stuff or sleep at the cost of moving away from your preferred meeting time by only 15 minutes. The lesson is: talk to them.

"That sort of message is not good for a working relationship."  Exactly.  The OP's approach feels very authoritarian, which is not unheard of in academia, but has a way of killing morale quickly.  Combine it with the lack of experience of the OP (recently graduated) and the students will quickly lose respect too.

+1 for consulting with the team; discussing needs/wants sends a great message, even if the leader ultimately can't meet everyone's preferences. --- Semi-related rant, this question seems better suited to Workplace SE. The discussion about late start times etc applies to any job; special concerns for academic positions (while fully on topic) just screams #FirstWorldProblems to me. Most of the world is lucky to have steady work, let alone fulfilling, intellectual work. Sometimes you need to just suck it up, be an adult, and meet the job's requirements, even if it keeps you from sleeping late.

@brichins A workplace usually has more defined rules about working hours than a research group, and people accepting a job are aware of those rules.

@Patricia Shanahan Another factor you could mention to strengthen this answer would be to refer to the power imbalance between user1717828's somewhat dictatorial "I was a student for 25 consecutive years, so I know the ropes regarding when academics typically wake up and get started" and a non-morning person like me who might feel bullied into adjusting my schedule to this new "boss"

This is a much better answer than the accepted one.

@MilesRout Despite your annoyance, the reality is that in many cultures a parent's duty to ensure proper care and supervision of a young child does override just about everything else. Leaving a 5-year-old alone for a couple of hours may be a crime for which the parents could be prosecuted, and "My boss called an unexpected early morning meeting." would not be a legal defense.

@MilesRout It cannot be my parental responsibility to do anything - I am not, and never have been, a parent.

@MilesRout: "The reality is that it is your parental responsibility to arrange for childcare." - child care before 7 AM is rare or even unavailable in some places.

@MilesRout: I disagree. Most other reasons can be told to wait, tended to at a later time, and left alone until then. (Small) children cannot, you cannot just leave them alone or unsupervised.

Early (or late) meetings are generally unreasonable. Some people naturally wake up early, while others stay up late and are more productive in the evening. If you force people to attend meetings that are too early or too late for them, they will be physically present but may not contribute that much due to being too tired.
What constitutes an early or late meeting depends on the society and culture. At the institute I currently work at, people are generally expected to be around from 10:00 to 16:00, and regular meetings outside those hours would be unreasonable.

It doesn't only depend on the society and culture, but also on the preferences of the participants (as mentioned in Patricia Shanahan's answer).  I don't think it would ever be unreasonable to have a meeting at a time that all participants agreed to, even if the time was unconventional.

i am definitely not a "morning person", and while i would eschew meetings at 08:00 local time (unless there are extenuating circumstances), i don't think that 09:00 meeting times is unreasonable at all.  that said, i would rather not have to commit to getting to a meeting any earlier than 10:00 and rarely had i needed to get to work-related meetings sooner than that.

It's not just preferences, it's physiology.  Even if you get me to show up at 8 AM, you aren't going to get anything but incoherent mumbling out of me until 10 at the earliest, and I'm far from unique in this.  Worse, that early arrival is going to negatively impact my productivity the rest of the day.

@jamesqf You're definitely not alone. I've outright stated at times that if you want me to be smart in a meeting, it needs to be 10 or later.

I'm in industry rather than academia, but if you get me to show up for a meeting at 8 AM every single week, you will get incoherent mumblings from me for the duration of my notice period, then nothing at all. I don't even take jobs that require me to be present before 9 AM (at the earliest), let alone those that require us to be sat down, coffee ready, emails read, and prepared for a meeting at 8 AM?! Not everybody is an early bird. Meetings from 10 AM onwards should be an acceptable compromise for everyone.

@LightnessRacesinOrbit A lot of people in industry (tech support for example) works shifts ... or are on call and don't have any choice about what time they start/finish.

@DavidPostill: I know but equally a lot don't! I don't, and the OP doesn't, and the OP's students don't. So...

@DavidPostill: Sure, working certain hours may be a job requirement, but we usually have a choice about whether we take such a job or not.

Many offices I have worked in will attempt to only schedule regular meetings from 10:00 to 12:00 and 14:00 to 16:00.  This allows people the greatest flexibility in planning when to commute.  For me that had meant a 30 minutes journey at best rather than 90 minutes being a typical traffic pattern.

Congratulations on getting to lead a small team!
You might want to look into developing your leadership skills and techniques to help you with your new responsibility. After all, leading people is about more than instructing them.
A good question you can ask yourself about the appropriateness of your requests: How would it feel if this would be other way around?
In this case, what if some other recently graduated PhD student would instruct you to change your schedule to 11:00-19:30 so that you can have a meeting at the end of every work day at 19:15. Would that be perfect, or acceptable, or bad, or horrible?
You write:

It's important for our schedules to overlap, so I've instructed them to meet me at 8:00 to get started.

If the requirement is to make the schedules overlap, why instruct them to make the schedules identical?
Maybe you can meet with your team and talk about your requirements for working together (overlap in schedule, regular meetings, probably more) and also give them a chance to state their requirements. Then you can lead the process of figuring out how to find a solution that works well for everyone involved.
(Note that the solution doesn't need to be reasonable to outsiders, it just needs to work for the insiders. But also note that it not only needs to work for you, it needs to work for everyone on the team).

I agree with this. Two additional things to consider: (1) what are the current norms (in grad school my group tended to work 1100-0200, so an 0800 meeting would have been right out). (2) what kind of time on equipment is needed/used by folks in the group - I often got accelerator time from 1800 to 0600, so I wouldn't hang around until 0800 for a meeting with you after being up all night running.

I also don't see any obvious necessity for the schedules to be identical.

Excellent answer; thanks for posting!  Between this and J. Fabian's answer, I marked his as accepted because it was posted sooner, but they both answer the question and offer guidance regarding how to address the underlying issue.

So I'm just going to put this article here.
First of all, why is it so important that your schedules overlap? And why is it so important for everyone to abide by your schedule? I spent 12 years in academia and the only time I ever had an 8AM class was when I was a freshman in college. This class was intentionally scheduled at 8AM because they knew that people wouldn't show up, it was a critical class, and if you failed it you got kicked out of the program. LOTS of people failed it.
I would consider it unreasonable to start at 8AM unless you have a really good reason that it needs to start at that time. "That's when I start" is probably not a good reason, and honestly also a little bit inconsiderate. If you decide to start at 8AM, you need to understand that you're probably not going to start on time. You're also going to end up with a bunch of people that don't show up. They're going to resent you for making such an unnecessary decision, you're probably going to resent them for not showing up, and all in all it's probably a really bad decision in terms of team dynamic.
As an alternative solution, why not establish core hours, say from 10AM to 4PM? Give the rest of your team a bit of flexibility with which side of that they want to put the rest of their hours on so that it's not all about your schedule and everyone can do what they need to do. You'll still get your "whole team" time, but it's a much more considerate way of handling it.

It's twenty years that I have classes scheduled at 8:30 am, because that's the typical schedule at our university. And, yes, students show up. It's not that difficult to show up at that time, one has just to put the alarm clock at the right time. Ninety-nine percent of students one day will be employed in industries where they won't have the luxury of showing up late.

There's still a massive difference between 8AM and 8:30AM, and while I understand that I work in tech and it's a little different, I've literally never had a job (even when working as a contractor with the military) where it was required for me to show up before 10AM. Core hours is also a concept that is becoming more and more commonplace across the US. The first time I heard about it was in the context of game studios, but that's what I've had across 4 or 5 different jobs in the past few years.

I wouldn't call 30 min a massive difference ;-) Many of my friends who have a high-level job in industry usually work from roughly 8 am - 7 pm: showing up later would mean going home at 9-10 pm, which is not nice if you have a family.

I find it unreasonable to compare times over different countries in a 30 min range. For instance when school tends to start has a significant influence on what is or is not reasonable and/or can be seen as a marker what is reasonable in a given context.

@MassimoOrtolano https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/03/09/students-see-benefits-from-later-school-start-times/OOb4vtHm4XZTBLm5X78V9L/story.html yes,  it most definitely is a massive difference.

Study after study shows that later start times in schools produce better results. Also why are your friends doing 12+ hour days? That sounds awful. And if it really isn't a massive difference, why would showing up at 8 vs 8:30 make such a difference in the time you would get home?

The schedule is mostly determined by the ratio between students and rooms available: during semesters, with 33k+ students, our rooms are roughly filled between 8:30 am to 6:30 pm and sometimes up to 8 pm; we wouldn't be able to start later, even if we it were beneficial to students and faculties. And to avoid traffic jam, when I have lectures at 8:30 am, I'm usually in the office at 7-7:30. For what concerns working hours, all the people I know who have high level jobs frequently work 10-12 hours/day.

Maybe I just got really lucky but even when I was at Uni the faculty were only there from 8-4 or 5. Most weren't even there before 10 if they didn't have a class scheduled at that time. The only exception to this was really when we had performances (was a music major in undergrad) and then faculty would pop in and out, come back when it was time to get ready. I did spend a summer teaching programming at a top 10 school, and that was an early one - had to be there at 7:45, but I would be done at 3PM so it never felt crazy.

The point with starting time of schools is that adolescents tend to have a latter rhythm than older adults and this is not accounted for. To extrapolate results for high-school students to everybody seems thus misguided. Sorry to repeat this point but talking about 8am and 7pm as if it had any actual meaning is a bad idea. When its 7am in London it is 8am in Paris, and  in a way it is really the same time of the day as there is hardly any E/W difference (and with Madrid instead of Paris it would be still more extreme in that at 8am it is in a way earlier in the day than in L at 7am).

At most universities, however, the majority of students will be under 25. Puberty in women tends to end around 18, and in men around 22. I was 15 when I started school. So not extrapolating to the entire population, just to the university population. And if you want to see some information about this in older individuals, there are plenty of benefits to be found there as well: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/15/sleep-work-schedule_n_6327556.html

There is really no need to convince me that starting later is much better. :-) But, using time in the way it is done here is a bit  meaningless. Let's switch to using UTC so school in the US starts at 4pm or thereabouts. Does this change anything?

Not really. Still too early. Changing what you call the thing doesn't really make a difference to me what the thing is :p

So yeah I guess if 4p makes it easier?

@MassimoOrtolano "It's not that difficult to show up at that time, one has just to put the alarm clock at the right time." If that were true, it would apply just as well to 5am meetings/lectures. You're forgetting that, to get up at a certain time, you also have to go to bed early enough, and eat dinner early enough and... Basically, the time of the first appointment of the day has the potential to completely control your daily rhythm.

@quid also at least in the US we don't really care about time differences like that because it usually will not affect the classroom at all. You're not going to have a student commuting from Dallas to LA. Also once I had to coordinate a class in NY with a class in South Korea and another class in Italy. That's kind of the only case in which this idea would make sense for me, but even then we managed to schedule things out in a way where nobody was losing sleep.

I think we are talking sideways. If you are in LA and want things to start late just imagine you are on NY time. Of course this does not work but why? And my point is that the same effect exists in the other way.

@DavidRicherby I had a PhD student who, when in Italy, used to show up around 9:30-10, saying that he really couldn't wake up earlier. He then completed his PhD in the US in a research center: toward the end of his PhD I went to meet him and the local supervisor. "What time can we meet?", I asked to my student; "I'm in the lab since 8 am", he answered. I was amazed: "Is that you?! My very same student?". If he wanted to stand a chance to find a job there, he had to start at that time, which was usual for his group. With the right motivation, one can wake up enough early.

Funny you should mention that, I lived in LA for 5 years before returning to NY a year ago. My family is always on east coast time. This doesn't make a difference. I'd totally be upset if someone was like "oh you don't want to start at 8AM in LA? Well, it's 11AM in NY!" of COURSE it's 11AM in NY, but I'm not going to have people in NY get up at 2AM so that they can sync up with people in London who start at 8AM either. Totally unreasonable.

@TamHartman I am pretty sure you are missing quid's point (or I am..) The point I think is that the sun rises and sets at a different hour in different places, even in local time, because the granularity of time zones is not that fine. So sun rise can vary by as much as an hour between the west and the east border of the same time zone. This is further affected by latitude: the day is much longer in the summer in Seattle than it is in LA, for example. So, even on the same day of the year, and in the same time zone, 7am can mean pitch dark in one place, but not in another.

"This class was intentionally scheduled at 8AM because they knew that people wouldn't show up, it was a critical class, and if you failed it you got kicked out of the program. LOTS of people failed it." o.O Then why did they schedule it at 8AM...

@MassimoOrtolano: "It's not that difficult to show up at that time, one has just to put the alarm clock at the right time." I'm happy for you that your brain chemistry allows you to do this with ease, but you cannot declare this to be true of all people. I would find it insanely physiologically difficult to commit to 8 AM meetings, no matter how early I went to bed, and I am definitely not the only one. It becomes infuriating after a few years when people don't understand this, and say things like "don't be lazy", "go to bed earlier", "set an alarm clock" and "it's not that difficult".

@MassimoOrtolano: "Ninety-nine percent of students one day will be employed in industries where they won't have the luxury of showing up late" No but for the most part they have the luxury of deciding which career to pursue, and you won't see me pursuing one which is likely to require me to be in a meeting as early as 8 AM. Ever! If you turn up before 10AM and the meeting is at 10AM, then you are not "late".

@LightnessRacesinOrbit I'm not claiming that it's easy, but if I have to do it, I do it. And, believe me, many graduates won't be able to choose a job where they can show up at 10 am. I have many friends who work in industry that have a bad opinion of people from academia exactly for the comments and complains like the ones you can read above: in this sense, the academic environment, from its ivory tower, is not doing a good job in preparing students for a large part of the job market.

@MassimoOrtolano: The question is not "should students do it if they have to?" It's "should I tell students that they have to?"

@SashoNikolov yes, that's what I meant. And it is even more than an hour as, e;g., a considerable part of continental Europe is put into the same timezone "against geography" so to speak. From Belgrade to A Coruña it should be more like two hours. I think a still more extreme case is China, which is all +8 while touching zones from +5 to +10.

@MassimoOrtolano I work in industry, not academia. If a job wanted me in at 8am they'd better be paying over the odds and even then I'd probably only accept a short term contract. Every job I've ever been in is flexible and in fact the current team I'm in has one guy who regularly works 7am->3:30pm, I tend to work 9:10 to 5:40, another works 10 till 6:30. This is normal...certainly for programming jobs.

Everyone has commitments, transport issues, childcare. Some people are naturally biologically better at evenings or at mornings. Sometimes it's simple stuff. For example if I wanted to be in the office at 9:00 I'd need to leave home 30 minutes sooner, not 10 minutes sooner, due to the way train timetables work out. Sometimes circumstances or people change. Trying to shoe-horn everyone into the same rigid box is something society is moving away from...not moving towards.

@TimB Notice that the OP doesn't want you there at 8 am every morning: he wants you there once a week for 13 weeks. There's a lot of difference. And not all jobs are programming jobs, and even among programming jobs there are differences: have you ever talked with someone who develops programs for plants automation, where every single minute of plant stop because of a bug can costs tens of thousands of dollars?

@MassimoOrtolano Sure there are jobs where time matters. Shift work for example. There are also plenty where it doesn't, so sweeping statements about not preparing people for industry is incorrect. Not preparing people for some industries maybe, and then only relevant if those people intend to enter those industries.

I don't see how your example is relevant, I've worked in TV automation where a singled missed advertising spots can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars (although most aren't that expensive). Currently I work in financial trading systems so I'll let you draw your own conclusions about potential losses if something goes wrong. There are plenty of ways to handle those risks and none of them involve people working rigidly from 8am or in fact have any relation to what hours the programmers work. (Beyond specific events like releases or investigating a prod issue, which can happen at any time).

Please take extended discussion to [chat].

You try to distinguish between atypical and unreasonable but I don't think this is possible.
Unless you are in a culture where it is typical for PhD students and researchers to be in the office at 8am, it is unreasonable to require your team to be there at that time if the only reason is that it's your usual schedule. The other answers give all kinds of reasons why it might be somewhere between awkward and very inconvenient for people to be in the office that early, if that is not the usual culture.
Of course, those reasons might not apply to the specific people you're meeting with. The natural thing to do would be to ask them if 8am meetings is OK. However, since you're in a position of power over them, they may feel pressured to agree with something that is bad for them.
If it is not usual for people to be in the office at 8am in your culture, you should ask yourself why you're trying to impose your unusual schedule on the other three-quarters of your team. Is it really so important that you're all there at the same time? Is it impossible for you to work 8-4:30 and them to work, for example, 9-5:30?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

It can depend on the institution (and the culture), but I would consider it unreasonable, yes. In fact, the university buildings in the place I work do not even open before 8am, and no-one, really no-one, is expected to show up that early. You should consider that people also might have to travel, and as it is indeed very reasonable to expect that people need half an hour or so to get some coffee, check mails, plan their day, and so on, you effectively require them to be there at 7.30. To me, this does not sound like a reasonable requirement in academia.

Addressing the section about not starting immediately after people plan to be in work, there are a few points against it:

Commuting delays - if there is extra traffic or someone can't find a parking space, or the train/bus is late, then they will miss your meeting or be late. Starting 30 minutes after everyone normally gets into the office gives everyone a bit of a buffer without needing them to get out of bed half an hour early just in case there is an unexpected delay.
Time to unpack and get their belongings together - People bring bags, have coats etc and might need things from their desk like pens and paper. So they don't walk in the front door of the building and straight into the meeting room. People need a few minutes to grab what they need for a meeting. Also if they were travelling for an hour they might need the bathroom.
Going from 0 - 100% takes a bit of time - You might have everything in mind that you want to discuss, but normally I like to go over what will be discussed before. If I am talking with someone on the way in, or driving, then I don't think much about what I will be doing until I'm through the door.

For these reasons leaving the first half hour for people to "settle down" in the office gives a better chance that they will be punctual for your meeting and prepared. Anecdotally, my previous company generally kept the first hour free unless it was a meeting everyone agreed was important and should take place ASAP, and even then it was accepted that people might be a few minutes late due to delays.
If everyone is in the office at 7:45 most days like yourself then it's probably not a problem. If people arrive between 9-10am then expect people to occasionally be late to the meeting or not present at all, in which case it is a bad idea to schedule it so early or they don't need to be invited in the first case. Your group might be happy to have the meeting early to give them a larger block of uninterrupted work, or they might hate the prospect of having to plan to get in the office at 7:30am to allow for the possibility of delays. Everyone is different.

"Unreasonable" is perhaps not the exactly-right word, because one can make arguments in favor of it. But it is obviously aggressive, possibly creating burdens for people (childcare, commuting, daily rhythms), and is in fact arguably obnoxious in that it makes a demand for compliance in a part of the day that is not universally easy to organize "to suit". Thus, although possibly people can do so, it often does/would require a disproportionate amount of effort to comply. Ergo: unreasonable. Done. Instead, ask the people what times-of-day would be convenient for them to meet... (or, oppositely, ask what times would be inconvenient, and then do that, instead). Meeting times are even more artifactual than speed limits... duh.

You have already got many good answers about the timing aspect itself but, reading through your question, I feel there is a larger point that needs to be made.
First, your demand is clearly unreasonable. It does depend on culture (national and organizational) but, through 5 countries and many diverse workplaces (university, research centers, private businesses big and small), I have never seen such stringent requirements for knowledge workers. And you know this yourself, you are trying to avoid the logical conclusion by making a distinction between typical and reasonable but it's not reasonable to impose something like this on your own if it's not typical and already a policy in your organization.
But more importantly, you speak of “overlap” and that can be easily achieved with a rule like being present between 10 and 12 and 14 and 16 (not that you really need to be so formal in such a small team but that was actually the rule at the most rigid and hierarchical organization I worked at as a researcher). This would leave your reports free to arrive as late as 10 and yourself free to leave as early as 16 and also some flexibility regarding lunch break while having plenty of time to attend common business and also an opportunity to work quietly early in the morning or late at night depending on personal preferences. So meeting at 8 certainly isn't necessary to have some overlap!
And you also suggest that this is not about a real “meeting” either but mostly about forcing the other members of your team to show up early, just because you want them to. So it has nothing to do with overlap or any actual need of your research but is entirely about micro-managing everyone's schedule. This is bound to be perceived as “bossing around” (and rightly so) and that is a problem in itself. Is that how you were treated while preparing your PhD? How others are treated in your organization? Do you think it's a good idea? Those are the questions you should be asking yourself.

Good points about the sub-text of "being a boss".

Congratulations on becoming a supervisor!
A team is made up of people
who may have different preferences, working styles and expectations.
For a team to work together in harmony,
everyone will need to practice give-and-take,
i.e., even though I prefer option A, I am willing to go with option B,
because that appears to be better for the team overall.
In my opinion,
even though you are in a position of authority
and could make decisions as a dictator of sorts,
in the long run,
it is healthier for the team dynamics
if you show your team members
that you are willing to take the time to listen to them,
to understand what are their needs and preferences,
and then to make together a decision that works best for everyone.
In my personal experience,
I often have to meet with collaborators outside of regular office hours,
due to the fact that we reside in different time zones.
We generally try to schedule our meetings at a time
which does not cause too much pain to each person involved.
On rare occasions, when there is an urgent deadline,
one of us may meet at an unusual time (e.g., midnight, 5 AM),
but this is usually a sacrifice that the person is willing to make,
rather than it being something that the others force upon him/her.

This would be as reasonable as hosting a meeting between 1:00 - 3:00 in the morning since I am most productive during those times and I would love more than anything for my team members to work with me during these times. Everything is quiet during those hours and there is less media and news distraction. Plus, it is a time where daily micro-tasks such as replying emails, setting up meeting is at its minimal and best of all no urgent distractions from students or family. What a lovely time to do all the heavy lifting!
In fact, I am currently taking a break to write this at 2:43 AM Est. I cannot sleep at all before these times because I can't stop thinking about the problems surrounding my research. I plan to wake up at 9:30 or 10 just late enough to catch breakfast, then use the little time left before lunch to deal with micro-tasks, maybe attend a talk or two that usually happens around 11:00 am and focus on research after lunch. I can't see why anyone else wouldn't follow this schedule. In fact, it doesn't look like the security guards mind these hours. Nor people who works at local restaurants, or at the convenience store, or taxi drivers... I'd say 1 - 6 am is the new 9 - 5 pm.
That is to say it would be unreasonable for me to impose my personal habits that is considered for most cultures too early or too late.
From my experience, in dealing with one or two people, usually the time is set at a time that is towards the beginning or the end of normal working hours, as the middle of which is usually occupied, but this requires discussion instead of imposition. In small teams with more than 4 people, Doodle poll is a good way to assess availability for a span of one or even two weeks.
Finally, it would be a good idea to follow up when people start to not show up or be distracted during meetings, it could be that they have somewhere to go immediately after, or it is at an inappropriate time, so watch for those signs as well.

For typical grad students, it isn't unreasonable (though some students might resent it).
If the students are parents of young children, it may be unreasonable, as it could unfairly shift the burden of getting kids ready and off to school onto a partner, who may have equally pressing responsibilities.
If the students are single parents, it is very unreasonable.

Keep in mind that different people have different circadian rhythms and for some of them this is an effort.
If someone would require me to come at 8 am, I would hate the situation, I will come for the first 1-2 meetings and then I will start to be late or barely on time and I will be mostly useless for the entire day (especially if this is a prolonged situation). And this is not because I'm lazy (as a student/casual researcher I happily worked 14-16 hours a day) but because I simply have a hard time getting up in the morning. Also, I usually ride a bike. So in order to not be all sweaty and tired, I would have to come 15-30 minutes earlier. Also, as others have suggested above, some people have other commitments.
In some cases (e.g. a course or a large team) you simply cannot make everyone happy. But, since we are speaking of a team of 4 people that you are supposed to work with, I think it is quite reasonable to ask for their opinion and find a good compromise for everyone.

It depends on the local institution you are in.  At my institution, I had meetings at 7:00 AM on certain days and tutorials at 11:30 PM on some Fridays during a term.  These times were checked to be ok with the participants, though. (E.g., if they wanted to meet only within the regular working hours, there is nothing I could have done about it.)
So, 8:00 AM is not unreasonable.
I emphasize the dependence on the institution, since, e.g., getting at 8:00 at -20°C in the winter to an institution in Alaska or in northern Sweden can be physically nontrivial.

The problem is that you can't really check that something is OK with your subordinates. They will feel pressure to do what they think you want them to do, especially if they're new students. Also, I don't see how your conclusion follows from your argument. How does "It depends on the institution; I used to have meetings at 7am" imply "8am is not unreasonable"?

Your conclusion is "8:00 AM is not unreasonable"; your argument, even as clarified by your comment, only supports the conclusion "there are institutions where 8:00 AM is not unreasonable".

An unqualified statement such as "8:00 AM is not unreasonable" is interpreted to mean "8:00 AM is not unreasonable, everywhere (or, at least, in the great majority of places)" not "8:00 AM is not unreasonable, in certain places".

OK. You seem to believe that "X is Y" means "There is at least one set of circumstances in which X is Y" rather than "In all or at least most sets of circumstances, X is Y". That is not how I understand the English language. In the English language that I speak, the short way of saying "8:00 AM is not everywhere and not at all times unreasonable" is "8:00 AM is not always unreasonable" or "8:00 AM is sometimes reasonable."

I've instructed them to meet me at 8:00 to get started.

The only thing that is unreasonable here is your "instruction" to them! I am reading that sentence as misuse of power.
The proper way to do it would be to ask each one of them individually which time suits them. Let three of you sit together to decide which time is least uncomfortable for the meeting.
If you want them to be comfortable to work with you and not see you as a "boss" or a threat, give them and yourself some choice which is acceptable to 3 of you rather than thrusting your opinion on them/anyone.
Consider reading how to deal with people.

A point that isn't coming across is that there are different institutional environments, and in some of them, being told what time to be where, and then showing up, is part of doing business.
In particular, these sorts of situations happen all the time in clinical research, and for non-clinical people who work with clinical people.  In such cases, an 8AM start to a workday might even be considered to be late.
In your case, though, I suggest talking to participants, and then scheduling a mutually agreeable time, so long as your schedule can accommodate it.
If you really like the 8AM time, though, and want to instill your students with an early work schedule, you might simply bribe them with bagels.

You make a good point but, if the asker were in an environment where everybody already started work well before 8am, surely they wouldn't need to be asking if it was reasonable to have 8am meetings?

It's not unreasonable, but people talk. Word will spread that, if someone wants to work with you, they have to meet with you at 8AM. This will be something people will even mention at "grad interviews", so it will be a factor which people have to think about if they are interested in having you as an adviser and choosing schools. For this reason, I think you might miss out on a lot of good students just due to this schedule choice. As always, being flexible is the best option.

One of the main differences of academia compared to other types of jobs is that there is no specific or defined working hours. I have worked in three different labs in three countries, and I never had to start at 8 and I never had to finish at 16:30.
Even in Sweden, where it's common for people to start at 8, the general rule is that all meetings have to be between 9-16, as it might be inconvenient for people to be there earlier or later (habits, children, etc).
In other places, I have heard that people are kindly asked to come before 9:30 (as in France) and while some labs don't allow to work after hours, the starting time is around 9 (as in Spain).
I always considered that working hours in academia are flexible (and I admire those that try to keep the 9-17 schedule - I cannot), and trying to be respectful to other people's needs, I would say you cannot demand someone to come at 8, especially since (I suppose) your schedule is not full with meetings that would necessitate the use of the 8am slot.
With that said, I only had an 8:30am meeting when all other slots of my boss were full and the meeting urgent.

Based upon my research group at University, I would say it would be counterproductive.  Everyone: professor, grad students, post doc would be up to late hours either doing their work or catching up on tasks.  Even if people regularly sleep for just a couple hours of night, it can't be the most beneficial time to meet.
It comes down to the group of people, their willingness to give up sleep and their other commitments which might affect their rising time.  Scheduling assistants such as Doodle are very useful when several people have to come together at one time to get a consensus.  Generally, if it just the students to meet with each other, late at night might work and be agreed upon, but usually when a professor is involved the times seem to run from later morning to mid evening.

authors: Жания Бекбаева


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What is a reasonable rate to charge for editing someone else's thesis?
I'm a PhD student in engineering. My supervisor would like to pay me to edit a colleague's thesis for grammar and form. He asked me to look around for the going rate and let him know, but I'm not really sure of what figure to go by. Some thesis editing services are run by people with PhDs in literature and charge a lot, and others are run by upper year undergraduates and only ask for a small fee. What would be a reasonable rate to charge for such service in North America?

I'm going to flag this for being too broad. The only answer possible is "what the market will bear." You can give a representative spread of your competitors, argue for why you are pricing where you are, and then negotiate (usually downward) from there.

A reasonable starting point might be to look at the stipend you receive for research/teaching and compute an hourly wage.  This might not really get at the value of the work, but it has something to do with the value of your time.

If I were to ballpark it, I'd say 15-20 per hour of effort. Technical editing is not something you can expect anyone to do, and at this level of editing, the quality and education level of both the writer and the editor should be taken into account.

Thank you @Compass, that seems to be a very reasonable wage for this type of task.

@Compass fee seems low to me, but I would ask to see a sample of the thesis first. If the copy-editing is going to relatively light, maybe 15-20 is okay. If you're going to be correcting mistakes in every other sentence--maybe somewhat more.

@BenCromwell I'm not sure if it's fair to the writer to charge the equivalent of $5 a page for proofreading (that's literally $1 for an inch and a half of typed content, or like reading OP's post twice). Perhaps we should figure out a price per page and work from there? My original estimate fell under the $1.5 to $2 per page @ 10 pages an hour approximation.

What would you learn by doing this?   I may give you very useful skills for when you do your writeup.

you should absolutely go by an hourly rate (probably equal to the rate you are paid at your current job/PhD stipend) if you have never done this type of work before. otherwise, you accept the whole risk if the task takes longer than estimated. and it always does, according to hofstaedter's law (http://is.gd/ZxARSP).

Would you have to pay taxes on your income? If so, don't forget to add that part to your calculation.

I don't have a better estimate than http://www.the-efa.org/res/rates.php whose rates work out to about 2 cents a word for basic copy editing or about 40 dollars an hour. For a thesis which is going to be very technical, I would expect someone with relevant expertise to get more. Grammar and form, probably is close to basic copy editing, but is probably more involved than that.

That sounds much more reasonable than $15-$20/hr. I do not know anyone with technical knowledge who would work so cheap ($20)...but they might do it for $40/hr.

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How does a dual degree (Computer Science/Maths) compare to a degree in a single area?
I am considering applying for a degree (ideally, but not necessarily, MSc) in Computer Science and Maths, such as this one: http://www.exeter.ac.uk/undergraduate/degrees/computerscience/comscimathsmsci/#Programme-structure, or another one from a respected university. My father has shared his concerns that this may be a 'Jack of all trades and master of none' option, when compared with single subject degrees, and I wanted to find out if this is true.
Would a degree programme of this nature (CS and Maths) make me just as skilled as somebody with a degree in either Computer Science or Maths, or would I be left with a degree that leaves less competitive than somebody who has studied a single subject?
Would employers/universities (I am currently interested in academia and being able to enrol in a Ph.D programme is beneficial) respect this degree as much as a degree in one or the other?
If this is true, is this true for both MSc and BSc courses, or would the integrated Masters make me competitive against single subject students?

Short version: Nobody will care about your major.

The courses that I'm looking at are equally split between the two, so not major and minor. I'm not completely sure what is meant by "Nobody will care about your major.". Do you mean that 'majoring' in one field and 'minoring' in another (or, in this case, studying equally for two somewhat similar subjects) is not as good as just taking one field, or that they won't care as long as it's in my degree title?

I mean nobody will care what your degree is called, or whether you majored in this or minored in that.  What they will care about is the expertise that you demonstate, in part through the specific classes you take, in part through the stuff you do outside class (independent projects, research, interships, clubs, etc.), and in no small part through your recommendatoin letters (if you decide to pursue a PhD).

@user3784841 : I see this question was raised 3 years ago. Did you in fact choose to proceed with this program? And how did it work out for you?

Your choice depends on your purpose and your competitors. You should ask yourself: who am I competing with?
If you want to pursue a Ph.D. degree, and if the subject you want to study contains a lot of math, such that a standard syllabus of a M.Sc. is insufficient, then you should go for it.
If you don't want to work in academy, then this depends on the company's choice of employers.
But remember, it is not about taking a lot of courses. As far as I experienced, professors pick their Ph.D. students by their i) research skills ii) background knowledge about the subject. And those are listed by priority.
Assume that, there are two CS students, Alice and Bob. Both are seeking a Ph.D. position in area of Game Theory.
Game Theory is closely related to Economics. But also, Multi-Agent Systems is main subject that relates Game Theory to Computer Science.
Alice chose to enroll a double-program which is a hybrid of Economics and Computer Science. Whereas Bob enrolled a standard M.Sc. Computer Science program, and took more Computer Science related courses.
They both graduated at the same time, with the highest possible graduation grades.
Scenario I
One of them wants to work at a company, and the other wants to join the research team of Professor Charlie. The result is, they are not competitors.
Scenario II
Both want to join the research team of Professor Charlie. There are two vacancies. The result is, they are not competitors (assuming that they are the only ones who want to join).
Scenario III
This time, there is only one vacancy. Now, you are Professor Charlie. Who would you pick? The right answer to this question is: what is my research team doing? Yes, it is indeed a question, but a necessary one in your situation. If professor Charlie's team is working on theories from field of Economics, then he will pick Alice. However, if his team is working on pure computer science and Multi-Agents, then he will pick Bob.
However, above all these, if there is a third student, Daniel, whose grade is not so high but published two top-conference papers and submitted one of his papers to a top journal, all in the area of Game Theory, it is most likely that Professor Charlie will pick him.
All in all,

If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there. -- Lewis Carroll

The quote excellently summarizes the questioner's situation.

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What should I do if I think a researcher in my university is intentionally employing incompetent people?
In our university there are a lot of great researchers and a very competent people in general. I've discovered today that one of our researchers is intentionally employing people who are totally incompetent. I think that he's doing this to appear as a great teacher and supervisor, because, as far as I know, he was a supervisor for all of them in the past.
I personally know some of these incompetent researchers, since their first year of undergraduate studies. They were those people who find it incredibly hard to pass every course, especially maths.  I've been giving one of them remedial lessons to make him able to pass a database course. He finally made it on the 3rd attempt. His other courses weren't much better - he failed literally EVERY maths course until the last possible attempt.
Today, I discovered that he and several people similar to him are employed as researchers.  Some of them were there even before completing their B.S (which is usually not allowed even for the most talented students).
What should I do to notify others of this situation and without worsening my position in my colleagues' eyes?
The researcher is a man of a great reputation (or at least, much greater than I am as a postgraduate :-) ), so I'm afraid of being just considered malicious and jealous man. On the other hand I'm pretty angry about all this, because there are some very expensive international projects, where money for these people are completely wasted and a research progress is much slower than it has to be. Those positions could be occupied by really talented and competent people and not just by somebody, who was supervised by one specific man.

Have you talked to colleagues or your advisor/supervisor about this? Do they share your views?

clarifying question: 'researcher' is not a student, and more of a staff position dedicated for research? (as a research scientist or postdoc?)

@Raphael I haven't talked about it with anybody of our department, I'm afraid of unwelcome consequences.

@Memming Yes, "the researcher" is a research scientist, who rather concentrates on research than lecturing.

how do you know the professor is well-intentioned but simply doesn't know how to hire?  or that they're actually good researchers by whatever measure, just not good at coursework?  because research and coursework are different skills.

@La-comadreja Try to read my question more carefully. I have never said, that he doesn't know how to hire people. On the other hand, I've said multiple times here, that I know these people in person for several years, so I know pretty much about their abilities. Of course I can be wrong, but that's not the point of this question.

@Guest: Maybe they were hired for their people and communication skills?

On a side note (which may or may very well not apply to your case): In my field and locale, there is such tense competition on the job market, that we gladly hire medicore or even subpar candidates who show at least a slightest possibility to grow better over some time. In a privately owned company, with really good managers, under European labour laws... When it comes to personal policy, there are just too many metrics to be able to get optimal values for every single one  of them.

My suggestion is that you let it go for three reasons:

This is hardly the last time you'll come across this problem, inside or outside of academia.
There are factors here you might not be considering or know nothing about.  Maybe the person you're tutoring in math has excellent people skills, or is the instructor's nephew, or the Dean's. Whatever the reasons they're really not any of your business.
As you say, you will indeed end up being considered a malicious and jealous man.

If it really bothers you you should probably find somewhere else to work where this isn't a problem, but then see point #1, above.

Unfortunately, this is probably the best answer I'm going to receive, even if I'm not very glad to hear this :-( Nevertheless, thank you.

"Whatever the reasons they're really not any of your business." -- I disagree. If funds are wasted, that's a problem for the whole department. It's the job of faculty to ensure that is not the case, though, probably not a post-doc's.

But Raphael if the funds are wasted that will be evident by the failed proposals and failure to produce results. If the team is able to produce results, even via unorthodox means, the funds aren't being wasted.

@Raphael I've jousted with that dragon more times than I can count and never once have I won the battle.  We had an admin assistant who was stealing equipment from the incoming mail and we couldn't get her fired.  And that's a completely objective offense.  When you get to things like "competent," that's highly subjective and debatable and does not mean anywhere near as much as it probably should in the context of academia.

Like others here, I am supremely sceptical of your reasoning that the prof. is hiring bad people to look better. I think it is indeed a pretty universal concept that professors hire good people because it makes them seem good. Never have I heard of a case where somebody was actively looking for terrible people because they can be taught more.
Hence, I would look for other reasons why those "incompetent people" are employed in this lab. The ones that seem most likely to me are:

The better students may not be interested. In Austria and Germany, for instance, many of the best advanced students already work part-time jobs outside of academia. It is simply not possible to always hire the "best-in-class" for some student jobs, simply because they have other, better-paying jobs, and may not be interested. No matter what the concrete circumstances are, I would not by default assume that every student is always interested in each job.
It may be more work to find better students. Even if there are better students that may be interested, sometimes bachelor- and master-student hiring is very low on the priority list of the professor, and he simply does not care enough to go out of his way to find the best people if he has somebody at hand that he thinks will at least be adequate. This is close to your reasoning, but it's not the same.
Maybe the professor is looking for other qualities than you. You go very hard on those students because they sucked at their math courses. Maybe the professor does not care about this, because the job is foremost a programming job? Maybe they are in fact not incompetent in the specific skill that the job needs?
Maybe they simply improved. Relatedly, maybe they simply learned and are not incompetent anymore?
Maybe it's simply nepotism. No exactly a good reason, but still much more likely than the reasoning you proposed - maybe those incompetent students are somehow related to the professor, or to friends of the professor. This is, I think, the only case from my list where you should really be angry, but even in this case I foresee only hard times for you if you go on a mission to change the professor's behavior.

I'm surprised you left confirmation bias off of your list-- assuming that "simply nepotism" implies conscious bias. If the professor saw great potential in them earlier then he will, unless he's aware and compensating, almost certainly have a strong bias toward continuing to assess them highly now. That's not to say that it's the sole or even an important factor, and it's not really nefarious--just part of being human.

I can confirm that people that seem incompetent to a researcher in one subfield/group can successfully graduate with a PhD in another subfield/group. (Any interpretation of this fact is dangerous, as long as we have no objective measure of "competence".) Required skill sets, abstraction vs application levels and research culture differ. (There are harder and softer subfields to any academic discipline, aren't there?)

Your story reminds me of my (painful) student time in Italy, but I (and my friends) were the bad, incompetent guys :)
Back then we were 3 Asians doing Master in Software Engineering in Trento. There, they offered one of the most theoretical Master programs that I've ever known. The mandatory courses for Software Engineering included Computability (lambda calculus etc), Computational Complexity, Concurrency Theory (pi calculus etc) etc. And we all sucked.
I got 0 in Computability in the first semester, I decided not to retake the exam in the second semester since I understood nothing, and I managed to pass it in the third semester. My friends X and Y went to the Dean and told him they could not finish this program unless he let them to pass Computability :D
I and X graduated after 5 semesters (the standard is 4), Y needed 3 years to do that. Our GPA were less than mediocre, and there were several courses that we needed to take the exams several times. So if you, the OP, says we were incompetent students, I agree. My friends may also agree.
But if you say we are incompetent researchers, we will not agree. We sucked at math stuffs like Computability, but there are still many things that we can do research on. I have just finished my PhD in the UK, and I'm going to start my post doc in the US this month. X also submitted his PhD thesis in Canada, and already has a post doc offer from a top school in the same country. Y stayed at Trento for PhD, and already started his post doc with a US government agency early this month.
We may be mediocre researchers, but not incompetent. Because our PhD advisors have been happy with us. Maybe you are right, the people in your department are really incompetent. However, if our advisors evaluated us merely based on our GPAs and performances in class, we would never have a chance.

I don't know you or your friends and I'm definitely not saying that one cannot improve his performance drastically. I'm not even trying to wreck someone's career. The point was, that I know those people in person for several years, so I know pretty much about their abilities, maths was just the most distinctive example. Of course, they could've improved without me noticing it.  My question was targeting the case they haven't. And congrats for your career and improvement, it's pretty energizing to hear such stories :-)

Your perception of them being bad seems to be based on what your past experiences where with them. Their past performance is not necessarily a good indicator of their present performance. The professor that hired them saw something in them. One of the best researchers I know did not pass his bachelor's with flying colors. The remark that the professor hired them to look good himself is also doubtful. There is only one way a student makes his professor look good, and that is by doing good research. In the competitive research world the professor would likely only spend more money on people he believes in.
Like @DaveKey already said, don't get involved. It is none of your business. Focus on your own work and not on your emotions surrounding the work of others.

For undergrads, it is a bit of a different though. Some grants will provide money specifically for them, and some professors do not care at all about who they hire for such jobs because they expect nothing to begin with.

@user8001 if the money is specifically for one person, the complaint of the OP that better people could use it is moot. In addition, if some professor really does not care, the complaint of the OP will also likely not help. I would although find it strange a professor does not care who he works with. Undergraduate research is a great way to spot talent for graduate research. Good graduate research is vital, especially for non-tenured professors.

@PaulHiemstra Our situation is pretty specific - there are grants for undergraduate and even postgraduate researchers, but they're assigned to the specific project, not the specific person. The head of the project chooses his team, so it's pretty possible to employ not-so-qualified people officially for part-time job or as an external consultant.

@guest but why hire incompetent people. If the professor wants to get something useful out of the project he'll hire people he can trust to do something useful.Likely the professor does not agree with your assessment of the people he hired.

@PaulHiemstra I can just guess his motivations, but of course there are another people in the team, who are fully competent and who'll eventually finish the research.

Again, he could hire two competent people in stead of one bad and one good. I think the professor thinks they bring something to the table. And if he really does not care, your complaints will be useless and likely piss him off. Complaining is really a lose lose here.

@PaulHiemstra I understand your objections completely and I'm now fully decided not to complain about it :-)

I think focusing on doing your job well and not on how other people's do theirs is important. That does not take away from the fact that it can be frustrating :). But just let it go and be happy (come in Disney song from frozen ;]).

"It is none of your business." -- I disagree. If funds are wasted, that's a problem for the whole department. It's the job of faculty to ensure that is not the case, though, probably not a post-doc's.


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Expounding implementation details of a paper and provide a full computational analysis
Recently I've implemented a pipeline given from a paper, there are three main steps two of these are offline and the third one is real time. The real time part was particularly difficult to implement, and mainly because of lack of details. More specifically the problem was the authors provided a function and they said "we minimize this function". The problem with that is that is wasn't explained how they actually solved the problem and I had in the first place work out all the mathematical details by myself. I've done a detailed analysis that wasn't provided by the original paper, like predicting solution in some cases, computational complexity. Given that this algorithm was real time then this analysis can be useful for whoever would like to implement it.
The question is, given a paper that tells you "we solved our problem using this and we have obtained these numbers" can be worth publishing all the analysis that can theoretically justify those numbers?
In my mind this could also be useful for validation purpose of whoever wants to implement it.
Also, it would be nice to have some example of this if it happens.

The original paper cite any patent or restriction?

Not really, the thing is that paper explains what they used for an implementation. They explained what problem they tried to solve (with a formula). But my point is many technical details are missing. It's essentially one of those problems where they give you a mathematical expression of something (which is a minimization problem in my case) and later they say what hardware they used to find the solution, but they don't actually explain how they did set up many things in order to be executed on a computer. It lacks of these bits, that to me made difficult the implementation.

At the end, as usual, they provide experimental results. But my point is more "if they'd done a more careful analysis that could have possibly be useful". Like "theoretically with this implementation you can actually achieve more even theoretically".

I think that you could publish that (if it is of your interest of course) as An implementation for the solution presented in "Original Paper". Or you can always upload it to GitHub as well. But it is not possible to say that your implementation is exactly the same if they don't expose their code.

It is of my interest, is there any way I can get confirmation?

You could try to reach the authors, since they have published their research it is not wrong or anti-ethical to implement the a solution. I don't see it as a matter of having to ask for authorization to publish, it is only a possibility for collaboration with them.

This is a problem with a lot of research these days: reproducibility. From my experience publishing an implementation approach to a paper, when no approach was given is a valid academic contribution, as there could be various approaches each with its own advantages and disadvantages. If you can expand your work to include multiple reasonable potential approaches and their outcomes, as well as potential pitfalls that could arise (you probably already went through both of these with your work), it would be a significant worthwhile contribution.
The next question is whether the journal you submit to sees it this way, and that can be a hit or miss. The only way to know is to try. Try to frame your work as "Approaches to X (where X is the sub-problem you tackled), instead of linking it too heavily with the original work (where X is e.g. the name of the original paper). If everything else fails, you can always try a conference or open publication although the "social credit" for these will be much less.
I also support the idea of publishing your code on github. The more we share the better off we all will be. This open sharing approach has aided in the significant machine learning publishing boom, and fast pace of improvements we are seeing.

Can you provide an example where this happens? Like Paper A with a poor implementation description, and Paper B that actually implements it?

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How do conferences work for deaf scientists?
Watching various COVID-related briefings, I notice there is always a sign language interpreter. This is clearly necessary, yet thinking about all the conferences I've attended in the past, literally none of them have had a sign language interpreter.
How do conferences work for deaf scientists? Do deaf scientists simply not attend conferences? If so, how does one even work in fields such as computer science where conferences are an integral part of the academic experience?

This has led to an interesting discussion about how academia accommodates and could better accommodate the deaf; let us continue that conversation in chat. Comments here should be used to clarify or improve the question; please read this FAQ before posting a comment after this one.

I am neither a deaf scientist nor an organizer for conferences. However, I was a student and staff member at a university with a significant deaf population so I'll speak from that perspective.
The prevalence of interpreters and other accommodations for those with disabilities varied significantly. It was a given that American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters would be present at large scale events and presentations aimed at the community as a whole. Additionally, interpreters would be provided for deaf students taking classes taught in spoken English.
Beyond that, it was usually the responsibility of the deaf person to arrange for an interpreter; though many interpreters were employed by the university, there was no guarantee one would be available on short notice. This may explain why I seldom saw interpreters at club meetings and other smaller events, especially those that emphasized spontaneous direct communication. For example, interpreters were present at the anime club where much of the activities involved watching Japanese animation with subtitles, but I did not see any at the club for tabletop role playing games where interpersonal interaction was constant.
In short, students and staff had the accommodations necessary to fulfill their primary goal(s) but often not enough for secondary ones, such as socialization. I suspect a similar dynamic applies to scientific conferences.
Conferences that regularly have deaf people attending likely organize interpreters themselves but the rest will only provide accommodations when requested. (In other words, at a typical conference, you're not going to see an ASL interpreter unless there's at least one deaf person present!) The effectiveness of such accommodations are apt to suffer if the organizers lack experience and/or resources. This would discourage deaf people from attending unless the conference was essential - for example, a topic of particular interest is being discussed or a colleague is in need of material or moral support - or had a positive reputation of proper accommodations.
In summary, the attendance of deaf scientists at conferences is presumably dictated by the following:

The importance of the conference to the individual deaf scientist
The presence and quality of accommodations that enable deaf scientists to be productive
The number of people with whom the deaf persons can readily communicate with
Each deaf scientist's personal comfort level with attending conferences designed primarily for hearing people

Welcome to academia.SE  This is a great answer!  I'm also not Deaf, but my dad has done English/ASL interpreting for academic conferences, and based on my limited second-hand understanding, this answer is really good.

In what was a very large astronomy conference I have seen a sign language interpreter  (actually they had two, who round swap every few minutes during the talk) in certain sessions (presumably going to the sessions which the deaf scientist(s) was attending). I haven't seen this at other conferences, but whether that is because of their smaller sizes or because deaf scientists didn't attend I don't know.

Which conference was this?

one of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meetings

I've seen this at my company's international conference as well. The person needing accommodation reaches out to the conference and work together. Additionally, conference management contacted the presenters with tips to help the interpreters.

This is highly unusual.

@AnonymousPhysicist: Unusual in some fields, not so unusual in other fields.  For example, the Linguistics Society of America's annual meeting routinely has ASL/English interpreters, and has information on its website for how and when to inform the LSA about which sessions will require an interpreter.

@NoahSnyder That's also atypical.  A conference full of people who study sign languages will be atypical.

At an international conference it’s not really clear which sign language should be used either.  Maybe a live voice to local sign language AI system will be the answer in the future.

@Anush There's no need for local sign language AI. For videos, there are systems like Youtube's auto-generated subtitles. For live audio, maybe Google Translate's Transcribe feature that came out this year would work well right now.

@icebird76 Those are good ideas if they work well. My experience is not positive but in may depend on the field and the accent of the speaker

@AnonymousPhysicist LSA covers all of linguistics, so while it may have a higher proportion of people who study signed languages; it is not "full" of them. It is also a misconception that linguists are fluent in languages they study. They often are not. Besides, deaf linguists are under no obligation to study signed languages. LSA's note about requesting deaf accommodations is pretty similar to messages I have seen at other events. OTOH, if this is how LSA decided to handle it, it's probably the best way for any conference to do it.

They do not work.  Most conferences in most fields of science do not work well for people with any sensory/communication disabilities.
A few online conferences offer automatically generated captions.  These help some but they are not very accurate.
Edit:  The fact that conferences are ableist is not because they are intentionally ableist, but rather because of ignorance.  Many conference organizers would be willing to adjust their conferences if they knew how to do so and had the funds.

I wonder how many people who upvoted have ever thought about whether or not "They do not work" is correct.

@user111388: They barely work for color blind people, in some cases.

It’s possible that “they do not work” is correct, but how do you know if that’s the case or not? Do you have a sensory disability, or have you discussed this topic with someone who does? If what you’re saying is just your opinion and not based on hard facts, I think it’s important to make that clear so that we don’t mislead people visiting this thread now or in the future (particularly people with disabilities who may make career choices about whether to go into areas like computer science based on the opinions they encounter here).

@DanRomik Nobody should make academic career choices based on this.  My knowledge of disability is based on a wide range of sources, most of which were peer reviewed research.

@AnonymousPhysicist thanks, good to know, and I agree about making career choices.

I would also add that they will try to accomodate for disabilities IF there is a demand. So if someone who plans to attend asks for sign language or any similar help conference organizer will probably try to help (there still might be money or similar issues in actually providing the help) but if nobody asks they will provide nothing. This is what you observe in the vast majority of conferences.

@AnonymousPhysicist Could you please provide some links to that research to back up your statements?  I expect they are likely true, but I think the comments about assumptions are worth addressing.

If you want to learn, search for "Universal Design."

Given that in the US, less than 0.1% of academics is deaf or hard of hearing, it is perhaps not because of ignorance but because of lack of demand. It makes no sense to hire a (specialist) interpreter for an event where nobody attending needs one. I suggest to either back your aggressive claims up with sources, or to write in a less militant tone. See here for detailed statistics.

It is also worth noting that ASL doesn't (apparently) have the same status as English among sign languages. If you have an international crowd, you might need several interpreters to accommodate all of them.

@Servaes Disability is not rare, and an interpreter is not the only (or most broadly applicable) solution.

I completely agree with this answer with the only caveat being that conferences do vary hugely in type and budget.   Having said that, I have never seen a deaf sign translator at any academic conference I have been to.

@Anush If really only .1% of academics are deaf or hard of hearing as claimed by Servaes (haven't checked how the statistics hold up), it might make more sense to have a personal interpreter that goes with the deaf person. In which case how would you even know that the conference handled this situation well or not?

In spite of what Anonymous Physicist says, conference can work for deaf scientists. This is the case in my own area of work, digital accessibility.
There are two main methods to make conferences accessible for deaf attendants:

Sign language interpretation: this means that a sign language interpreter translates the spoken words into sign language. If the conference is a local or national event,  the sign language interpreter will translate into the national sign language, e.g. American Sign Language (ASL), British Sign Language (unrelated to ASL), German Sign Language, etc. However, if the conference is an international event, there won't be sign language interpreters for each of the nationalities represented in the audience. In that case, sign language interpreters will translate into International Sign. Sing language interpreters take turns every 20-30 minutes. It is also helpful if they know in advance what the talk will be about, so they can prepare for it.
Live transcription into text: the talk is transcribed live and the transcription is displayed on a large screen at the front of the conference room. The transcriber can be physically at the conference or connected remotely. The transcription is in the same language as the talk.

For congenitally deaf persons, sign language translation is preferable, since that represents translation into their native language (except if the translation is into International Sign), whereas written language is essentially a foreign language.
Research into sign language avatars has been ongoing for quite some time, but I have never seen them in action at conferences.
The above is about deaf scientists in the audience. What about deaf scientists giving a talk?
In 19 years of research in accessibility, I have seen this only once. It was a congenitally deaf researcher from Finland who gave a talk in English. His pronunciation was only marginally harder to understand than that of many other non-native speakers of English, i.e. something one could get used to within minutes. The only issue was that he did not know how loud he was talking, so he asked he wasn't talking to loud. After feedback from the audience, he started talking less loudly.
(The conferences I am referring to include ICCHP / International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs, where translation was into International Sign, the e-Accessibility Forums in Paris (transcription), events organised by the Swedish organisation Funka/FunkaNu (transcription) and conferences organised by EU-funded projects in the domain of digital accessibility.)

The frequency of Deaf presenters may vary considerably by discipline and geography.  For example, linguistics is a discipline with a larger number of prominent Deaf researchers, some of whom present in ASL with an interpreter.  A notable example is Macarthur fellow and UCSD full professor Carol Padden.

@NoahSnyder Geography may play an important role, since support for Deaf persons (like support for people with disabilities) varies significantly from country to country. For example, Greece reduced its support a lot after the 2010 financial crisis. With regard to variation based on disciplines, I can only speculate.

"In spite of what Anonymous Physicist says, conference can work for deaf scientists."  Actually, I strongly agree with you.  Conferences can work.  Just they generally do not.  A conference of accessibility experts would be an outlier.

Conferences vary hugely in all sorts of characteristics.  But the ones I know are one off annual events where the organisers are happy if they can print the name badges. There is just no time or money to provide disability support.  It’s more like going round to someone’s house for a dinner party. It’s unlikely there will be deaf sign translators.

In most disciplines and in the larger more developed countries it's perfectly straightforward to provide real-time transcription where the speech is transcribed into text on a big screen (or streamed to a delegate's laptop or tablet).

Many deaf and hearing-impaired people do not have sign language, or
fluent sign language, and as with translation between any two
languages, nuance can be lost and ambiguities can be introduced in the
translation from English to Sign. Sign interpretation also requires
that a student maintain continuous eye contact, usually necessitating
additional notetakers. Students using real-time transcription can take
their own notes; the last dozen or so lines of the lecture are
displayed on the transcription screen for easy reference.

(adapted from Mirabai Knight Stenography)
Using computer-assisted realtime transcription (CART) is useful not just for people with hearing impairment; people whose first language is not the same as the speaker's, or people with some specific learning difficulties, may find it useful to have a real-time transcript.

In the USA, one in seven people have hearing loss. For people over 65,
that rate goes up to one in three. Events at most conferences seat
hundreds of people, so statistically it’s a sure bet that at least
some of those people would benefit from captioning. Even people with
mild hearing loss, who do quite well in one-on-one social situations
by using a combination of residual hearing, lip reading, and context
clues, often have trouble with conference audio, which can be
distorted in the amplification process, and which puts the speaker so
far away from the audience that lipreading becomes impossible. There’s
also the benefits that captioning can offer people without hearing
loss, who may be more comfortable reading written English than
understanding spoken English (very common when English isn’t a
person’s first language), or who may have central audio processing
issues (very common in Aspergers and autism) or attention deficit
issues such as ADHD.

https://ccacblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/conference-captioning-ask-for-it/
And the transcript forms a useful record of the conference, and can be used by people who couldn't attend the conference because of cost or distance, or who have disabilities making travel impossible or difficult, or who are unable to obtain visas. The transcript can also be translated (or machine-translated, which may be good enough for getting the gist or deciding whether ot order a paid-for translation).
All this widens access to and participation in the conference, and means that the cost of providing the transcript can be covered by the general budget rather than being a specific cost for one or two delegates.
An example of a conference video being transcribed
https://livestream.com/accounts/686369/events/4375102/videos/100329035
And a picture of a conference with, it appears, both transcription and sign.

To what extent is this actually used at the moment?

@Tommi I can't find statistics quickly, but it's standard technology and skills, and fairly widely available, so almost any conference organiser should be able to do so if given reasonable notice.

COVID briefings are aimed at the general public (and many Deaf people have poor English skills due to a history of bad Deaf education) and are low on jargon (hence fairly straightforward to interpret). Interpreting into the local sign language is the right choice for maximum accessibility.
For a high-jargon scientific speech to an audience of scientists, transcription may be the better option. You would need a specialist interpreter to manage such a speech; and it would be tricky for the Deaf audience member to view both the interpreter and the slides at the same time.

Qualifications: dropped out after two years of a Deaf Studies degree; training to become an interpreter.

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