Do it!
As a high-value contributor in a stagnant role, I just moved on from a job I was “valued” at (with people I loved btw) to a new role at a startup. 30% raise and endless blue sky.
I had a unicorn role and it took me a year to get the (new) job I wanted. My message to you is - push yourself outside of your comfort zone to explore opportunities. The process will likely take longer than you want it to; the sooner you start, the better.
(btw if anyone knows a website where I can generate text like that (I don’t have any version of office) I would appreciate it
God damnit those things have a specific term that I’m blanking on. Not clip art but close. Can’t figure out what to google either thanks for ruining my day.
I bought TWTR in december at 42.05, I just sold at 50.78. I feel pretty confident the Elon deal is not going to go through.
hahahah lol holy shit
https://twitter.com/KateHeeChoi/status/1518704775197564928
imagine this person and 90% of the commentors in a non-academic context, jesus christ. If I don’t get this sort of questioning from a potential hire or mentee I will move on
That whole thread is weird as hell; the replies are all over the place.
My view: The first part of the conversation is a little weird as worded, and might carry the implication that the student doesn’t actually think the professor is qualified. (And this could be even worse for women or minorities, who are famously treated with less respect in this environment.) My response would be that, duh, I have a PhD and am a professor in this department, which qualifies me to supervise your masters thesis. But the follow up (or alternate framing) is pretty reasonable - hey, can you help me assess who’d be a better advisor? So I think it really depends on what the student was trying to say.
If I could look into the OP’s head, my guess is that it’s just frustration about the fact that supervising masters students is uncompensated work, and now you’ve got this student asking me to sell myself to them with the bizarre goal of landing this uncompensated labor.
Rage incoming:
I’m traveling to a conference next month, and I have to get spending pre-approved in order to get reimbursed afterwards. For this particular conference, I’m obviously driving over flying because there’s no convenient flights. For situations like this, I’m required to provide a cost comparison between driving and flying, based on the standard mileage rate for my car, so that the university knows it’s a reasonable thing to do. Fine, driving is cheaper by a few hundred bucks.
But I’m also required to compare the cost of driving my car (at the standard mileage rate) to the cost of renting a car (plus gas), and choose a rental car if that’s cheaper. This is dumb, and something that I think is fairly new. One problem is that it’s annoying to drive a random car I’m not familiar with for a 6 hour drive. But the bigger potential problem (I’m waiting to get a response to this) is that I suspect they’re going to try to make me rent a compact car, instead of the midsize SUV that I normally drive. (“Travelers must incur the lowest reasonable vehicle rental expense that meets the business needs of the university.”) It’s not that I want the “luxury” of a Honda CRV or whatever, it’s that I value the elevated visibility of that car - I haven’t driven a regular sedan in years.
I’m angry in advance that I’m going to have to pay out of pocket in order to avoid driving a Mitsubishi Mirage or some similar nonsense.
I just paid $850 out of pocket to get a way way way way more convenient flight for a work trip. Enraging.
If they’re going to stymie someone with this requirement it ain’t gonna be spidercrab. That’s for certain.
Also rental cars are ridiculously expensive these days. I’d actually be surprised if renting (even a shitty car) actually worked out cheaper. But presumably you’ve done the comparison and that’s what it showed.
Sounds like you’re using GSA travel policy, either directly or your company copied a lot of the same rules. Either way you might be authorized two travel days based on the driving distance, if so you can include the lodging cost and M&IE for your rental car comparison. But like Melkerson said, that may not even be necessary. Pre-covid I would travel by POV and just accepted a lower reimbursement rate based on cost comparisons. Now it’s not difficult to show that the full mileage rate is the most cost effective mode.
Yep, it’s cheaper to rent a car at the negotiated rate than to get full mileage on my own car.
Surprisingly, the administrative guy I’m talking to is acting very reasonably. His current stance is that they can’t force us to rent a car, and if I do rent a car it would be reasonable to get an SUV. I think the only constraint they’re putting on is that they might not reimburse the full mileage allowance if I take my car and it’s more than the cost of a rental (like @d10 described). And that seems more or less fine to me.
I suspect that what’s happened since they’ve implemented this new policy (I think it’s fairly new) is that some of the Deans and super pimpy professors raised holy hell at the idea that they’d have to drive their Jaguars or BMWs to a rental car agency only to then drive a rented Nissan Versa for a few hours.
Did you include depreciation of your vehicle in the cost comparison? Putting some extra miles on your car has to be worth some $. If they want a cost comparison, then I think you should give them the true costs.
That’s exactly what’s captured by the mileage allowance of $0.585 per mile or whatever - the full cost of using your personal vehicle, including gas and depreciation.
But vehicles don’t depreciate at same rate. Shouldn’t it depend on the age and type of vehicle?
I don’t think so. If you’ve got 2 employees, one driving a new, $100,000 BMW and another driving a $20,000 Honda Civic, I don’t think you’d want to reimburse the first person more just because they spent more on their car. From the company’s perspective, the BMW doesn’t provide more benefits than the Civic, and you’re basically just giving one guy a first class ticket and the other guy coach if you reimburse based on the value of the car.
I think, from the university’s perspective, you should have to rent a scooter and have a much lower gas cost per mile (and lower costs than renting a car!)
Kinda like how they got across the country in Dumb and Dumber
I get why the company wouldn’t want to do it.
I guess when you said that they asked for a cost comparison, I assumed for some reason that you had some latitude in how you could present that. It sounds like that is not the case.
I would laugh, except that there’s a tiny amount of truth to this, in that the university places virtually zero weight on the convenience of the travel mode or how much faculty time it takes.
