I’m a grad student in CS theory, so it is not really expected of me to go to the office everyday, no-one checks (can check?) that I have done any work this week, and people don’t really expect that deadlines (for things like peer reviews) are kept, because everyone is used to academics missing deadlines. I often envy people in customer service jobs, where not much motivation / will power seems to be needed to keep going (because the customer is going to be annoyed if not). I wonder whether there is any way to salvage such theory research jobs along the lines suggested in the post; would be super-useful to me and presumably others.
I’m a grad student in CS theory, so it is not really expected of me to go to the office everyday, no-one checks (can check?) that I have done any work this week, and people don’t really expect that deadlines (for things like peer reviews) are kept, because everyone is used to academics missing deadlines. I often envy people in customer service jobs, where not much motivation / will power seems to be needed to keep going (because the customer is going to be annoyed if not). I wonder whether there is any way to salvage such theory research jobs along the lines suggested in the post; would be super-useful to me and presumably others.