De schaapsherder van Microsoft

It’s well past 19:00 on a beautiful Friday evening but Emmanuel Olivi remains buried in his seat, his expressionless face glued to the computer screen. A not uncommon sight around the faculty building, and usually these people hanging around universities at late hours are PhD students. Universities usually recruit the brightest students as their PhDs students, since they know that it takes such extra zeal and commitment to successfully deliver results at the end of a doctoral research project. 

Many TU Delft international MSc students now face the very difficult decision of deciding to pursue a PhD after graduation or instead taking jobs in private industry. The question then is how do PhDs fare in comparison to their counterparts who opted for private sector jobs? 

In his article titled, ‘So long, and thanks for the PhD!’, Professor Ronald Azuma, research leader at the Nokia Research Center (US), writes: “Being a graduate student is like becoming all of the Seven Dwarves. In the beginning you’re Dopey and Bashful. In the middle, you’re usually sick (Sneezy), tired (Sleepy), and irritable (Grumpy). But at the end, they call you Doc, and then you’re Happy”. 

Meanwhile, a recent article in the Economist (December 16, 2010), portrayed PhDs as cheap sources of labour who work for a fraction of the salaries earned by equally qualified professionals in industry. Although this seems to be a standard analysis of many people viewing matters from the outside, PhDs interviewed by Delta tended to disagree.  

Sayee Prasad, a PhD student in TU Delft’s Process & Energy department: “We work for the same hours as professionals, but we’re still inexperienced in the work we’ve chosen, unlike the professionals of the same cadre. We’re still in the learning phase. But I think after our PhD we will indeed earn more than those other professionals.”

There are several reasons why PhDs choose the academic research path. Working with state-of-the-art equipment and helping build the technologies of the future is one motivating factor. “I spent quite a lot of time in school trying to learn stuff,” says Olivi, a PhD researcher at France’s National Institute for Research in Information and Automation. “I don’t want to waste that knowledge by working in the industry, utilizing less than 5% of what I learned in school.” 

In his classic 1998 lecture to new PhD students at Middlesex University, Dr Richard Butterworth famously described the individualistic nature of PhD positions: the only person who can understand your work and emotions related to it would probably be you. This can lead to a feeling of virtual loneliness and at times depression. Such problems can often be avoided by taking jobs in industry, as such jobs are rarely individualistic and require greater team effort. 

Johan Rob, a Dutch MSc mechanical engineering student at TU Delft, agrees: “Personally, I’d fear a PhD, because I think it’s mainly a large individual assignment and I’d rather work in a team in a company. I think teamwork would be difficult to achieve as a PhD, but through team work it’s usually possible to complete the tasks.” 

Universities need constant research output, and the best way to achieve this is by having a constant flow of PhDs.  Consequently, universities want to hire the best PhDs they can, with the result being that PhD employee benefits have continuously improved in recent years. European PhD positions have especially started to gain more leverage compared to positions in the US, which has traditionally been the largest producer of PhDs.  

A PhD student at the Stanford University, for example, earns approximately 21,000 euros (gross) per year, according to glassdoor.com, while a Dutch PhD student in the Netherlands makes approximately 24,500 euros per year in the first year, with that figure increasing to approximately 28,000 euros per year by the final year of the PhD. 

In the October 2010 edition of the American Society for Cell Biology journal, a column by Tony Hyman, of the Max Planck Institute, explored some of the contrasts between European and U.S. scientific careers. Among a long list of advantages Hyman attributed to European scientific careers were transparency, adequate funding and easy access to facilities, all of which were missing in the US system. Hyman noted that PhD opportunities in Europe always came with adequate funding, unlike in America.  

These factors, including bigger pay packages for European PhDs, have attracted more students to Europe in recent years. TU Delft figures corroborate this: the number of PhDs at TU Delft has consistently increased by approximately 10% annually for the past ten years. “Although work style and expectations seem to be the same in both US and Europe, a higher pay package combined with a better, peaceful lifestyle motivates me to pursue a PhD in Europe rather than the US,” says Aswin Chandarr, a TU Delft MSc student in BioRobotics who is presently shortlisting prospective universities to apply for PhD positions. “I don’t care if I do my PhD at TU Delft or elsewhere, as long as it’s in Europe and I like the work I’ll be doing for those four years.”  

But it’s not always a rosy path for PhDs. There are always roadblocks. Tatsiana Aneichyk from Belarus, who is currently a consultant for Amadeus, in France, previously enrolled in a PhD program at Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). She dropped out of her doctoral program a year into her research: “A four-year long project belonging to nobody except you. There’s no such thing as a day off – just days when you can work from home. No matter how hard you work, you still get paid less than the average person with your background. Clearly nobody cares about overtime. And most of the time no one appreciates your work anyway. And after you finish your PhD, you’re overqualified for 95% of positions.”  

Finally, although PhD dropout rates are not so different from attrition rates in industry, they are still staggeringly high, with only around 75-80% of enrolled PhD students in Netherlands completing their PhDs, according to a recent report published in Career magazine.  

Oké, het onderwerp van deze ‘meet the CEO college tour’ was de carrière van Rinsema. Maar vragen stond de studenten in de Joost van der

Grintenhall op Industrieel Ontwerpen vrij. Toch kwamen de meesten niet verder dan brave, voor de hand liggende vragen als ‘wat is de missie van Microsoft in de samenleving?’ ‘welke moeilijke beslissingen heeft u moeten nemen?’ en ‘wat is uw volgende carrièremove?’. Waarmee dit een interview met de baas van ieder willekeurig modern geleid bedrijf had kunnen zijn.

Misschien dat Rinsema daarom al snel achterover ging leunen in zijn fauteuil onderin de grote collegezaal. Een groot deel van zijn spreektijd ging op aan het vertellen over zijn leiderschapsstijl. Die bleek erg te lijken op de stijl van coachend leiderschap die de TU zich eigen probeert te maken: ‘van controle naar vertrouwen’ en ‘van aanwezigheid naar output’.

Rinsema klonk meer als een verkoper van ‘Het Nieuwe Werken’ dan als de baas van een toonaangevend softwarebedrijf: “Werk wordt een activiteit in plaats van een plek. Daardoor kan de CO2-uitstoot omlaag, kunnen we files voorkomen en kunnen meer mensen meedoen, bijvoorbeeld gehandicapten. We doen niet aan liefdadigheid, we integreren goed doen.” Rinsema kon dat laatste aantonen met klinkende voorbeelden. Zo is Microsoft Nederland ambassadeur van de mantelzorgers en hebben medewerkers van het bedrijf Warchild geadopteerd.

Waarom niet alle bedrijven zo werken, wilde een student weten. En zo kon Rinsema nog even verder met het uitventen van zijn eigen visie op managen. Volgens de Microsoft-ceo is technologie het probleem niet. De bedrijfscultuur en dan vooral de houding van het management zitten in de weg. “Die leiders zitten vast in hun controlemechanismen.”

Zijn eigen leiderschapsstijl is volgens Rinsema nog steeds in ontwikkeling. Het belang van verandering zag hij in tijdens een 3,5 uur durende wandeling met een herder en zijn kudde schapen, vertelde hij. “De les was: een leider moet een organisatie maken die grotendeels onafhankelijk van hem is. Net als de schaapsherder hoef je alleen te interveniëren als het nodig is. Dat is moeilijk, want veel leiders hebben een groot ego. Je moet je realiseren dat je daar je organisatie niet verder mee helpt.”

Rinsema’s antwoord op de vraag welke beslissingen hij moeilijk vindt, was evenmin spannend: mensen ontslaan en een balans zoeken tussen werk en privé. En dan nog zijn plannen voor de toekomst: “Na mijn afstuderen had ik geen idee wat ik wilde doen. Ik heb dat nooit geweten. Ik kijk naar wat me energie geeft, wat ik ervan kan leren en waar ik kan bijdragen. Waarschijnlijk wordt mijn volgende move een internationale, ergens in Europa.”

“Wat vond je ervan?”, fluisterde een studente na afloop tegen een vriendin. “Een beetje saai, maar wel geruststellend dat hij ook nooit wist wat hij wilde.”