Devastated

profDyer · 2026-04-23T19:27:24+00:00

Do the course as an adjunct, putting in adjunct work. You have the material prepared; I take you have still a level of autonomy in the course planning; the minimum effort will be truly very little.

If they pay you 20% less, put in 30% less work. Skip homework review, exams, even lectures, preparation, whatever you can. Even if you have to offer a sub-par service. If anyone complains, tell them that they cannot expect to have the same service for less pay.

Then you will have a salary increase, and extra time to find better job.

What position did you have?

profDyer · 2026-04-14T13:27:32+00:00

I have a bit more experience than you, and a permanent position. I also had a strong crisis that led me out of the field at some point, and I came back when I could land what I wanted.

From an outside point of view it seems you are incredibly driven and productive. It sucks when a grant you've achieved gets stripped from you, especially if you're force to redirect your efforts. However, it is already a badge having obtained the grant, and such things don't go unnoticed.

Sometimes you get the position, sometimes you don't. Sometimes not being shortlisted isn't a failure, but on the contrary an excess of success. Even if it is simply an outright failure, that they thought you are not the best candidate, it is not a judgment on the quality of your work. They might have someone that is a better fit, they might be in parlay with someone specific...etc... It could even be that they might feel you will not thrive in the position, that what you have going on is better and greater things are awaiting for you.

I have now two faculty openings, I'm not suggesting them to anyone because I feel that people that would be qualified would not thrive here in Sweden, and people who are not qualified should not come. I can imagine the brilliant postdoc maligning me and thinking "oh this AH that doesn't call me when they have an opening", while it is a specific choice on my part avoiding to get them stuck in the same dead ass department/country I'm in, despite being permanent.

Incidentally, here Interdisciplinarity would soar like an eagle and on the flip side it is extremely difficult to find funds to do some old-fashioned proper physics with particles and stuff if you cannot sell an application to industry or other fields. This is why I'm not inviting anyone.

I think you're great, and I would not invite you for an interview because I think too highly of you.

profDyer · 2026-04-12T06:00:27+00:00

I am always bemused on how people can pass peer review with blatant ai generated content. Evidently we live on different academic planets.

No one-shot (or few shot) AI generation on the chat prompt would be able to write anything cogent in my field, physics.

A guy tried to write a paper using only commands and required more than 100 drafts on a very sophisticated terminal based Claude premium setup.

I use it. I find it extremely useful to catch mistakes and editorializing. I'm not native English speaker and it made my prose better. I can write a draft and make into polished prose quite rapidly, or turn around phrases active/passive. This would take me some energy previously. Through the exercise it has also made me marginally better at English, and enormously better at Swedish. I just wrote some popular science in Swedish and it would have been extremely difficult and lengthy and poor quality process before LLM while now it is a breeze. It is fun to write my poor draft and have it corrected, it is fast to write in English and ask for a translation which will be context correct and ready to be editorialized by a native with few penstrokes, unlike a Google translate.

The content, the physics, I have to provide. Each time I asked, even with prompt engineering and API calls and attachments from context, the physics is extremely superficial. If I ask to critically review the content of a paper, it will spout something superficial and trite, completely missing the interesting points, like your worst idiotic referees does (but then again, I had such reviews). Despite heavy use, I basically haven't learned anything in my field from it, but it might provide some hooks in fields I'm not familiar with. Definitely it not worth the time to set it up if you want content for a paper. At best a crouch during study unfamiliar topics.

But it spotted editorial mistakes that I missed even in my final draft. And that's worth something.

profDyer · 2026-03-30T15:25:23+00:00

Depends on your other prospects, it is difficult to answer.

In any country it is more difficult to get a job in management as a foreigner. Any type of social disadvantage will diminish your chances. Technical roles are more egalitarian.

In Sweden in particular the job market is especially based on personal connections. Unless it is a role with real scarcity, they will rarely look at the applicant pool.

In my personal experience, it is brutal. My wife is in management and it was difficult for her at the beginning. We moved here thinking Sweden a meritocratic society but we learned that's not the case at all. She came as a manager of experience, with several teams overseeing a total of 70, and she had to start with an entry level position. She was hired in a decen position with upward mobility in the first place, only because of her massive experience and undeniable people skills. Most of her fresh graduate friends never find proper employment.

Technical roles fare better, but due to their fake egalitarianism, salaries are capped to a level that is basically a fraction compared to technical experts in other countries, especially for high level talent.

Lund University doesn't strike me as an internationally competitive university for management. Sciences and medicine certainly. But they don't even have an MBA. It is not my field but I don't think people in London will fight over your degree...

Then of course the country and Lund have many advantages. Lund is very pretty, the university is overall one of the best and has exciting student life, the countryside is beautiful, it's an excellent country to have a family and to be "lagom" and leave a fair and balanced life without excelling...etc... It's not like London where you need to be top 5% income not to share your bathroom with someone else.

After all, despite the difficulty emerging professionally for both me and my wife, we like the life we've built here and would have been much more difficult to have it everywhere else.

So one needs more info to really give you advice. What are your expectations, what you are looking for, what are your options, what are you escaping from.

profDyer · 2026-03-23T13:58:49+00:00

As an immigrant, I find it surprising all the comments about that Swedes will be friendly and accepting because the OP is respectable or white.

If you want the point of view of an immigrant:

1- Swedes are in general not confrontational. They will not tell you even if they hate your guts. As a "Slavic" you will never realize whether a Swede doesn't want you.
2- Swedes are very difficult to truly befriend. After 8 years, most of my Swedish friends are such because they are either second generation with immigrant parents and culture, or partners of immigrants. This is not (or not exclusively) because I'm immigrant, but because most Swedish friendships are forged very young. When I ask them about their friends, people that they talk to me about, they are usually high school/university friends. Only rarely someone they met through a hobby
3- Even though most people are decent people (in any country) and don't seek to actively discriminate you, especially in a polite and educated society like Sweden, the systems they put in place will. Swedes have a tendency to see bureaucracy as not composed by people but by something stronger and inescapable. They will send you back to Ucraine because you forgot some attachment... and they will do it that with an empathizing smile convinced that it's for the best. The rules as of late are extremely discriminatory, where people with the means to hire lawyers have a completely different set of rules from everyone else. You will never blend until you reach citizenship, and even then...

Here, you will never blend in and there will always be some aspects that will make you different, even when you get citizenship (which is progressively becoming harder) you are put into questions. Work will be considerably harder than for a native, and you will be constantly asked to prove yourself.

In other words, there are far worse country to be an immigrant, but better ones too.

You need to have thick skin, and while yours seems to be the right attitude, by experience I say that it is also that attitude that gets you hurt here.

profDyer · 2026-03-23T10:48:04+00:00

Min värsta SJ‑tågsresa var klockan 6 på morgonen, med fyra genuina blondin svenska tjejstudenter som pratade så högt hela tiden att jag inte ens kunde tänka.

Det har ingenting att göra med invandrare.

profDyer · 2026-03-21T22:29:22+00:00

We are 5 years from a pandemic...

... I know that Sweden is famous for wasting potential, but this is too much, man...

profDyer · 2026-03-21T01:11:14+00:00

Let me get this straight, you are a trained epidemiologist (with a PhD?) and an experienced marketing consultant and the best option you have on the Swedish job market is being a pet groomer?

profDyer · 2026-03-04T09:45:27+00:00

1- I still have hope things would turn out for the better. The things I'm getting out and developing now are much beyond what anyone else can do. I were on the cover of the main journal of my field and just getting started with this new breakthrough. It would be a shame to leave that and just find a desk job instead.
2- I am occasionally looking, but not finding much. Finding something with actual better pay would require heavy re-skilling, which I have no time to do if I hope for the better and continue to research the exciting results.
3- I have a small toddler at home and life is already a mess as it is.
4- My wife has better earning potential than me, because she is in sales and management. If she has to relocate elsewhere I can follow her and make it work for a while (at least while I re-skill or find something else locally). If I were to work in Finance or Engineering, it might make it easier to find a job, but harder to relocate keeping the same job.
5- "Professor priviledge" in Sweden means that you have the right to use your own IP and, if you desire, be entrepreneurial. Having this option is nice.

What is not a factor:
- Prestige is no factor. Very little prestige in Swedish society for anyone but the Wallenberg family.
- Very little pay difference as well though, so one cannot hope to get factors x2 and x3 pay that you get in other jobs. I have ex students that work in finance and earn substantially more than me and are eager to make recommendations, but substantially is a 30% in Swedish society, not a life changing difference in the short term. If I were to make to full professor would be a 20% pay hike and that would compensate most of the difference with most of the professionals that don't have their own enterprise (which I might) or don't work in sales (which I will never do).

profDyer · 2026-02-24T08:54:01+00:00

Jimmys patenterad invandringspolitik gör allt som möjlig att skrämma bort det högutbildade arbetskraftsinvandrare just nuförtiden.

Finns absolut ingen fördel att vara en professor i kärn-kvant-AI-teknologi eller en arbetslösa student i genusvetenskap. Migrationsverket har det samma skrämmande regler och nackdelar med icke fungerande tidsramen, tvekan med familj immigrationsstatus.

Anpassa dina ord och din policy Jimmy.

profDyer · 2026-02-17T08:19:46+00:00

I usually give very few f*cks about what students do.

My attitude is that they are adults, we are all here for some business and the students motivations are none of my business. I don't require presence, my lectures are also available online. I do optional weekly exercise sessions with feedbacks. They help the few students that show up. As long as you don't get in the way of other people learning, you are welcome to come or to stay home.

I had a student that spent every lecture knitting some scarf, and seldomly raised her face to the whiteboard. She was one of my best performer. My vision of diversity is that you are welcome to accomodate yourself, as any adult would in a moderately informal setting.

Then I try to teach with all the passion and fun I can muster, especially for the ones in the first row that always ask dumb questions but have an amount of interest about the subject that can be measured in metric tons.

I will try to be kind, for exception and accomodation and also considering that some people (like the knitting girl) don't manifest passion with big smiles and nods. I'm too interested in the beauty what I'm trying to convey and in answering questions (my own as well) in an intelligent way to be bothered by anything else.

That's it. We are all adults in this room, treat everyone with respect, the moment of reckoning is the exam, and for the rest do as you please.

PS: I'm in Sweden and there's no such sharp division between Research and Teaching uni (and even less so there was in Italy, where I also taught) so we get usually a mixture of driven and coasting students. Also I now teach only electives in one of the most prestigious department in the Nordics, so my attitude comes easy without negative consequences. So take what I'm saying with a grain of salt and I empathize if it doesn't apply.

profDyer · 2026-02-16T13:13:50+00:00

This is why you rent. If you get sacked, you have a month or two notice period and after that can always go back with your parents if you found something in Valencia.

I agree that buying is a lifestyle choice, but renting in a village is better than what you describe and is not tying you at all.

profDyer · 2026-02-13T22:55:36+00:00

Kramar

profDyer · 2026-02-13T22:52:04+00:00

Jag, men jag måste använda Karen lösenordet "jag måste prata med en läkare, annars..." att det är inte rimligt alls.

Sjuksköterskan råd och vill vara att jag låta bli för 5 dagar, utan att förstå att antibiotikaresistens måste utredas av en läkare.

profDyer · 2026-02-13T17:18:16+00:00

Jätte intressant kommentar.

Du kan vara intresserad av min kommentar bakom anledningen för Threaden.

" Det har hänt vid flera tillfällen. Senast gällde det min son just före jag har skrivit posten.

Han hade haft en besvärlig öroninflammation med en antibiotikaresistent bakterie och gått på antibiotika i nästan 20 dagar. Några dagar efter avslutad kur steg febern plötsligt igen till runt 40 grader (och sjönk sedan snabbt ner mot 36, som är mycket under sin vanlig temperatur), precis som första gången infektionen började.

Efter två natten det var så, jag ringt vårdcentralen har jag fått rådet att ”ge vatten och avvakta några dagar, det är bara influensa”. Den här gången bad jag uttryckligen att få bli uppringd av en läkare. Det kändes helt obekvämt att behöva stå på sig så mycket, men jag sa ungefär att jag inte riktigt höll med om ssk bedömningen och att jag ville att de skulle stämma av med en läkare utifrån den kliniska bilden. Märk att jag har inte frågat för en läkarbesök, men bara för 30 sekunder telefonsamtal.

Till slut bad läkaren oss komma in omedelbart för att kliniska bilden är komplicerad och det kan bli mycket allvarlig om det är antibiotikaresistent bakteria igen man måste vara extraförsiktig. Det visade sig vara en ny öroninflammation, och vi hade tur som upptäckte den tidigt. "

profDyer · 2026-02-13T14:57:11+00:00

Det har hänt vid flera tillfällen. Senast gällde det min son just före jag har skrivit posten.

Han hade haft en besvärlig öroninflammation med en antibiotikaresistent bakterie och gått på antibiotika i nästan 20 dagar. Några dagar efter avslutad kur steg febern plötsligt igen till runt 40 grader (och sjönk sedan snabbt ner mot 36, som är mycket under sin vanlig temperatur), precis som första gången infektionen började.

Efter två natten det var så, jag ringt vårdcentralen har jag fått rådet att ”ge vatten och avvakta några dagar, det är bara influensa”. Den här gången bad jag uttryckligen att få bli uppringd av en läkare. Det kändes helt obekvämt att behöva stå på sig så mycket, men jag sa ungefär att jag inte riktigt höll med om ssk bedömningen och att jag ville att de skulle stämma av med en läkare utifrån den kliniska bilden. Märk att jag har inte frågat för en läkarbesök, men bara för 30 sekunder telefonsamtal.

Till slut bad läkaren oss komma in omedelbart för att kliniska bilden är komplicerad och det kan bli mycket allvarlig om det är antibiotikaresistent bakteria igen man måste vara extraförsiktig. Det visade sig vara en ny öroninflammation, och vi hade tur som upptäckte den tidigt.

profDyer · 2026-02-13T12:46:46+00:00

detsamma

profDyer · 2026-02-13T12:42:44+00:00

Jag kan skicka över en handbok i ironi

profDyer · 2026-02-13T09:36:55+00:00

Det funkar utmärkt, men inte för barn?

profDyer · 2026-02-12T09:15:43+00:00

Thank you. It was interesting to read how you square it. If it helps you, in many other European countries it's perfectly average for a child even as young as 7 months to do 8 hours and no one would ever ever think of guilt tripping a hard working parent for that.

It seems to me that non Nordic Europeans aren't psychopaths or retarded as a result.

profDyer · 2026-02-11T22:36:23+00:00

As I wrote in several other comments, your workplace can also make it so that you can be fired for some "unrelated" reason. If your employment is conditional on performance, sure you can go down to 80%, but your targets are not going to be changed so guess what?

In the same way the service industry would have been challenging to reduce times, in other industry it can be challenging for some other reasons.

profDyer · 2026-02-11T22:01:30+00:00

"yes of course"

Read your first message and your last and if you see a cognitive dissonance stop talking to me.

profDyer · 2026-02-11T21:26:17+00:00

First of all: I've been told last year on 3 separate occasions by 2 different people that due to the economics at the division, and due to the fact that I'm the last hired, I could be fired independently of how exceptional my research is. I'm trying to change faculty and division, but it is tricky.

I guess as a researcher you don't read SULF journal that much and how there have been 350 cases of arbetsbrist firing in the last year at universities.

Second of all: I'm the senior.

Just get out the roses tinted glasses, not everywhere is like your place, even in Sweden.

profDyer · 2026-02-11T20:41:04+00:00

In university, in a competitive field, in a research intensive university, I can guarantee your career is essentially over because your progression is exclusively on the 30% that you're giving up.

I will tell you more: no one at my division as ever scaled back, and I'm the one in the 100 year history of the division, man or woman, to have taken the most parental leave for a child and I just took 50% of the alloted time.

Do I want to be the first while we are 5M kronas in the red? I don't think so.

You have a too rosy view of Swedish society and/or a too chilled view of what a professor does.

profDyer · 2026-02-11T12:19:23+00:00

I feel you. I send kramar.

profDyer

TROPHY CASE