i stand 100% behind my point that you need to maintain some kind of healthy relationship with your otherwise you will likely have serious issues.
No, that wasn't what your point was. That was
my point.
Your point was the statement "Keep your supervisor happy or go find another job".
My point was you don't have to keep your supervisor happy, you can go it pretty much alone without having to find another job.
However, If I didn't keep him remotely happy I would be sent packing, as he demonstrated on more than 1 occasion by firing people.
Your supervisor has the ultimate power in deciding if you are ready to submit a thesis and if he is not cooperating or supporting you then you will never get a PhD.
You make it sound like they have absolute power. They do not. If you disagree with them because they are unreasonable then you can elevate the issue to the head of department or even beyond, to a university level tribuneral. Yes, it's a
staggering pain in the arse for everyone involved but it is an option. If you can demonstrate a complete unreasonableness from your supervisor then you don't have to fall in line with their every whim.
For example, if you authored say 2 or 3 papers with other people, got them all published in reputable journals, perhaps even had a few citations already, then you demonstrably have produced viable work to go into a viva. You can say "Here is an external source I have no control over and they have assessed my work to be publishable and it's already getting citations". If your supervisor then said "Sorry, I refuse to let you submit that work in a thesis" then you not only don't have to accept that but you damn well should go over their head. A supervisor who acts like that shouldn't be allowed to be a supervisor.
Unfortunately there's plenty of academics who shouldn't be academics. It's the stereotypical image of academics that they are absent minded, lacking in organisation and often have serious personality issues. This stereotype is not without basis and sometimes they have to be stood up to. Simply rolling over and taking it because they have a dictator fantasy isn't necessary.
our professor has to sign off that you are ready to submit, For sure you can quit and approach another professor to finish the last hurdle but that is more time and stress, and lends to political arguments over publications names on the thesis.
You seem to be changing your tune. You go from "They have absolute authority! Please them or quit!" to "Oh you can stand up to them but it's a pain". Yes, it's a bloody pain
but it can be done. If the supervisor is demonstrably unreasonable then not only can you can up to them, you should. Part of the reason I was willing to go through what I did with my supervisor is I wanted to make sure every one of the younger students knew about it so they wouldn't pick her as a supervisor. If we all just rolled over and accepted that **** it would just letting such nonsense continue.
know someone who quit their phd halfway through writing a paper and joined another lab in another university - the paper was never allowed to be published because no agreement was made on authors and institutions.
Where did I say otherwise? Hell, I even gave precisely that example! Did you read what I said? Yes, if you upset someone you're coauthoring a paper with then you may have to bin the paper as they can refuse to allow publication and you cannot basically use their work without their say. If you have to put all your eggs in one basket then you will back yourself into a corner (and then you open a can of works and can talk in clichés till the cows come home!) but not everyone does that. Many people don't even publish a paper with their supervisor. I work with a number of maths and physics PhDs and about half of us didn't publish anything with our PhD supervisors.
In Switzerland and the US your supervisor has to be present and even has the right to fail you.
My father has been an academic for more than 3 decades and been in more PhD vivas than he cares to remember. His comment to me before mine was "If you've gotten to the viva stage then you shouldn't fail". It's the supervisor's job to say long before that "You haven't done enough work". If the supervisor lets it get to a viva and then
they fail you then they haven't done
their job. Now if the supervisor says "I refuse to let you submit" then you are in the situation I just covered, if you can demonstrate multiple published articles from your work then you have the choice to go over their head. If in the viva the supervisor then tries to fail you then if you're in the UK the supervisor shouldn't be saying
anything so they cannot try to torpedo you. If they try to fail you out of malice then you're into the realms of university tribunals. They are a massive headache for everyone involved but they do occur.
Cases where external experts approved of the thesis and defense but the poor person's very own supervisor failed them are not unheard of. It happened in my university, not that I knew the person or the prof.
Then the supervisor failed in their duty as a supervisor. If they suspected the student had a real chance of failing then it shouldn't have gotten to a viva, unless they were say 8 years into a 4 year PhD and things came to a head. If you've got a 4 year stipend, a supervisor calls a viva 3.5 years in and fails you then that's their doing and something is desperately wrong. If someone is doing awful in their PhD it's the supervisor's job to say a year or two in "This isn't for you". That's what MPhils are for, they are a way of the university getting rid of you without the "Thanks for wasting 2 years of your life, sod off" feeling of getting nothing.
The supervisor reads (or should read) the thesis before hand. They have months to give comments. If they feel going into the viva "Oh Bob is rubbish at X, that'll be cause for a fail" then they should have told Bob before hand. Months before. That's what their job is.
This was one of the difficulties in arranging my defense - getting 2-3 external experts, internal expert, president and my professor to be present in the same location on the same day is very tough. In a 4 month window and a set of 8-10 external experts and 4-6 internal experts to choose from (and pretty much any professor to be the president) there was only 1 day where some solution could be met and it took me nearly 6 weeks to organize. A good friend had so much difficulty he actually had to start his post-doc and then a year later come back and do his defense!
It's the supervisor's job to arrange that in most cases. Again, that's what the university is for. And not all vivas involve that number of people. Mine was me, the external and the internal. Many maths and physics ones are like that.
Despite hating my professor he proved useful in my viva. Not in helping me respond to the experts in anyway but sorting out some political issues surrounding the project.. Committee presidents have no knowledge of the project or work so cannot provide support but merely ensure a fair defense.
Political issues? Those shouldn't have anything to do with the defence of a good thesis. If you have the work, the publications and the citations and are competent there shouldn't be a way to fail. Deliberate malice or 'politics' are not reasonable grounds for failing.
As to 9-5 working times, this is fairly common. Where I did my university about half the lab had this and the other were completely ad-hoc. When I was leaving there was talk about having 9-6 hours (or some subset like 10-4) enforced to equalize labs and to ensure that interdepartmental meetings could be simpler, ensure simpler access for the students and improve experiences for visitors.
We would often have TV crews turning up at the last minute to report about recent papers etc, if the discovery channel turns up and half the lab is empty and people are missing then its not a good image. Due tot he nature of our work we were often a showcase lab so when foreign dignitaries, investors, heads of state, CEOs walk in they want to see people working, not a ghost town.
Firstly I doubt you had CEOs and heads of state that often and without warning. Such people don't make snap publicity visits, they are well orchestrated. Secondly, having a general agreed time for meetings between large teams is fine and more likely for people working in large lab collaborations. But you have been making blanket statements based on your experience. This whole "Please them or quit" thing is nonsense as a blanket statement. You're generalising from individual cases which is patently flawed in its logic and demonstrably false given the experiences of people like myself. Now you're altering your tune slightly, perhaps realising your blanket statements are not quite as universal as your initial post tried to make out. A touch less hyperbola perhaps?
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and it was clear that i could answer every question.
