I often say to my students, "I am your advisor, not your boss." As an advisor, I dispense advice, explaining the consequences of specific actions (both positive and negative), but I rarely tell you what to do. I explain to you what the design space looks like, or, alternatively, what the loss landscape is. It's up to you to decide on your course of action. Ultimately, it's your research and your degree.
However, this doesn't mean that all my advice is equal in terms of "assertiveness" or "firmness" — the degree to which you should follow my guidance. At one end of the spectrum, some advice I offer is quite close to a directive, i.e., "please do it". At the other end of the spectrum, some advice I offer comprises merely suggestions, i.e., "feel free to ignore me". Given subtle nuances in communication, particularly for non-native English speakers [1], I've decided to explicitly elaborate on communicative intent here.
Think of this as a way to translate between "what I say" and "what I really mean". Of course, this guide is idiosyncratic with respect to the particular way I communicate, but in general, for many advisors, the "surface form" of an utterance often diverges from its underlying intent.
To begin, there are cases where what I say should be interpreted as directives, even though it sounds like advice. These generally fall into two categories: The first is externally imposed rules, which if ignored, leads to negative consequences. For example,
- "You should get that form signed"... otherwise you can't graduate.
- "You shouldn't go over the page limit specified in the call for papers"... otherwise your paper will be desk rejected.
Thus, even though these statements are phrased in the subjunctive ("should"), understand these directives as "please do it".
The other main category comprises commitments we (as a group) made. For example,
- A deliverable in the context of a proposal.
- A feature in a piece of software for a downstream user.
- A particular model variant for a collaborator.
Not honoring these commitments has negative consequences (e.g., unhappy collaborators). In these contexts, statements I make should be interpreted as requests, i.e., you should do it. And if you can't, let's discuss further and figure something out (for example, prioritize between competing responsibilities). Please don't just ignore me.
With the "please do it" stuff out of the way, everything else below really is advice, but to various degrees of assertiveness. Yes, in many cases, it is okay to ignore me.
I'll sketch out common things I say, in decreasing order of assertiveness:
"It's a bad idea to..." or "You shouldn't..." or "Don't..." When I phrase advice negatively, it should be understood as "don't do it unless you have a very good reason otherwise". There are (likely) negative consequences (in my experience) to a course of action. For example:
- "You shouldn't introduce X here in Section 3 because you don't define X until Section 4." Likely negative consequence: your reader is not going to understand your paper.
- "You shouldn't talk for more than Y minutes." Likely negative consequence: your audience is going to get annoyed.
Advice along these lines isn't a "100% rule", but if you're going to ignore me, you'd better have good reasons [2].
"It's a good idea to..." or "You should..." When I phrase advice positively, it usually means that I am telling you about best practices, norms, or preferred solutions. For example:
- "It's a good idea to have an explicit statement of contributions in your introduction." (Many reviewers except such a statement, perhaps elevating it to a norm.)
- "You should add some ablation conditions here." (Running ablations falls under "experimental best practices".)
Advice along these lines should be interpreted as less assertive than the "it's a bad idea" variants above. There are plenty of violations of best practices [3], but just remember that best practices exist for a reason, and if you wish to violate them, be deliberate in terms of what you hope to accomplish.
"You might want to..." or "You should think about..." or "Have you considered..." Take these as suggestions. For example:
- "You might want to move that figure here."
- "You should think about adding this feature to your model." [4]
Often, these comments are made in the context of a discussion where I may not have "thought things through" (completely). In these cases, give my suggestions some thought, and if they don't make sense, feel free to ignore them. However, if I bring up the same issue again (at a later point in time), it would be nice for you to demonstrate that you've at least considered my feedback, e.g., "Yes, I thought about moving that figure here, but that doesn't make sense because..."
"... your call" or "... I don't feel strongly either way" or "I'm agnostic..." or 🤷. This happens often after a discussion wherein multiple options are considered, all of which represent reasonable choices or actions. For example:
- "You could phrase it like this... or like that... your call."
- "You could structure your results section this way... or that way... I don't feel strongly either way."
It really means... up to you...
I strive to communicate clearly and directly, but the bottom line is: If you don't understand the level of assertiveness in the advice I'm offering, ASK ME TO CLARIFY!
[1] I once said to a student (non-native English speaker) "do this at your peril" and the student didn't understand what I meant.
[2] Yes, there indeed cases (but relatively rare) where a student ignore my advice in the category, but ended up with a better outcome than would have occurred if my advice had been followed.
[3] In fact, violation of best practices is one approach to progress. Learning to rank using tree-based models constituted best practices before the "neural age". Of course, they've since been supplanted (or at the least, augmented) by neural networks.
[4] Note the subtle difference between "you should..." and "you should think about/consider..."