From: Michael Toomim Subject: A letter for you Date: April 7, 2014 at 11:58:23 PM PDT To: James Landay Hi James. I originally wrote this letter for stanford over the summer. However, I was emotionally overwhelmed by writing it, and never sent it in. I always intended to cc you on it. It's been eating me up because I haven't sent it. Over the last weekend, I realized that I really just need to send this to you. Here you go. ------ 8-6-2013 To the hiring committee, As you have requested, I am writing about my experiences as a PhD student of Prof. James Landay at the University of Washington. CONTEXT I have known James Landay since I was an undergraduate at U.C. Berkeley in 1999. I took two of his HCI courses, but did research in a different group (Prof. Susan Graham's). At UW, I have been his only student to remain solely advised by him -- all others added a co-advisor. James thinks highly of me: he called me his student with the most potential. I thought he was the best advisor in the country for me, and recommended him for years. Altogether, I have been his PhD student for 8 years, and known him for 14 years. However, I do not recommend him to students anymore. Something is wrong. He pays very little attention to research. This makes it difficult to do research with him. His two remaining students at UW (myself, and Lydia) have recently left his advisorship. I decided to leave the PhD last July, and self-publish my dissertation on the web instead of finishing it with James. Doing research with him became too frustrating, and I think I can have more impact by going outside. This frees me up to write an honest letter to you, since I no longer rely on his approval. I wrote most of this letter over the summer, but my emotions were so strong that I decided to give myself space, and write with a clearer mind and more objectivity. STRENGTHS James is very smart, very perceptive, and an excellent judge. He is a great judge of people. He can quickly assess a product (a user interface, a talk, etc.) and identify flaws from a user's perspective. In Daniel Kahneman's terms, he has excellent System 1 (fast thought) reasoning ability. James is also very adept at politics. He can sense where a group is leaning on an issue, feel what needs to be addressed, and recognize a political solution. He has the natural ability of a great salesman or politician. He is known as a strong advocate for his students, and these skills help him identify what they might need emotionally and socially. Like a coach on the sidelines, he believed in me, and his emotional support led me to success more than a few times. He guided me emotionally through one epic CHI deadline, where I wrote an entire full paper (accepted) in one day. He saw what I was capable of and encouraged me to live up to it. He enthusiastically encouraged my non-traditional conference talk for that paper (in the form of a political speech), that helped me form my personal identity. His support helped me see who I am, and learn the confidence to express it. However, unlike a coach, James executes little planning, analysis, oversight, or practice. He roots for his students in the big game, but he puts little attention to the process of research. SUMMARY OF MY OPINION I pursued the PhD to do research. I see research as a diligent, systematic investigation into a subject (Random House Dictionary definition). A researcher will identify new concepts, facts, theories, or applications. James pays very little attention to research. This makes it frustrating to do research as his student. He builds research communities, but rarely attends to research itself. I base this claim on evidence of my experience, which I can summarize: James rarely thinks about research outside of research meetings. He rarely allocates deep (uninterrupted) thought to research. He frequently cancels or reschedules research meetings. During meetings, his attention is easily distracted by emails, text messages, and instant messages. His listening tends to be superficial rather than deep, and he rarely asks questions about research. He gives feedback on polishing presentations, but not on the concepts, facts, theories, or applications that constitute the core of research. This makes it difficult when you depend upon him to make progress. I will go into details on the evidence later in this letter. James says he cares about research; but his actions disagree. One has no right to claim they care about something that they do not attend to. In some sense, James is a great cheerleader -- at the games, rooting for his students, creating strategic emotional support -- but a coach would plan and develop fundamentals every day of the year. James wants to win, but pays little attention to the work on the ground. THE SHIFT AFTER BERKELEY I have had the unique experience of knowing James as a student both at Berkeley and the University of Washington. At Berkeley, James advised a very successful research group, and you could see his personal contribution -- a clear, well-articulated theme of informal pen-based interactions that drew from his PhD thesis and generated a number of projects (e.g. Demin, Suede, Satin, Outpost, K-Sketch, and Papier-Mache). This work was the core of GUIR, the group he built at Berkeley. At Washington, however, James invested less attention in his research group. He spent most of his first years at the Intel lab he was leading, and his students rarely saw him. He proposed a research theme across UW and Intel called "Digital Simplicity," but his students' research mostly remained uninvolved, because the theme did not make sense to us, and James did not engage us in it. (Only Jon Froehlich's research, in my opinion, has a core element of James' vision, by displaying feedback of activity to improve one's environmental behavior.) I invite the committee to judge this themselves, by examining whether his UW research had as strong a central theme as his Berkeley research. As advisor and PI, the central theme was James' contribution. One hypothesis is that James was prioritizing work at Intel over UW. However, this does not fit two pieces of evidence. First, even when James returned to UW, he was not very engaged in research. And second, my colleagues at Intel told me privately that there were problems with James at Intel as well. One of them explained the problem, specifically, as "James does not care about research." (An opinion which corroborates my own.) When James went to MSR Asia, I went with him, and observed a similar pattern. Consider that James successfully built the dub group, but his research (e.g. "Digital Simplicity") is not very visible in dub, compared to being the core of GUIR. James is engaged in many aspects of academia -- building communities and brands, for instance -- but has paid less attention to the core research mission since obtaining tenure at Berkeley, and the evidence is visible in his work. EFFECT ON STUDENTS Without a focus from James on research, his students find it difficult to do the research necessary for their careers. Each of his UW students (except me) ameliorated this by adding a co-advisor: - Susumu Harada, began with Landay, added Jeff Bilmes - Kayur Patel, began with Landay, added James Fogarty - T. Scott Saponas, began with Landay, added Desney Tan - Jon Froehlich, began with Landay, added Shwetak Patel - Lydia Chilton, began with Landay, added Dan Weld I remember two common complaints that led to these additions: (1) `James does not give my work enough attention.' (2) `I need someone else to counteract James' strong opinions when they are wrong, because he doesn't listen to me or believe my opinion when I say it, so when I have another professor in the room, he can argue with that professor instead of arguing with me.' Each of these five students expressed that it was much easier to do research after they added their co-advisor. [To be complete, James also advised two students from Berkeley while at UW (Kate Everitt and Richard Davis), who did not add co-advisors. Kate actually officially transferred to UW. On the other hand, they both had struggles graduating with James.] At the time, I felt confident enough to be advised by James without a co-advisor. However, in retrospect, I see this as a mistake. Our relationship became worse as I developed my dissertation, and in the end I had nobody to turn to for help or mediation. I recommend that no student work with James without a co-advisor. No UW student has graduated from him without doing so, excepting Kate Everitt and Richard Davis who began with him at Berkeley. I have spent a great deal of time with these students. At Washington we organized our own student-led peer-advising meetings for the purpose of compensating for the void left by our absent advisor. I heard complaints about James from his other students that I am incorporating into my opinion, since I know (from private discussions with the students) that these other students are afraid to say negative things about James in a letter to Stanford. MY DAILY EXPERIENCE As a student, you would like your advisor to understand your research, and ideally contribute to it. To do so, he must pay attention to the research. However, my daily experience contains few examples of James investing attention in my research, or thinking about how to improve it. As a result, I think James only understands pieces of my research, and contributes to little of it. To make this claim more objective, I have gathered some evidence that you can verify with James' other students -- despite their fear of expressing a negative opinion. I have categorized these experiences into the two situations in which an advisor might contribute attention to research: (1) during meetings, or (2) between meetings. - DURING MEETINGS. When you meet with James, it often feels that you have only a small portion of his attention. He is easily distracted by his phone, emails, and instant messages. I have to ask him to turn off his monitor, phone, and speakers when we meet. Eventually I learned to hold meetings with him outside, where there were no distractions possible. We would go on jogs. This made it easier to motivate him on ideas, and is how we developed my initial thesis plan. However, as my thesis evolved, James did not keep up. Now, I do not feel that he understands what I am working on. James frequently cancels or shows up late to meetings. This limits his research attention. This tardy and absent behavior can be verified by any of his UW graduate students. - BETWEEN MEETINGS. I claim that James devotes little or no attention to my research between meetings. I believe this both because I sense it subjectively in my interactions with him, and because I have searched for objective data, and found very little evidence of James attending to research between meetings. Let me provide some examples. First, one might expect an active collaborator to periodically volunteer for tasks that he intends to do in between meetings. However, in my search I found few instances of him volunteering to a complete research task in between meetings. I also found little evidence that he thinks about research that I do not prod him for specifically. For example, I usually expect collaborators to have periodic conceptual developments, ideas, thoughts, analyses, questions, or insights to share; but I rarely received research contact from James outside of meetings. He does periodically forward a tweet or news article that he read and thought relevant, but does not analyze the relevance with more than a few words. I have searched my email archives and meeting notes to verify this. I do not recall him proposing an idea for my research of more than a sentence. This leads me to believe that he only thinks about my research when face-to-face with me. Given that he says that my research is important, and that my experiences fit what I have heard from his other students, I believe that he rarely thinks about research in general outside of face-to-face meetings in which he is forced to. Research discussion with James is rare outside of a scheduled meeting. For instance, I have no recent memory of him sticking his head into the lab to ask how research is going. We have few email discussions about research. You can verify all these behaviors with his other students. In my historical search for James' attention to research, I found one situation in which he consistently gave support -- in rallying his students before paper deadlines. I appreciate this, but unfortunately, his attention in this process is severely limited. - WRITING PAPERS. With research papers, James attends to little beyond the writing's surface. I reviewed his feedback on my papers, and those I have seen for other students, and verified that his writing contributions are almost entirely limited to: • Surface polish (grammar, syntax, layout, graphics, length) • Immediately before an impending deadline James will edit a paper to polish its presentation, but he puts little attention to the content. I have received many edits from him that improve syntax, grammar, phrasing, citations, and layout, but very little feedback that addresses concepts and ideas, even though I prod him for that. For example, I have not had my ideas questioned, or reconceptualized in a paper. I have not seen him help formulate concepts in a research paper. In general, his feedback reflects quick reactions, but not deep thought. His other UW students have similar experiences, and can verify this. Unfortunately, there appears to be another casualty of this deadline-restricted editing behavior -- James does not seem to read all his students' work. - READING PAPERS. It appears that the only time James reads his student's publications are before paper deadlines (when he is editing for syntax and polish). These are the only times I have seen him read his student's publications. I do not think he has read my camera-ready revisions, for instance, even when I specifically asked him to because I made substantial revisions with important new thoughts. I think this because he expressed to me that he was unlikely to read one of my camera-ready papers that I requested him to read. James' inattention is much worse for papers a student writes with another strong co-author -- a situation in which James is not depended upon for editing. Another UW student of his complained that James did not read one of these papers at all. I reviewed my four conference articles, of which James is a co-author on three, and judging from my conversations with James about them, I do not believe that James has read any in its published entirety. I chose these examples because I could find objective evidence for them, but this statement would be much richer if I could put my subjective experience with James over the last eight years into words for you. Overall, I find that James rarely gives research his full attention -- during, or between meetings. I have included specifics that you can verify with his other UW students. Without giving research his attention, James contributes to little of my research, and has only a limited understanding of what I am doing. MY PHD STORY When an advisor does not give their students attention, and fails to take responsibility for tasks, it causes problems for their students, and is likely to result in a bad relationship between the student and advisor. This is the story of my perspective in that relationship. I entered UW with high expectations, having watched Landay's group at Berkeley with admiration. However, time and again my expectations were let down. I expected James to lead his group, but he was hardly present while running the Intel lab. Instead, a few of his students held weekly meetings to advise one another. I expected him to provide research guidance, but often found myself floundering alone without oversight or advice. I expected him to help formulate concepts and structure when writing a paper, but found I needed to do that myself. I expected him to help fund me, but when my NSF fellowship ran out, there was nothing in his budget, and I had to spend a summer doing research on my own savings from my stipend, during which time I wrote two grant proposals that funded me for the rest of school. I trusted James, so I reasoned that he was just focused on "high-level" guidance, ensuring that I was making adequate progress towards graduating and obtaining a good faculty job, but then I realized that he was not paying attention at the high level either. His advice in setting my thesis proposal date hurt me (he gave me 13 days to write and present, to fit into his last-minute travel schedule, and then tasked me to deal with the harsh criticism that resulted from the committee, without his help), and he was voicing no plans or strategies around my career. I realized that I needed to do everything myself. James was not taking responsibility. I accepted this. James might not be attending to my research, but I could still do it. I had my own grant. However, as I grew closer to graduation, James exerted more control over my research, while paying it less attention. I found his attempts at control to be misguided: they were difficult to apply to my actual work, and held me back rather than helping me forward. As an analogy, consider that it is very difficult to meet the approval of a paper reviewer who does not take the time to understand your work. I needed James' approval to graduate. But unlike my peers, I had no co-advisor available to mediate disagreements. This made progress difficult. By last March (2013), I had completed a first draft of my dissertation, but James had not read more than the first chapter. I was hopeful that when he did so, he would finally understand my research, because he had claimed for years that his lack of understanding was because he needed me to write a complete, detailed written document. I thought this draft would do the trick. However, in the process of asking him to read this, I instead found evidence that James was just making excuses. In particular, there was evidence that he had invented problems in my work in order to avoid taking responsibility for reading it. The evidence is as follows. On Friday, I asked him to read Chapter 2, which explained the core theory for my thesis, and he said that he would by Monday. However, by the following Friday, I realized that he still had not read it. I could tell because he expressed opinions on my thesis that indicated a lack of understanding the content of Chapter 2. I then asked him if he had read Chapter 2, to verify my suspicion. James said that he had not. Since this was holding me back from making progress to graduation, I told James that I needed him to read that chapter in order to understand the thesis, and that this made my work difficult. He then got angry on the phone, raising his voice and yelling at me that the problem was my fault, because I had not written a good enough version of Chapter 1, and did not deserve to request him to read Chapter 2 until I wrote a high quality version of Chapter 1. However, this contradicts what he said on instant messenger the prior weekend -- when he told me that Chapter 1 was pretty damn good and explicitly agreed to read Chapter 2: "so, I actually like chapter 1 a lot (modulo a bunch of typos, some rough spots, some word choice that doesn't make sense to me). ... BUT, the one part I still really disagree with is the thesis statement. I think it is a total copout. It pretends that you have done nothing technical or empirical and it is simply not true. I would like you to change it still. ... Otherwise, it is pretty damn good to me." "ok, goodnight. GOOD JOB! KEEP AT IT!" "I can read chapter 2 on Monday for sure. Maybe even Sunday night if you are going to edit it and revise." ...and again: "should be able to read 2 by monday at latest then..." - James Landay (over IM the prior weekend) I can handle a person yelling at me, but James' claims contradicted himself. After years of encouraging him to understand my work, I finally had a concrete, complete, written document for him to read. Yet, he then invented problems in my work (after commending it) as an excuse to not read it, and shift the blame for his lack of effort from himself onto myself. I found this deeply troubling. It is difficult to confront a faculty member, since they have absolute authority in the academy. James was not making sense. Instead of continuing to assert myself, I then tried to appease him, and do as he asked. However, his leadership made little sense, and after three months, I realized that I would make much faster progress on the research if I left graduate school and completed the dissertation on my own. In those three months, James' leadership was to require that we revise the thesis statement (just 1-3 sentences of the document) before doing anything else. So I had spent three months revising the thesis statement, and made no other progress. I left the PhD in July, even though I had a draft of the dissertation written. MY PERSPECTIVE ON JAMES This is very unfortunate, because James provides his students with so much heart and spirit. Overall, James seemed to pay more attention to research when he needed it for tenure. Now, it seems to me that James' heart is not interested in doing research. Now that he has tenure, he does not need to. James is known to be deadline-driven. He has seemed restless since he left Berkeley, at UW extending his Intel stay for an extra two years, then extending his China sabbatical for an extra year, surveying a move to Boston, and now leaving for New York and potentially Stanford. My personal opinion is that, after a long academic career, he has trained himself to do the minimum work necessary to obtain good marks on academic review -- a good grade, a paper acceptance, or a tenure committee's recommendation. Upon completing tenure, he became restless, looking for a new challenge. With nobody left to convince, James must now follow his own internal voice. But that voice is either not interested in research, or James has not developed an ability to follow it. He only has two non-temporary students at the moment. If he does not use them to attend to research now, why would he at Stanford? I would be cautious about placing James in a role where he is expected to do research, and would hesitate before having students work with him. MY BIAS In this letter, I went into detail on the negatives because some of his other students are afraid to put negatives into writing for your committee. In fact, two of his other students have read this letter, and verified privately that it accurately describes their experiences as well, but told me that they did not include negative points in their letters out of fear that their words would get back to James. I have not given his positives the same depth of treatment, even though they deserve it. In writing this letter, I assume you have learned the positives from other sources. Please let me know if not, I would be happy to tell you all I know. I also did not go into detail on my experiences with his teaching and other duties. In sum, I have written roughly 3 paragraphs of positive statements, and roughly 37 of negatives, but James' influence on his students is certainly more than 8% positive -- James is a positive person overall. In expressing through this bias, I ask for your forgiveness and interpretation. Certainly, most of the problems I had with James can also be traced back to faults of my own. Other students will likely have different experiences. However, I have seen patterns across his students, and have included evidence of those I recall in this letter. Furthermore, I omitted cases where our personal faults are particularly difficult to disentangle. If the committee finds this letter to disagree with other opinions, I encourage it to check the evidence I have presented.