In academia it’s undeniably true. I had to learn to keep mum regarding my insights into how to publish more, keep running the lab when the budget is halved, make documents accessibility-compliant within minutes and without having to attend workshops, and so on. Nobody wants to know. Or they do but they want to be able to complain about life even more. So I shut up and make compassionate noises when people go on and on about problems that have a clear solution.
I often think that academia exists as a place where people compete in the art of complaining.
Clarissa's Blog 
I’m in STEM and everyone is complaining about budget cuts at federal funding agencies and the dwindling support for the research enterprise. For readers who don’t know, faculty have 9-month salaries but if you’ve got research grants, you can pay yourself some portion of your summer from that. I’ve long been of the mind that if I have enough grants to pay myself a substantive portion in the summer, I’d rather hire more students or pay my existing graduate students as RAs so they don’t have to be TAs.
I just found out that a guy who’s been whining about running out of money and who has dropped several of his graduate students into the TA pool over the past couple of years actually has enough money to routinely pay himself three months of summer. That amount of summer salary can actually pay for 3 semesters of graduate-student RA.
I’m speechless. And he’s not the only one. Husband says most people do this (pay themselves first, screw the grad students who do the lion’s share of research), that I am in the minority with making sure students are covered to the maximal possible extent. It’s just unfathomable to me.
Not only does the faculty prioritizes his own salary (on top of the generous 9-month salary), but he has no shame whining how he’s actually broke and can’t pay students. The audacity.
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I believe you, my friend. I’ve seen so much dysfunction over the summer salary. People completely losing face. The idea that summer jobs should go to NTT instructors first is completely alien to my colleagues. Some situations left me feeling deep vicarious embarrassment.
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