[dnautics]

16 hours is shorter than the past. I mean your exploitation rhetoric is very facile. For what it's worth, I think there are more postdocs exploiting the system than get exploited by the system. My personal feeling is that the median postdoc is worth negative science.

[projektir]

There's nothing facile about it, I'm not so filled with learned helplessness that I can't objectively look at 16 hours and say that it's too much without having to turn to an imaginary god and thank him that it's not 24 hours while standing on one leg.

When you are making use of a person's time and you are not properly compensating them, and the improper compensation is a result of a huge imbalance of power, incentives, and options, that is exploitation.

All bad systems are and will be exploited, that actually only confirms my argument. When bad systems exist, it's a signal that they're not actually doing useful work, and are miscalibrated and inefficient. These inefficiencies are then very easy to exploit by other parties, because the thing that we claim to value (good science) is false, and the thing we actually appear to value (doormatiness) is true, so it is not surprising at all that people who can appear doormatty are benefiting from this system and science has nothing to do with it. That's exactly what you set up! If you measured for the science, you'd detect the rest and kick them out in a short while.