An Unsolicited Guide to Being a Researcher [pdf]

Professor Eugene Vinitsky just dropped a blunt slide deck on How To Research, featuring an “overview” slide that says… don’t do overview slides. Internet, meet irony. Still, the crowd loved the no‑fluff tips: the collaboration “golden rule” — don’t block your teammates — and the honesty that you can’t read every paper, so build tools and focus your niche. One fan hailed it as “generally good… non‑obvious advice” that applies far beyond machine learning, while another joked, “The best research advice is always unsolicited.” You can almost hear the slow clap. Then the drama swung hard: a vocal crew argued the real blocker isn’t Slack — it’s money. Funding cuts and uncertain career paths hijacked the thread, turning lab etiquette into a policy rant. Meanwhile, a nerdy side quest broke out over research notebooks: should notes be designed like reusable software, or does too much structure “homogenize” your thinking? And yes, people begged for a recording, because the deck’s meta‑gag — an overview that says don’t have overviews — left some feeling lost without context. Bottom line: Vinitsky’s PDF says communicate clearly, don’t stall your collaborators, and stay sane about the literature; the community says give us real talk, real funding, and please, hit record next time.