There’s a saying that floats around a lot in business circles: A bad system will break a good person every time. It’s usually applied to management, corporate structures, or customer service. But if you swap “person” for “researcher” it hits just as hard in academia.
We like to think that research is about curiosity, discovery, and the pursuit of knowledge. That’s the romantic version. The reality? It’s also about navigating funding cycles, dealing with arbitrary metrics, fighting for stable jobs, and juggling an ever-growing pile of administrative work. And for too many talented researchers, that system - designed with the best intentions but riddled with inefficiencies - grinds them down.
Everyone expects research to come with some paperwork. That’s normal. But at too many institutions, bureaucracy isn’t just a necessary structure - it’s an opaque, convoluted mess.
Want to hire someone for a project? Good luck figuring out the process.
Need to access funding you were awarded months ago? Hope you don’t need it urgently.
Trying to understand why a request was denied? That might take multiple emails, meetings, and a scavenger hunt through conflicting policies.
This lack of transparency isn’t just frustrating - it’s costly. It slows down research, drains energy, and forces researchers to spend more time navigating processes than actually doing the work they were trained to do.
Worse, it’s demoralizing. People don’t burn out just because they’re busy. They burn out because they feel powerless in a system that doesn’t make sense.
If we want researchers to thrive, we don’t just need to reduce bureaucracy - we need to make it clearer, simpler, and more predictable.
That means investing in training, because too often, people are thrown into administrative processes with little guidance.
It means building better tools. Smarter, more user-friendly tools can eliminate unnecessary friction.
It means simplifying workflows. Some procedures exist not because they’re needed, but because no one has questioned them in years. Regularly revisiting and streamlining processes should be a priority.
And it means improving communication. A transparent system is one where people don’t have to guess what’s happening or chase down information. Clear guidelines, decision-making rationales, and proactive updates can make a huge difference.
A good researcher in a good system thrives. They have the space to focus on ideas, experiments, and discoveries - not just forms, approvals, and unanswered emails. We can’t eliminate bureaucracy entirely, but we can make it work better. We can make it transparent, efficient, and supportive instead of confusing, slow, and exhausting.
A bad system will break a good researcher every time. Not because they aren’t smart enough. Not because they don’t care enough. But because the system demands too much in the wrong ways.
— João
We like to think that research is about curiosity, discovery, and the pursuit of knowledge. That’s the romantic version. The reality? It’s also about navigating funding cycles, dealing with arbitrary metrics, fighting for stable jobs, and juggling an ever-growing pile of administrative work. And for too many talented researchers, that system - designed with the best intentions but riddled with inefficiencies - grinds them down.
Everyone expects research to come with some paperwork. That’s normal. But at too many institutions, bureaucracy isn’t just a necessary structure - it’s an opaque, convoluted mess.
Want to hire someone for a project? Good luck figuring out the process.
Need to access funding you were awarded months ago? Hope you don’t need it urgently.
Trying to understand why a request was denied? That might take multiple emails, meetings, and a scavenger hunt through conflicting policies.
This lack of transparency isn’t just frustrating - it’s costly. It slows down research, drains energy, and forces researchers to spend more time navigating processes than actually doing the work they were trained to do.
Worse, it’s demoralizing. People don’t burn out just because they’re busy. They burn out because they feel powerless in a system that doesn’t make sense.
If we want researchers to thrive, we don’t just need to reduce bureaucracy - we need to make it clearer, simpler, and more predictable.
That means investing in training, because too often, people are thrown into administrative processes with little guidance.
It means building better tools. Smarter, more user-friendly tools can eliminate unnecessary friction.
It means simplifying workflows. Some procedures exist not because they’re needed, but because no one has questioned them in years. Regularly revisiting and streamlining processes should be a priority.
And it means improving communication. A transparent system is one where people don’t have to guess what’s happening or chase down information. Clear guidelines, decision-making rationales, and proactive updates can make a huge difference.
A good researcher in a good system thrives. They have the space to focus on ideas, experiments, and discoveries - not just forms, approvals, and unanswered emails. We can’t eliminate bureaucracy entirely, but we can make it work better. We can make it transparent, efficient, and supportive instead of confusing, slow, and exhausting.
A bad system will break a good researcher every time. Not because they aren’t smart enough. Not because they don’t care enough. But because the system demands too much in the wrong ways.
— João