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Does archaeology have a passion problem? - Ep 283
730 Plays10 months ago
According to an article Doug read about passion in regards to architecture, Doug asks Chris and Andrew some specific questions. They answer the questions without hearing the other’s answers and then the three of them discuss the results. Do you need passion to be an archaeologist?
Transcripts
- For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/crmarchpodcast/283
Links
- We couldn’t link to the article.
Blogs and Resources:
- Bill White: Succinct Research
- Doug Rocks-MacQueen: Doug’s Archaeology
- Chris Webster: DIGTECH LLC
- Andrew Kinkella Kinkella Teaches Archaeology (Youtube) Blog: Kinkella Teaches Archaeology
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. This is the Serum Archaeology Podcast. It's the show where we pull back the veil of cultural resources management archaeology and discuss the issues that everyone is concerned about. Welcome to the podcast.
Episode Overview: Passion in Archaeology
00:00:23
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the CRM archaeology podcast episode 283 for February 20th, 2024. I'm your host, Chris Webster. On today's show, we talk about passion in archaeology and whether or not that's actually required to do the job. So get ready to get passionate about this topic because the CRM archaeology podcast starts right now.
00:00:48
Speaker
Welcome to the show, everyone. Joining me today is Andrew in Southern California. Hey, guys. How's it going? And Doug in Scotland. Yeah, representing the non-California people. That's right. That's right. All right. Well, the topic was Doug's today, and we've got a little bit different way to approach that. So, Doug, why don't you go ahead and tell us what we're doing?
00:01:07
Speaker
Yeah, so the title of this episode is, does archaeology have a passion problem? There is a little bit of a study I've read. It's actually related to architecture, but
00:01:19
Speaker
Sounds just like archaeology to me results. And we're going to do something a little bit different with this episode. And we're basically going to run a many sort of, what are their surveys they did in the study. But that I'm going to ask both Princeton and Andrew individually. So the other one will be muted or at least not clocking some questions. And then we're going to bring it back together and see how you guys's answers compare and how that compared to the study on passion.
Importance of Passion in the Field
00:01:49
Speaker
So with that, I believe Andrew has volunteered to mute and leave the room some as it were metaphorically, and we'll get started with Chris. Yes, I'm leaving and I will be meeting my headphones. I won't hear any of this. All right. All right. We'll let you know when you can come back, Andrew. I'm assuming Andrew's gone. Gone to a better place. Chris, I'll throw the question to you.
00:02:19
Speaker
Do you think you need a path in being an archaeologist?
00:02:24
Speaker
I think probably yes, only because of the nature of this job and the substandard pay sometimes and the hell you've got to go through just to find jobs and keep jobs and things like that. Why would you go through all that if you didn't have some sort of passion for archeology, some sort of passion for history or even the research or some aspect of the science? You know what I mean? There's other jobs where you can just go nine to five and not worry about it at all and just get your paycheck every day.
00:02:50
Speaker
and get paid way more than what you're doing in archaeology. But the stuff you've got to go through to do all that, you have to have some kind of passion. Do you think you can spot passion or passionate people in archaeology? I think so. There's definitely the people that you meet that seem like they're phoning it in. They don't want to do anything extra. Every time you ask for a volunteer to do something or to learn something new, they never step up.
00:03:18
Speaker
Not that you have to, and I wouldn't even say that's a requirement, but you can tell that the people that are, I guess, more passionate than others buy the stuff that they do. They're constantly reading books about archaeology and learning new things outside of work and watching YouTube videos.
00:03:34
Speaker
stuff like that, and just learning new skills. I would say, inherently, those people have more passion.
Hiring for Passion vs. Skills
00:03:39
Speaker
Just like any business, though, people that continue to study on their topic, whatever it happens to be outside of work, are going to be inherently more passionate, I think. Chris, you hire people, or you have hired people in archaeology and stuff. Do you look for passion when you're hiring people? And what does that look like? How do they demonstrate that to you?
00:03:59
Speaker
Yeah, that's really hard to demonstrate. I've been fortunate enough to not necessarily hire too many people just like off the street that I didn't know because this is a small industry and I'm a small company. So the people I've hired, I hired them probably because I knew they had passion for the industry. And I knew that they were going to strive to do a good job despite any sort of adversity that might happen. Because the minute you have somebody that's
00:04:23
Speaker
not really into the work and they're just out there for a paycheck. You can see their eyes start to glaze over when they're doing survey and they start looking around. They're talking a lot more. Talking is not bad as long as you're still looking at the ground, but they're just not paying attention. Those aren't the kind of people that I can have working for me and really working for anybody just because the whole point of working here is looking at the ground.
00:04:46
Speaker
So I don't know if I can really answer that question because I've never really had to hire outside of my sphere of people that I know. And I only hire people that I know will do a good job. Fair enough. And with that, let's call Andrew in. If we, if we had like some little bottles here, we can think to them together and be like, Andrew, come out and play. Nice. I haven't seen it yet. He probably just comes back.
00:05:13
Speaker
Probably just last night. Let's get a drink. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's not when you're back, Andrew. It's nine o'clock in the morning in California. That's day drinking time on Sunday. All right. I am back.
00:05:26
Speaker
Andrew, if we had some empty bottles, we could clink them together and be like, Andrew, come out and play. Exactly. Oh my God. Yeah. For anyone who's not getting that reference, 80s cult classic warriors. Yeah. Watch it. But been done by the Simpsons and everyone else is like parody.
00:05:51
Speaker
Cool. All right. Well, this is not going to say anything. Probably pretty close to the similar questions to Andrew. Okay. All right. Here we go. Bye. You don't need to leave, Chris. You can just sit. You just don't have to say anything. Oh, well, okay. Well, he's muted himself. He's gone. He's gone. Yeah, fair enough. All right. Andrew, we'll start with the first question, which is, do you think you need to have passion and do archeology?
00:06:20
Speaker
Yes. Next question. No, it's I mean, absolutely. It's it's one of those just disciplines that you can tell when people don't. And it's awful, you know, like if you don't have passion for being like a high power businessman, but you're making millions of dollars, it's like, OK, I get, you know, I get this. There's the trade off. But in archaeology, it's like, what are you doing here?
00:06:47
Speaker
So I think passion is huge and obvious in the moment if you don't have it.
00:07:00
Speaker
Talk about that a little bit more to expand. Like, how can you tell if someone has passion in archaeology and how do they demonstrate that? It's funny to tell if somebody has passion or not. It's just it's just obvious. It's in everything from their body language to the way they talk to what they talk about. Like, are they smiling? Are they upbeat? And I know that sounds cliche, but it's true because I can think directly right now to people I've seen or met who don't have passion. Right.
00:07:26
Speaker
grumpy, they don't really care. They start doing shoddy work because they're just sort of working to the hour or to the money. So there's like a laziness aspect to it for people who are not passionate.
00:07:43
Speaker
Again, when you when you see it, people are talking about it. They're talking about archaeology when they're off the job, but not in an annoying way. Just they're like interested about things. They'll do other aspects of archaeology in their free time. You know, they'll learn about like, man, I've always wanted to go to Egypt or whatever it is. So you will you'll see that, you know, you'll see them incorporated in their daily lives in in a prideful way. It's cool. It's great to be around somebody who has passion about something like archaeology or anything.
00:08:12
Speaker
Cool. And so this last question, I might modify it because the question I asked Chris was like, do you look for passion when you're hiring people and how do you, how do you see that? I know Andrew, you did a lot of PRM, but I don't know if you did, you said you didn't quite got that, like, you know, project manager level, PI level, but maybe, uh, if you haven't had that, maybe you can turn around. I mean, I know you do a lot more teaching, but, uh, I'm assuming you bring on people for projects.
00:08:41
Speaker
or work field schools or like your group chiefs for field schools and stuff like that. Yeah. Sure. I've actually done a lot of hiring, hiring for fellow professors and stuff too. Like I've done that, you know, a bunch. And I did get far enough in the CRM world where I saw this as well. So it's like, you know, do you look for passion in hiring? Absolutely. It's funny. It's kind of like the thing that you're trying to suss out. You know, are they into it?
00:09:07
Speaker
One of my colleagues when we were working on a hiring committee and this wasn't for archaeology, this is sort of something completely different. He kind of leaned over to me as we were watching the various candidates and he was like, you know, I'm just trying to figure out, it's like, will they bro out on this? And I know what he meant, you know, like, will you just hang out and talk about archaeology for fun? You know, are you invested? Like, when we're trying to hire, you're looking and you're like,
00:09:36
Speaker
Hey, are they going to try and be a dean, though, as soon as we hire them to be a college professor? You're absolutely looking for the passion. Off the top of my head, I'm almost going to say it's the number one thing you're hiring for. How do they demonstrate that in a TV resume or even in an interview?
00:10:00
Speaker
So CV resume is very hard because you have to suss it out during the interview. Because anyone can have a well-written CV, well-written resume. But during the interview, they're talking about their own projects. They're going to be natural leaders in it if they're passionate. They're passionate, so they want to do stuff.
00:10:18
Speaker
So they're going to have things that they did themselves. They're going to have projects that they did. They're going to have articles they wrote on their own cool thing. They're going to have like pet projects. And because they're so passionate, they're going to want to give their passion to other people. So like they're like, they're running their own situation where they're teaching people and they're proud of teaching them because they're just super happy that they're bringing people into this field that they think is just super awesome.
00:10:44
Speaker
Cool. And that's pretty much it for the questions. So I think this is actually a nice time to do a break. Yeah. And we'll just take it and then I'll bring you back and we'll discuss what Chris said about it. And I'm actually really glad that this experiment definitely worked. You guys said different things, which is excellent. Great. It was super fun. I think it was a great idea. Yeah. And we'll bring you guys back to the next segment and discuss this.
00:11:12
Speaker
Welcome back to the CRM archaeology podcast and the experiment is over.
Challenges in Defining Passion
00:11:16
Speaker
I was muted for the last part of segment one and Andrew was muted for the first part. So Doug, what were the results? Which one of us is the bigger tool? Well, okay. So we weren't measuring that. That is almost as hard to measure as like, that's what we're doing here. But I think, I think I'm a passionate tool. Is that what I get? Nice. Yeah.
00:11:41
Speaker
Well, the thing is, you might be a tool because you're passionate. It's true. It's hard to separate those two. Yeah. So I'll tell you guys, you guys did basically what all the architects did.
00:11:59
Speaker
Which is, all right, so I'm sorry, the questions were slightly a bit, I could see we're a bit leading, but yeah, passion is a psychological state and it cannot be objectively measured. You can't measure it, but both of you guys, both said you need to have passion and you both believe that it could be measurable and that you could suss it out on people.
00:12:24
Speaker
This is the fun part of where the study did a much wider range. You guys, there was a few things you named in common, but there was actually, you guys had like your ideas of like what, how you demonstrate passion, how someone could were actually fairly different. So like Chris was talking about like, oh yeah, you know, if you guys probably listened to each other, you probably would have sort of thought, oh yeah, definitely to each other's what you were saying.
00:12:51
Speaker
Yeah, it's the part where the first thing that came to your mind weren't quite the same thing. So this was like, yeah, you know, they volunteer for extra work or they volunteer for stuff or you both described what you both described. They were the same was you could see it in their eyes.
00:13:06
Speaker
Or like, you had both described like how you could just hell, like you could feel it, but you just, you'd talk about different things. So Chris would like, yeah, you know, are they, are they volunteering for active work? Are they coming in early? Are they leaving late like that? And Andrew talked about like, at, you know, at Server University, slightly different thing, are these people going to throw it out?
00:13:27
Speaker
Are they going to do a lot of extra time? And Christian talked about this as well as doing bits of extra research and outside archaeology stuff, stuff at that part of your work. So you guys both touched on that. But basically, you were giving advice to a new archaeologist
00:13:50
Speaker
or a new student, they may have picked up thumbs up and they may have been super confused on like, wait, do I need to do this? Or like, how do I do that? Um, and that's the basics of the whole study is like passion is definitely not measurable. It's not objective yet. Well, okay. So our sample is quite small. It's just two of you guys, but you know, a hundred percent of you said you need to have passion to do archeology.
00:14:17
Speaker
And you both thought you could measure it, and you both named different things that could be measured, how you would measure it, how you could prove it. Yeah, it seems legit. I think so. So this is why I think archaeology has a passion problem. So I've seen this, and this was sort of by a couple of months ago, I think the social media was on Twitter where
00:14:38
Speaker
someone was basically talking about how they're having a hard time breaking into archaeology. And the advice that came back was like, oh, you just have to be passionate. And of course, the person who snapped back was like, I am passionate. But it really triggered something that started investigating that. It's like,
00:14:55
Speaker
they were talking about completely two different things about what they thought passion was and what it would be to get archaeology. I think there's a huge problem we have in that, like, I think, you know, again, I gave you guys leading questions, but if you were to give advice and, you know, we were giving advice, I'm pretty sure we've done it on the podcast before, as we'd say, oh, you need to have passion for archaeology, which is a horrible thing to say is basically it's completely subjective.
00:15:24
Speaker
and doesn't actually help anyone and probably I think lead to quite a few problems in that what you guys are described as passion would probably be considered exploitive working practices.
00:15:45
Speaker
I'm throwing the grenade at myself, hold this pin and drop it in and let you guys have it at it. But like both of you guys basically described that people probably wanted to quote the terms you guys said was like if someone just comes in and works the time. Or it's just there for a paycheck I think is something you guys probably both said in a certain way.
00:16:08
Speaker
Which is like, there's a lot of studies out there about how like action and, you know, you could, if it's a job, you should just work to the time you're paid. Otherwise you'd be exploited. So I'm going to toss that grenade in there and let you guys have at it. I'm sorry. You'll probably feel attacked at the moment. Now that I've just said that you guys are part of the problem of destroying the profession. I'm of the older generation, so I never feel attacked. Okay. So don't worry about it.
00:16:37
Speaker
I'm good.
Working for Passion or Paycheck?
00:16:38
Speaker
I would just say a few things. And obviously, Chris, you can go for first. I feel like Doug, I feel like this is the movie Moneyball, where like Chris and I are like, hey, you just feel it. It's all about feel. And you're like, no, losers. Here's the Excel spreadsheet. Just hire some adult who doesn't give a damn about archaeology and you'll make more money. But I do think I do think you can see passion. I think.
00:17:02
Speaker
in that instance where you said online where somebody was like, oh, you just have to be passionate. They're in that instance of they're using passion in order to like kind of screw someone over. You know, like you can you can talk about stuff that isn't really working out and it's not a fair answer to be like, oh, you're just not passionate enough.
00:17:22
Speaker
No, no, no, no, no. I can be finally passionate my own time, but I happen to be not making enough money right now. That's what I would say. I don't know, Chris, what do you think? Well, first off, I completely disagree that you shouldn't have passion for your job and you should just be there for a paycheck. That is the base reason why you're for sure there. I mean, we take it as a
00:17:44
Speaker
as a fact of life that you need to do some kind of job to live and pay your bills and be a person in this world. Unless you're independently wealthy and came into money, then you pretty much have to work. If you're going to have to work, why not have it be something that you actually enjoy doing? I've moved around, done a few different things, not just archaeology. I wouldn't be doing something if I didn't enjoy it. Do you enjoy every facet of it? Probably not. There's obviously things that you're just not going to like, but overall,
00:18:13
Speaker
Do you like doing it? It's the common question. Would you still be doing something in this space? Not necessarily field-tecking and digging shovel tests, but would you still be doing something in this space if you won the lottery? And I think a lot of archaeologists would probably say yes. Again, they wouldn't be probably digging shovel tests.
00:18:32
Speaker
but might take that opportunity to go fund their own research or do something along those lines. And that is where it comes in. That's where, if you don't say yes to that question, then it's like, you're sure you can still do this job, but it's like, why? Why don't you find something where the answer to that question is yes? You know what I mean?
00:18:52
Speaker
Absolutely. And also in terms of that overtime working or whatever, that that can be many, many things. That doesn't mean in your free time you're doing something for the company or for the university. It means maybe you have a passion project, you know, like, oh, on Tuesday afternoons, you go do this thing that's also archaeology, but has nothing to do with your daytime archaeology job. So it doesn't have to be where you're being exploited labor or something like that.
00:19:17
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I wasn't even necessarily talking about people. Doug, I think you may have inferred this from what I said, but I never said come in early and stay late, especially for no pay. I was really referring to people who get off work at night, you know, they take their shower, they sit down and instead of watching, you know, Seinfeld all night and just, you know, mindlessly doing nothing, which does have its purpose. Trust me, I do the same thing.
00:19:41
Speaker
But also, occasionally you're watching the Discovery Channel or something on YouTube that's educational or reading a book about archaeology. And I'm not saying that's a requirement, but those kinds of people do have just a little bit more of a stake in the field emotionally, I think, than they do just work-wise. You know what I mean? Because they're probably going to do that stuff even if
00:20:01
Speaker
They can't find work in CRM and there's just nothing for them. They end up working at Starbucks. They're probably still reading and doing this. People who listen to this podcast, right? Not necessarily this podcast. This is more of a niche topic, but like, like the archeology show is more of a broad audience. Those people aren't archeologists, but they all say they want to be archeologists. Every single person I talk to that's listening to the show, they're like, Oh, I always want to be an archeologist when I grew up. And I just never did that. That's passion. You know what I mean? Or, or ignorance. One of the two, but either way it's passion.
00:20:30
Speaker
I agree. So at this point, Doug, you should feel attacked because Chris and I are ganging up on EO. Yeah, that's right. We're coming. I knew how this was going to go. It was a bit of a trap. Those questions were a bit leading and it sort of.
00:20:47
Speaker
set you guys up to say that passion was something that was important. You know, I could see somebody on the other side like like just for the sake of argument being like, no, actually, the number one thing is like solid skill set, you know, or something like that. I could see like if you're really well skilled. Well, if you're not as passionate, you could still, you know, you could you could make that argument. But it's not totally leading.
00:21:09
Speaker
Well, no, no, I believe that, so I would argue the complete other side of that. Did you? Yeah. So I absolutely... Okay, so we're going to slightly go back to off-the-record stuff. I'm not going to mention the details because it's going to cause a hoorah. But before this episode started, we were talking about a certain set of archaeologists who we dislike. And I would be willing to say
00:21:38
Speaker
Every single one of those archaeologists have incredible amounts of action, however you define that. And that causes them to go on social media and rage, and rage, and rage against the machine, and against the flowers, and against the planet, and against Carl, and against Sarah, and against whoever. And so, like, we're talking about, like, you know,
00:22:06
Speaker
if we weren't involved in archaeology, we might actually completely cut off all archaeologists because a lot of people say that archaeologists are not pleasant people to be around. That's not when it's gone. That's when it's not thrown their way. Exactly. Those people are so insane.
Passion vs. Dissatisfaction
00:22:25
Speaker
because of passion. So you could tell. None of those people, none of the people on Facebook or Twitter or anything like that, they just sign up for the job. They're there from nine to five. They look at it as a job that gets the money. Maybe they slightly enjoy it. Maybe they don't. But the purpose is not to, as we somewhat define, doing a bunch of extra work.
00:22:47
Speaker
And that means that those people are like, man, it is 501. I am not going to be on Twitter. I mean, you guys did some very positive examples of like, oh, you know, reading a book in their spare time and enjoying it. And that was a very positive, but also like a lot of passionate people do, let's say less positive activities with their passion.
00:23:08
Speaker
Well, how do you want to define that? You know, I think, I think probably passion and bitterness are close bedfellows. You know, people are passionate about something and then not rewarded tend to kind of lash out. So it's, it's later down the line. I think so. Hey, with that, let's take a break and we'll wrap this up on the other side back in a minute.
00:23:27
Speaker
Welcome back to the CRM archeology podcast episode 283. And we're passionately talking about the fields of archeology and whether or not passion is required. No passion for me. That's right. That's right. Well, I got to say, Doug, you were mentioning at the end of the last segment about, you know, these, these keyboard warriors and people are complaining on social media must have passion in order to otherwise, why would they do that? Right? Why don't they just quit and go find something else to do? And I got to say,
00:23:57
Speaker
I think people really just get angry when the job they have, regardless of what it is, isn't going the way they expected it to. Or they don't feel like they're being fairly treated. They are going to rail on social media about that. And my just glaring example of that is, was it a documentary or something I saw not too long ago about Dollar General employees? Oh, you know what? It was John Oliver. He had a whole segment on Dollar General last week tonight.
00:24:27
Speaker
And it's worth a watch. It's definitely worth a watch because there are people shooting videos on social media and YouTube and commenting and doing all these things about the horrible, horrible working conditions at Dollar General. And I guarantee you, they do not have a passion for working at Dollar General for minimum wage, right? They just don't have a passion for that. It's just like wherever they happen to be in their hometown or their personal circumstances, they can't work anywhere else, right? For whatever reason, they have to work there. So because they have to work there, they're going to complain about the horrific
00:24:56
Speaker
conditions at most of those stores and the way that they're treated and just all that stuff. But I guarantee you, they do not have passion for that job. I mean, I guarantee it. I mean, maybe managers, they just want to manage and do something that's a little bit different role than say a clerk or something like that. But even there, I mean, it's just, I can't see it. I can't see somebody having, maybe that's just me.
00:25:18
Speaker
but I can't see that. So I think there's a little bit of this, I'm just a human and I don't want to be treated unfairly and I have a place to complain about that, AKA social media, and therefore I'm going to do that. I don't think that necessarily means that those are passionate people for the job. It might just mean they're complainers too, right? That's also a thing too. People just complain. There are some people that would just complain about everything, but then there's other people that will, I feel like the ones that you can see that might have passion are the ones that are
00:25:44
Speaker
trying to find solutions rather than trying to point out more of the problems. There's a few people trying to get this whole archaeology union thing going again, and there's other people saying, oh, maybe we should do this, maybe we should do that, instead of saying, I hate this and I hate that. That does nothing. The ones that are trying to solve the problems, I think, are the ones with the passion, but I don't know. Just one example I was thinking of.
00:26:06
Speaker
Well, so that sort of segues nicely into what we had sort of discussed for what we're going to do for this third segment. And that's just something to sort of think about is that, so Chris, right there, you said, you know,
00:26:19
Speaker
you think passion would be people who are trying to do something different instead of the complainers. You'd actually see people as complainers as not, not having passion. Sorry, I don't mean to put words into your mouth. That pretty much sums up what you just said, right? Not as much. Anyway, not as much visible passion, you know, maybe they do. They're just not articulating it very well. I think this isn't one of the problems though is like, so both of you guys both said you need to have passion for the job.
00:26:45
Speaker
I asked you, and Chris, you had sort of said, well, you'd mainly hired people that you knew, so you haven't actually had much of a chance to like sort of hire people based on passion. Whereas Andrew basically said,
00:27:00
Speaker
man, you're hiring people, but nothing but passion. Sorry, Andrew, am I putting words into your mouth? I would say it's a little bit of an exaggeration, but it is based on what I said off the cuff. Now, no matter what, passion is a major, major element. But of course, if you're like,
00:27:18
Speaker
I have no skills whatsoever but your passion like you're not gonna make it but in in this field i think so many of the jobs are so highly prized throughout archaeology right so basically so many people have this skill set what's gonna push over the top is your passion and the way that you kind of relate that passion other people.
00:27:40
Speaker
I think that that's a key problem of how we look at that is how you relate it. Because I could think of a lot of, so you guys have both named different ways of how to sort of demonstrate passion, how to relate it. And I think the problem with that is it also sort of filters out a lot of people who probably are very passionate. Again, it is completely subjective. It's a self feeling. So I could say I'm 100% passionate and there's no way of actually using a yardstick.
00:28:09
Speaker
to measure that. But by trying to do a yardstick, which we do all the time, I think we're filtering out a lot of people. I'm thinking, there's a lot of people who are maybe like neurodiverse who maybe, if they're giving a talk and doing an interview, maybe they're just not very animated. You guys talked about seeing in their eyes and I've seen it guys. I have video recorded and edited
00:28:31
Speaker
6,000, 8,000 presentations at conferences. I could tell you that there are some people who are super engaging, not for the topic, but like how excited they are about the topic. But that's a certain type of person, that's someone who can get animated, someone who changes their voice and goes, yes!
00:28:55
Speaker
And you're like, I could care less about pottery, but then you, you are getting me excited about pottery. And that thing though is like, then we hire those people, but that's not necessarily like the skills. And that doesn't necessarily mean that they're more passionate than anyone else. And I'm just thinking like, you know, again, like people who maybe like spend a little extra time after work or, you know, volunteer for stuff, but you know,
00:29:23
Speaker
man, if you have kids, like you have to be out at five, you have to pick them up from the school run. Like, like, like they are like, yeah, you're, the school is not going to look after them. They're, they're at the curb.
00:29:34
Speaker
And you're picking them up or someone else is picking them up at that time. And so if you kind of demonstrate passion by being able to be there, spend half an hour after work doing whatever needs to be done, that's also always doable. And I think that's a big problem that archaeology has is, one, it's incredibly subjective what we think passion is.
00:29:59
Speaker
And we're hiring off of it. I think we're actually probably not, I don't know if there's any way you could ever be able to measure passion. So we're probably actually turning down a lot of passionate people. And maybe we're hiring people who, Chris, you said are not passionate, but maybe they give off the impression because they're people or lawyers and you're like, yeah, that person's definitely passionate. I see them on Twitter all the time talking about archeology. But, you know, I would say there's two ways here. There's,
00:30:26
Speaker
there's passion in your own head for your own discipline or whatever, and then there's passion in terms of socially, like interacting. And no matter what, archaeology is an extremely interactive, teamwork-driven situation. Man, I can't even barely think of a discipline that is more kind of team-associated. The archaeology crew, it's a crew. You're never working in a vacuum.
00:30:52
Speaker
So yes, you could have passion in your head that you show to no one. That's fine. That's fine. But also there does have to be a social aspect of it of it, too. And I'm not saying you have to be some awesome like life of the party who tells jokes all the time, but you just have to be in the mix. Yeah, but then we're basically.
00:31:12
Speaker
filtering for people who are in the mix and maybe like. No, wait, let me just break in for a second and say just just the yes, yes, we're filtering for people who can deal socially because it is a social job.
Social Skills in Archaeology
00:31:24
Speaker
You know, like if it's if there are aspects of it that are not like if you're if you're working alone in a lab, OK, that is not social.
00:31:32
Speaker
You know, but almost every other aspect is interacting with people in the field, in bureaucracy and government and, you know, landowners. Like, dude, you have to have people skills.
00:31:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. Yeah. But those same people skills, the double edged sword or the, uh, those people skills, the same ones that are showing up as keyboard warriors. Like, like, you know, think about it like, as if you're doing most simple genetics where like, yeah, you started basically reading for a certain traits and all of a sudden you end up with a hug.
00:32:06
Speaker
and horrible side effects or even like a German shepherd where you've read for one thing and now they have horrible hips or things like that. If we are filtering for people that we think are passionate and that passionate means certain aspects, we might also be filtering for let's say less than desirable characteristics
00:32:31
Speaker
that we find in certain archaeologists. Oh, man. I think that's a stretch. I think that and also saying that people who are passionate, you know, online or whatever, you're conflating like the fact that online, you're not personable at all if you're online. That's like the opposite of being personal, personable. You're by yourself on a computer using it as a shield to attack others. So you're not personable at all.
00:32:58
Speaker
Right. Well, it's almost worse than that difference in person and online. Doug, you're not even in the, some of the groups on, on Facebook as much as some of the others are. And I'm an admin on, on one of the biggest ones, of course, Arcio field texts. And I'll tell you what, anytime somebody is really passionate about something or really concerned that they could have retribution, they post anonymously. Right. And there's been huge conversations about posting anonymously in a private group. And it's just like, you know,
00:33:27
Speaker
The fact that this field requires somebody to post anonymously, otherwise they will get retribution on something is a little messed up to begin with, right? We don't have some sort of a safety net for people to really, you know, tell somebody and have action done on whatever their situation is.
00:33:44
Speaker
and have no fear of retribution. That's a really difficult thing to find.
Anonymous Complaints and Community Fit
00:33:48
Speaker
There might be some organizations that allow that, but it's really difficult in CRM. And then not only that, but there are situations not confirmed, but suspected where somebody's been so paranoid about retribution that they created a fake account, joined the group, and then started railing against people. So it's just
00:34:06
Speaker
That's passion. It's also passion for not wanting to be messed with and, and having a decent job and not having to worry about all this crap, but it's also, you know, it's also passion. So I don't know for good or for worse. That's what I'm saying is actually like, actually it isn't, it isn't passion. Essentially passion can be whatever you want it to be. Like it's not, there's not any objective. You can't measure passion. You can't actually really define passion.
00:34:36
Speaker
Like, like, you know, okay. So yes, you can, but we all know what it is. Oh yeah. Yeah. It comes back to the Supreme court. Yeah. Like I'll know it when I see it. Right. Right. Yeah. But if it's something that has a horrible thing to do, if it's something that's so important to archeology, like everyone's hiring off a passion, but it's something you'll know it when you see it. That is going to be demoralizing to a lot of people who are just cold.
00:35:06
Speaker
They need to have passion, but you know what? You know what I would say to do at the end of the day, though, like the hirings I've done that were passion is a huge part of it, which is like all of them. They all turned out great. So like whatever my like mojo mumbo jumbo is about passion, it's it's working. Oh, yeah, you don't know that.
00:35:29
Speaker
I have a hundred percent success. You had a choice. You would have to be able to do a random sample. So you'd have to say like, these are my choices. Clip a coin and then you'd have to say like, all right, here's the one that coin chose and here's the one I chose with a large enough sample. And then be able to say, actually, I, Andrew,
00:35:52
Speaker
in the people whisper of passion. But honestly, I've been in talks with other archaeologists who've told undergraduates, I can just look at you and tell if you'd be a good archaeologist or not. And they're like, I'm always right. I'm like, well,
00:36:08
Speaker
You haven't actually done a scientific test and you're just reinforcing. You don't know the person you didn't hire would have been, I don't know, won the Nobel in something, even though we're all in archaeology. In archaeology. Yeah, there's no Nobel in archaeology, but you never know. They could have been that. And you don't know because you didn't hire them. I know. I destroyed their life. I blame myself.
00:36:32
Speaker
So I see that a lot though, but like a lot of archaeologists are super confident in their hiring skills and like, Oh, well, I remember I went to a talk or I went to an interview. I got to, you know, there's different panel, got to meet the owner. And the owner was basically just like, Oh yeah, you know, we may choose you, we may not, but whatever choice we do, we're making the right choice. I was like, fuck you, dude. I don't know. What do they say?
00:37:03
Speaker
Well, it was a level of cockiness and a lot of people have that. They're like, yeah, we've made the right choice. Obviously it worked out because we made the choice. But actually you have no way of testing that and no one does any tests that would do that.
00:37:16
Speaker
Yeah, but I know I've done a ton of hiring and and it's not I don't think anyone on the hiring committees feels like they're just great hirers. It's done through hard work and time. Like it takes a lot of time to hire someone. You know, you do really read those CDs closely. You do really read the letters of recommendation closely because this is serious. You're going to be trapped with this person for years. So you want to, you know, make a good make it good. So I never feel confident. I just feel like
00:37:45
Speaker
man, I put the work in, I did the best I could. Yeah. But also you're selecting for someone that, again, it's selection bias on you're selecting for someone who you think you'll get along with for years, which is maybe not necessarily, which honestly, like, yeah, working with crap people, I get that.
00:38:06
Speaker
But that might not be the best selector of people is like, is this going to be my bro for the next 20 years? Maybe not always the best. It is a portion of it, though. Like, again, it's very complex and there's all kinds of variables on that, you know, but it is it is one and it's not self centered. It's it's like the.
00:38:27
Speaker
Does this person, it's much more you think of it, can they jibe in this setting, you know, when these people, it's not just me, it's the other professors or my other coworkers. It's the people who work in the lab. It's like this whole kind of mini community. Can they like work in this small village with us? You know, and that's, that's really what you're looking for. And in terms of if there's students or that kind of thing, can they also inspire and work with that? That's huge.
00:38:52
Speaker
Okay. We got to end the show, end this segment. Any final thoughts, Doug, on your little experiment here? Yeah. I mean, it basically panned out how the other research did. I still don't think I've convinced you guys that hiring for passion is a bad thing, but I don't know. Maybe some of the listeners will have a, maybe I've sparked some interest in this. There's always going to get a bunch of angry emails about like, you know,
00:39:20
Speaker
It was all for the CRM podcast and for that passion episode. And now I've lost my passion for the CRM podcast. You know, Doug, you did not turn my opinion, but I thought this was super fun and a great idea for an episode. Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, with that, while Doug stews on his passion for disagreeing with Andrew and I, we will
00:39:44
Speaker
the show and come back next time. If you've got thoughts on this, definitely let us know. I mean, I, no, no, it's understandable. You guys just aren't as passionate as I am about this topic. Right. I should go. Exactly. I should have gotten more passionate. You guys have agreed with me. It's your lack of passion. That's how I define passion guys.
00:40:08
Speaker
You have a passion if you agree with me, all right? That's right. That's right. I'll have to find some people who just don't phone it in who aren't exactly like the paycheck to the Those little dead-looking your guys's I You're not here for this passion guys I
00:40:32
Speaker
I'm gonna do this again. We're gonna do this game with Bill and Heather. I'm sure they'll have the right amount of passion. Exactly. Not like these dead beats. Yeah. Indeed. I hear it in your voice, Andrew. I know the tone. That's soulless. Yeah, soulless. With that, send us your comments, tell us about all your passion or lack thereof, and we will see you guys next time.
00:40:56
Speaker
That's it for another episode of the CRM Archaeology Podcast. Links to some of the items mentioned on the show are in the show notes for this podcast, which can be found at www.arcpodnet.com slash CRMARC Podcast. Please comment and share anywhere you see the show. If you'd like us to answer a question on a future episode, email us. Use the contact form on the website or just email chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com. Support the show and the network at arcpodnet.com slash members. Get some swag and extra content while you're there.
00:41:23
Speaker
Send us show suggestions and interview suggestions. We want this to be a resource for field technicians everywhere, and we want to know what you want to know about. Thanks to everyone for joining me this week, thanks also to the listeners for tuning in, and we'll see you in the field. Goodbye. Goodbye! What passion! Oh god, I'll see you guys next time. I didn't even say the outro yet.
00:41:48
Speaker
Before I'm getting there before you do it see I'm showing my initiative I'm passionate. I'm gonna be there before you need me to be there, okay? I'm waiting. You know I'm alright. I'm that person who's there early Chris. Well. Goodbye
00:42:08
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Cultural Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Rachel Rodin. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.