It depends on the specific professor. There are stressful and relaxed ones. It trickles down from the professors to their assistants to their PhD students. Here's my ad-hoc list of bad signs. Avoid those.
Professors
* don't have time for feedback
* have no interest in their PhD students' work
* are known to steal results (and put their names on it)
* are ideologically/religiously driven and judge you and everybody else accordingly
* don't open their network to their PhD students
* jump from one hot/trendy topic to the next and burn their PhD students on it
* blame others/circumstances for anything bad
Faculty
* members pride themselves for devoting their lives to the cause
* members do long work days, have little sleep
* has little budget it spends on its PhD students
* feels toxic (Sayre's Law: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.")
PhD students
* do overtime
* rarely/never publish
* publish in irrelevant magazines
* publish with their names on the nth position (after doing all the work)
* don't or rarely attend conferences
* don't or rarely work on what they signed up for
* take long to finish (or don't finish at all)
* blame others/circumstances for their bad situation
Talk to PhD students, ask on the net, listen to speeches and lectures the professors gave.
A lot of advice given at HN about whether to join a startup applies to academia as well. Unnecessary work, little pay, vague promises, inconsistent management, insider circles. I wonder what academia's equivalent of stock options is. Aiming for tenureship perhaps?
Professors
* don't have time for feedback
* have no interest in their PhD students' work
* are known to steal results (and put their names on it)
* are ideologically/religiously driven and judge you and everybody else accordingly
* don't open their network to their PhD students
* jump from one hot/trendy topic to the next and burn their PhD students on it
* blame others/circumstances for anything bad
Faculty
* members pride themselves for devoting their lives to the cause
* members do long work days, have little sleep
* has little budget it spends on its PhD students
* feels toxic (Sayre's Law: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.")
PhD students
* do overtime
* rarely/never publish
* publish in irrelevant magazines
* publish with their names on the nth position (after doing all the work)
* don't or rarely attend conferences
* don't or rarely work on what they signed up for
* take long to finish (or don't finish at all)
* blame others/circumstances for their bad situation
Talk to PhD students, ask on the net, listen to speeches and lectures the professors gave.
A lot of advice given at HN about whether to join a startup applies to academia as well. Unnecessary work, little pay, vague promises, inconsistent management, insider circles. I wonder what academia's equivalent of stock options is. Aiming for tenureship perhaps?