Earlier this week my advisor was in an online meetings with the other RAs, I was doing other duties at the time, so I arrived late. He brought up a delay I guess I caused on a previous project (I don’t recall anything that was particularly long, I think he may have been referring to me pointing out an issue with the math he would have preferred to ignore, but that could just be me being catty) and called my code ‘messy’ and said to not use my code, but instead use his vibe-coded script that gave better results (It was incorrect, surprise). Today he yelled at me for not getting some work done and I blew up at him, and recused myself from the project (today was the deadline to submit the paper, so that was kind of a dick move).
Now that I am less angry and thinking more clearly, I can’t help but think that this is a massive break of professional decorum, and breaks my trust in him entirely. I don’t feel that I can really trust him to write proper reviews of my work or be relied upon as a reference.
Am I correct in feeling this way, or am I overreacting?
Yes, 1000%. So many red flags in this post. Your advisor is going to be your primary advocate after you finish, and you need to be able to trust him to help market you and your skills on the job market. That’s like 75% of the job. The other 25% is helping you develop the skills you need to be an independent researcher, both by guiding you and modeling the skills. It sounds like you can’t trust him to do any of that. Find someone who has your back. My advisor was one of the kindest people I’ve ever met, and an amazing mentor. It made the whole grad school experience so much better. Your name will be closely associated with this guy’s for years at least. If that makes you uncomfortable, that’s another great reason to switch.