How to tell pushy "advisors" to back off? TL;DR

What can a PhD student on a research stay abroad do about postdocs that are supposed to be collaborators but behave like "helicopter advisors"?

Background

A friend of mine is doing her PhD (fourth year) in Europe (in a STEM field) and she asked her PhD advisor for the possibility of a research stay abroad. So the advisor told her to contact some professor-acquaintances of his and one of them (at a very famous US university) had a project she could work on but no funds to pay her. She therefore applied for funding and stipends in her home country and managed to scrape up enough money to go and stay for some months. Half of this time has passed by now.

The Situation

She is working on said project together with two postdocs who will be co-authors on a possible paper resulting from it. The professor who invited her will of course also be a co-author but he is not very closely involved. The postdocs, on the other hand, seem to believe they need to track her every step and micro-manage her. All while being very demanding since they are looking for faculty positions. They will (both, sometimes one after the other, sometimes together) come to her office on an almost daily basis to be shown any progress she made. Also, they will schedule frequent meetings (in addition to the weekly group meeting) for her to report on what she has been doing and to give her tasks to complete. From what she's telling me, for her these meetings feel like it's two big guys against her. She tried to involve the professor in the meetings but all that did was make it feel like three big guys against her. She has also started working in the library and that has taken some pressure out since now the postdocs won't just come by and demand seeing her progress.

The Problem

However, the feeling of constantly being pushed and having to prove herself is starting to take a toll and I'm seriously worried about her mental well-being. She's not sleeping well, has considered just dropping everything and going home (something she usually never does), and sometimes she seems close to breaking down.

Now on the one hand I don't think the postdocs are doing this maliciously (they haven't reacted negatively to her starting to work in the library), it just seems to me like they have little experience in supervising students (which is odd, considering that they are looking for faculty positions) and interpersonal relations aren't really their strength. I mean not even an undergraduate student should be supervised so closely in my opinion, let alone someone reaching the end of their PhD who is funded from abroad and is basically a visiting collaborator. And on the other hand, to some degree, it's probably also her personality that's making this difficult since she really values working independently and maybe it's a cultural/language thing that has prevented her from being able to make that clear. But all this does not change the fact that something has to happen. Unfortunately, I wasn't really able to give her any good advice on how to make them understand that they're pushing too much and need to give her more freedom.

The Question

So what can I tell her to do when she asks the next time? How can she improve this situation without burning bridges?
It's hard to tell exactly what's happening here.

It does not seem unreasonable for collaborators to sync up daily. Ideally all three of you would be syncing up with each other, rather than just this student syncing up with her supervisors -- but since she is only staying for a short time and working on a single project, it is sort of natural that there is an imbalance. I wonder if the student is interpreting standard collaboration/teamwork as &quot;pushing&quot; and &quot;having to prove herself&quot;.

But I can also see scenarios where the supervisors are really being overbearing and negatively affecting progress.


Either way, this is not the student's preferred work style, so I would consider trying to schedule some standing meetings. Maybe send a brief e-mail that says something like:

Hi guys,
I'd like to schedule some additional meetings where we could all sync up on the nuclear waste project. So far we've just been doing these discussions &quot;on the fly&quot;, but I think it might be better for all of us if we had a set time for the three of us to sync up. Maybe Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1 PM? Please let me know.
Worried

They may react with

No, things are fine, you're doing great, just keep doing what you're doing

In which case, you can say bluntly:

I'd really prefer to have a set time -- that way I can prepare a summary of my progress/questions in advance, and won't have so many interruptions during the rest of the week. Could we give it a try?

If they still push back after that,  you may have to accept that this is how the group operates.