This page not updated since August 1993. One opinion holds that assistant professors should do their own work and only direct the work of students later in their careers. The other side of this issue is that good students can multiply your effectiveness and increase your productivity. I believe that the latter is particularly true in connection with experimental research, where student help with implementation and software development can make the difference between success and frustration. Where theoretical research is concerned, the choice is more personal.
Some people are quite content to work in isolation.
Others prefer to have students work on related aspects of the same problem on which they are working. In such cases, the experience was a largely unproductive expenditure of time. In my personal work with students, I set goals for them and insist that they document their progress with draft manuscripts. My work with them on these drafts often leads to conference papers. My students always publish before they finish, sometimes jointly with me and sometimes on their own, depending on the degree of my own involvement.