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The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

blue.cse.buffalo.edu

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Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#41

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

kevhito wrote: post #32
blazespin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I interpret as .. doing things that might piss off people on the committee." Sounds like obedience to me. There's a great HBO tv show, "The Wire". It's all about how an institution can consume personalities of those who belong to it. I'm pretty sure tenure is the same way. I see this happening to people who work in corporations for a long time. Their personalities change as they become the sort of person who can suc…

Hi, although I'm new here and all of you have been teaching here for 20 years on average, let me tell you why everything you have done with the curriculum is terrible and should be completely rewritten in my style. And of course, I'll have to do all of this myself, since you are all incompetent. And I better teach the first round myself too, because I can't trust you with that either. So yes, there is a difference be…

Just because someone has been doing something for twenty years doesn't mean that what they're doing can't be improved. It doesn't even mean they're necessarily competent.

The professional response to a newcomer isn't to have a snitty fit of tutting and hissing, but to consider the possibility that maybe the younger newcomer has something to offer.

If they're just being Dunning-Kruger-ish then fine - snipe away.

But it's not at all a given that the situation is that simple - especially when they've been employed as a prospect in the first place, which suggests that at least an entire hiring committee met them and considered they had promise.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#42

Post by joeclark77 »

CalChris wrote: post #9

my department voted against my tenure case earlier this week Since this was posted 2016-10-22, I'm gonna assume the department did this smack in the middle of the semester.

Academic job markets get started around this time of year, depending on the discipline and affected by the dates of their big conferences, for jobs to begin in fall of the following year. So by giving him the decision now, he has enough advance notice to prepare his CV and apply for jobs.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#43

Post by kevhito »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #29
kevhito wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this. But research isn't everything. And there are at least some hints and signs that this person doesn't know how to get along with colleagues. > I worked really hard to bring an exciting and rigorous operating systems class to UB. Why did this effort require working "really hard"? Was it because of obstructionist, jealous, or stupid colleagues? Or people who wanted a boring and unrigourous course inste…

> Why did this effort require working "really hard"? Was it because of obstructionist, jealous, or stupid colleagues? I was one of the students at UB while this took place. It took a lot of effort, partially because the rewriting involved a lot of student feedback and there was also a massive e-mail discussion (accidentally?) sent to the entire computer science undergraduate mailing list of one of the senior faculty…

I am very thankful to be in a department with almost zero nasty internal politics, and I've heard real horror stories from people I trust about how nasty things can get.

So thanks for providing more context. It's hard to tell from the post whether this person is the cause of or recipient of all this drama. From the way he tells it, it wasn't just the department, but pretty much everyone he interacted with across campus. It wouldn't surprise me if the entire university was poisoned by nasty politics, but it also wouldn't surprise me if a self-assessed superstar would see it that way even if it were not.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#44

Post by icantdrive55 »

blazespin wrote: post #21
code_sardaukar wrote: post #14

I read the whole article and it's very hard to judge the correctness of most of the article's claims. Most importantly, it's hard to judge the most important thing: the author's own research. However, I can say that there are different ways to interpret things. The author sees tenure as a way to establish obedience to the unwritten rules of the department. Based on my knowledge of academia, including friends who were…

"I interpret as .. doing things that might piss off people on the committee." Sounds like obedience to me. There's a great HBO tv show, "The Wire". It's all about how an institution can consume personalities of those who belong to it. I'm pretty sure tenure is the same way. I see this happening to people who work in corporations for a long time. Their personalities change as they become the sort of person who can suc…

"That being said, I suspect standout researchers get tenure and get to be themselves, just as talented people can succeed in corporations and still be themselves."

In Academia, they have no fear of being themselfs after tenure is granted.

I had a chemistry teacher who literally tried to ruin me.

I really thought I was to blame. I realized he had a some mental malady when he pick up the stack of formal complaints he received from the administration on behalf of students; while he was yelling at me in his office. He used to love to bring me into his office regularly. He used two hands on that stack of complaints. I can still picture those hairy little arms lifting that stack. Yea--really.

I wasen't the type to complain, but went to a guidance counselor. Before I mentioned the teacher, he said, "Dr. Besergian?". I was floored. I asked how did you know? He said, "I literally almost got into a fist fight with that guy, and never, never met anyone like him. There is something wrong with him. It's not you. Drop the class, and take it at a community college."

I dropped his class, and took chem at a community college. The following year, I was finishing my last Organic Chem semester. He saw me, and was shocked. I thought--how many students lives did this jerk ruin? He saw I was chewing gum. He slithered up to me, and told me to spit it out. He was holding a trash can. I spit the gum in his face. He just walked back slowly. All that bravado was gone. He knew I figured him out. He had no control.

I liked tenure, but after this joke--I started to question it.

(This jerk is probally still harassing, mainly young men, somewhere. Don't let him ruin your plans. Everyone knows he's horrid, little man, but has tenure.)

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#46

Post by sdenton4 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #35
code_sardaukar wrote: post #14

I read the whole article and it's very hard to judge the correctness of most of the article's claims. Most importantly, it's hard to judge the most important thing: the author's own research. However, I can say that there are different ways to interpret things. The author sees tenure as a way to establish obedience to the unwritten rules of the department. Based on my knowledge of academia, including friends who were…

>What the author interprets as proving obedience, I interpret as not wasting time on things the committee can't measure objectively, or doing things that might piss off people on the committee. I'd be astonished if any academic committee in any university anywhere in the world had any idea how to measure the value of research objectively. As for not pissing people off - I'd imagine it's impossibly hard to do truly or…

Yep. The academic job market is mind bogglingly brutal, meaning that academic departments have no reason to go out on any limbs. As a result hiring and tenure processes are extremely conservative and, as the author points out, normative.

I completely sympathize with the author; the promise of such shenanigans in the academic career path were part of my motivation for passing a job offer and instead take a software engineering job.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#47

Post by kevhito »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #41
kevhito wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, although I'm new here and all of you have been teaching here for 20 years on average, let me tell you why everything you have done with the curriculum is terrible and should be completely rewritten in my style. And of course, I'll have to do all of this myself, since you are all incompetent. And I better teach the first round myself too, because I can't trust you with that either. So yes, there is a difference be…

Just because someone has been doing something for twenty years doesn't mean that what they're doing can't be improved. It doesn't even mean they're necessarily competent. The professional response to a newcomer isn't to have a snitty fit of tutting and hissing, but to consider the possibility that maybe the younger newcomer has something to offer. If they're just being Dunning-Kruger-ish then fine - snipe away. But i…

No, you are right, I was perhaps too harsh. But it takes some modesty and humility to pause and consider why the system ended up the way it has, and why the elder's are resistant to change. The author shows no sign of modesty or humility, so it isn't at all clear to me that the elders were snitty or tutting and hissing. In fact, it sounds like there were other issues the author was deliberately ignoring. Finite resource allocation, campus-wide priorities, an MS program, etc.

Being able to convince others, win allies, balance priorities, and just get along with others are important skills, and the author seems to excel at none of these. At least, judging by this post. Elsewhere in this thread, a student suggested that there may really have been some nasty infighting happening, in which case this poor guy may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#48

Post by latch »

pmiller2 wrote: post #23
gregmac wrote: post #7

Why is Tenure still a thing? It's basically a lifetime employment contract. It seems the only argument for tenure is academic freedom.. a tenured professor can pursue an avenue of research without fear of reprisal for it being controversial or not yielding results (though really, even experiments that 'fail' actually serve to prove that it's not the way to go). It seems to be me like this is a problem that can be sol…

> employees in most (every?) jurisdiction are protected by laws that mean they can't be fired without just cause. The United States is not one of those jurisdictions. Employees can be fired for any reason other than certain protected reasons (race, etc.) One can literally be fired for supporting the wrong political candidate, for example.

I understand the spirit of your comment, and it's probably a fair summary for anyone unfamiliar with at-will employment, but

(a) a lot of this is state-specific, not US wide as you indicate

(b) many states have laws specifically to protect employees from being fired for their political affiliations and activities.

(c) some states have even broader protection

But, to your point, you can always fire someone for their political view and say it was for one of a billion other non-protected reason.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#49

Post by kevhito »

psyc wrote: post #33

Kind of hilarious how many comments in this thread already echo the mentality he's opposing. Get in line. Don't rock the boat. Don't complain about your lot. And you probably deserve what you got, because it's what you got. (Aka Just World Fallacy.)

I think it's mostly just me. It's not so much "get in line", but "before you complain about getting in line, maybe consider why there is a line in the first place".

Getting burned by pissing off one or two people in your department is unfortunate. Pissing of more than half the people in your department? Plus lots of people in other departments? And the administration too? And even the local newspaper?

Either he is the only good guy in a sea of jerks, or maybe he's not quite the good guy he thinks he is. I don't know the which it is, and the article doesn't tell us either.

I'm not sure why this story upset me so much. I think it is because when I started in my department, I saw things I thought were terrible -- courses that hadn't been revised in years, the wrong languages being taught, outdated exercises, poorly-written web pages, cumbersome processes, etc. And I said so, frequently. Thankfully, I had some great mentors to help teach me to slow down and listen to others, and work with others. We've now made lots of changes, updated the curriculum, and done it all together. And some things I thought were terrible I know realize are actually elegant solutions to problems outside of our control (e.g. finite money and time and expertise, and a college administration that needs to think about public perception, alumni, gifting, athletics, other departments, and lots of other things besides "what will make the CS department awesome").

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#50

Post by MaulingMonkey »

kitanata wrote: post #30
blazespin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm sure departments are just dying to hire someone who will bite them like this if they don't make him happy.

I don't understand the mentality where if anyone dares shares their opinion about a former place of employment that has anything remotely negative about the place, that it is looked upon as poor form. It's ridiculous and takes away power from employees and those looking for work. We should openly talk about our experiences in places we work. Wouldn't it be an unfortunate thing, for someone to get hired into a place t…

> I don't understand the mentality where if anyone dares shares their opinion about a former place of employment that has anything remotely negative about the place, that it is looked upon as poor form.

Mmm - I think it's an extension of the "praise in public, criticize in private" mentality. Not everyone in all environments takes blunt critique of their work well, even if it's not intentionally aimed at them, especially if everyone can hear it. A little diplomacy can help a bitter pill go down much smoother.

The article seems to contain some public, blunt, and very clearly coworker-targeted critique:

>> And of course I’m angry with my colleagues. I trusted that they would be able to put aside historical personal grievances and act in the best interest of the department. I was wrong.

I'd be this blunt with close colleagues and friends. With everyone else, I'd take a moment to consider the possibility that I might've had something to do with the personality conflict (to be fair, the author does seem to do this earlier) and reword more diplomatically. Because we should strive to have empathy for our peers and colleagues - even if we don't get along with them perfectly. To do otherwise risks contributing to toxicity.

But as you say:

> In general, this post is mostly positive.

So here's hoping nobody sweats the small stuff.

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