The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

I was also wondering about his chance at appeal, but it's not clear how close he was:

> I knew that I had made a few enemies, but I was surprised that the final vote was so lopsided: 6 yays, 2 abstainers, and 8 nays.

What's the bar for passing? A majority of yeas? A plurality? Is there any sort of standard or is it different from school to school?

> the key to getting stuff done in a hierarchical organization is tact. I think he was a poor politician

> Rocking the boat publicly (as this post clearly shows he is OK with) is not the mark of good political skills.

You're not wrong.

However shouldn't we be asking ourselves why we are requiring such skills?

The truth is that being a good politician has an inverse relationship with being a geek.

Peter Thiel has been pointing this out for many years. He asks, do we really have scientists anymore? Or are they really bureaucrats and politicians pretending to be scientists?

I am convinced it is the latter. I think we have whole universities filled with cargo cult science.

This relates neatly with some awkward facts about the modern education system.

For all the extraordinary efforts and feats of intellectual prowess it is also extraordinary how little they practically achieve. The number of breakthroughs has dramatically declined. Once you get past the PR bullshit and backslapping there is very little actually happening in many places in the 'innovation economy'.

Take nanotech. I am not aware of any advances that make their appearance in a consumer's home. I can think only of a handful of niche applications like expensive hydrophobic coatings. If the advances were occurring in the factories we should be seeing more refined low cost goods on a massive scale. Is that actually happening? I don't know that it is. We've been promised a lot and been waiting for long time.

Take biotech. Nothing. Just nothing. I think the last biotechnology I interacted with was a yogurt. Can anybody name a single biotech invention or innovation that actually exists in people's houses? In the 50s and 60s we had the Green Revolution, that counts. However the price of food has been rising considerably for several years now. There is certainly no food product that I consume that has become much cheaper.

The discovery of DNA is at least half a century ago. Despite much fanfare about CRISPR, why should we be sure that this time biologists are bringing home the bacon? Is anybody willing to bet that in ten years time there will be GM cool pets, much cheaper food, much cheaper quality wood for building from GM trees? I would not take that bet.

What about energy? Willing to bet your energy bills get much lower in the future?

tldr; Maybe a whole lot of people are totally full of shit. The basic metric of progress is that things get cheaper, but they're not, so it isn't happening. If you're not willing to bet that prices decrease then maybe your confidence in the future of invention/innovation is misplaced.

Being a good manager means managing people. Dealing with people is easier when you have strong people skills. Conversely, if you put someone who has a toxic personality in charge of an organization, you might destroy the organization.

Again, I'm not saying anything about his talent, because it's impossible to know without hearing all sides, which I seriously doubt will happen. I'm saying that the article, his opinions, his actions, and from what his version of events are, is sending signals that he cannot get along with his superiors / peers in a way that is mutually constructive and beneficial.

Honestly, industry might be better for him, if he can find a benefactor willing to finance his research. But academia is petty and political, and from what I'm reading, his odds don't look good.

There's a book about this: Leading Quietly.

I'd agree that the way to appeal to management is to build relationships & grassroots support in the organization. But the way to appeal to the market (which seems to be his current situation now, since he seems to be looking for a new job) is to make a big splash, take credit for all the things you've done, define yourself in terms of what you'd most like to do, and then wait for the calls to come in.

The difference is on whether the set of people you work with is mutable or immutable. If it's immutable, you better preserve relationships, because you'll be working with them in the future, regardless of what happens, and you need them to implement your plans. But if it's mutable, then when people dislike you, just find new people. Stake out a territory in idea-space, and then just adjust the set of folks you hang out with until everyone agrees with you.

Voice or exit. If you want voice, you've got to speak to what the people around you will hear. If you're willing to exit (or going to anyway), you can say what you want and swap the people out until you find the set who hears you.

Interestingly, the current U.S. presidential race is a perfect example of this. Trump is following the people-are-mutable, if-they-don't-like-you-fuck-'em strategy. He's burning bridges with everyone who criticizes him. And he's probably doing this because it has worked for him in business - when he stiffs a contractor, sexually harasses an employee, or loses an investor's money, there is always somebody else willing to get in line behind them. Clinton, however, is the consummate relationship builder. She's carefully worked across the aisle through decades of experience in Washington, such that she's got all the really important people supporting her. Trump's strategy works great at rallies, where he can speak only to the people who agree with him, but fails across the entire electorate, where he has to deal with a pre-existing composition that isn't going anywhere.