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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

#201

Post by joeclark77 »

fencepost wrote: post #51
joeclark77 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but he's now trying to take his show on the road and get a job at another university. The reason this "parting shot" is risky is that it may get him pre-emptively ruled out by a lot of other hiring committees.

But speaking out here about the reasons he was denied tenure may be the only chance he gets to present that to some schools that might otherwise say "Buffalo knew this guy and tossed him, they must know something." It may also prompt potential employers to look at the makeup of the department that rejected him - is it full of people who got their initial degrees when 32-bit architectures were theoretical novelties?

Good point. In this case I think he's confident that he'll get a job somewhere, and therefore he's willing to do this as a way of eliminating potential employers from contention based on whether they do or don't value the kinds of contributions he's making. It's a good strategy unless he's wrong about how desirable he is.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#202

Post by mcherm »

obventio56 wrote: post #11
mcherm wrote: post #2

This article has a powerful and important point to make. But much of the strength of an argument rests on the author's evaluation of his own contributions which is almost unfailingly positive. The article would be even more effective if accompanied by statement from one or more of the eight department members who voted against granting tenure.

I can't be the only high school age lurker here that thought your comment came straight out of an AP DBQ.

What is an "AP DBQ"?

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#203

Post by tdb7893 »

Chinjut wrote: post #116
mwfunk wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since hardly anyone has firsthand knowledge of what happened, everyone is extrapolating (it's all anyone can do really). You are extrapolating that this is a case where individuality is getting crushed by The System and this guy's only crime was speaking the truth and not conforming to this or that soul crushing norm of professional life. For the most part the less sympathetic comments I've seen are extrapolating tha…

I'm not saying he was crushed for his individuality and truth-speaking then. As I said, I have no idea what he was like in the past, or the merits of his tenure case. I'm saying people, in this thread, are taking him to task for criticizing his (soon to be ex-)employer publicly now. That "Don't criticize your employer!" norm, to me, is a bizarre one for strangers to get upset over deviations from.

Vocal criticisms for a former employer will do nothing but come back to bite you. It looks pretty bad to future employers and burns bridges unnecessarily with the former employer, who you generally have to rely on for recommendations. In this case the public criticism being in general a bad idea just highlighted the lack of political acumen that this guy had already shown.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#204

Post by clegoues »

dluan wrote: post #67
Hondor wrote: post #63

From this other page https://blue.cse.buffalo.edu/ , it looks like he can take his grants, research, Phd students and courses with him to a new job! I'm totally amazed at that. Don't they belong to his old university? Is that how it usually works in universities?

Most times, grants stay with the department and they have the discretion to use the remainder however they want.

Not quite; there's a mechanism for this, though the details vary by department/funding source/phase of the moon. Typically one can take at least part of earned grants elsewhere, though sometimes the originating school can still take overhead before transferring the rest (leading to double-overhead, when the new school takes a percentage of the remainder).

(The funding system doesn't always make sense, but it REALLY wouldn't make sense to give a grant, especially something like a CAREER, which is given to a single PI based on the work that PI proposes to do, to a department where the PI who proposed to do the work no longer actually works...)

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#205

Post by Chinjut »

tdb7893 wrote: post #203
Chinjut wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying he was crushed for his individuality and truth-speaking then. As I said, I have no idea what he was like in the past, or the merits of his tenure case. I'm saying people, in this thread, are taking him to task for criticizing his (soon to be ex-)employer publicly now. That "Don't criticize your employer!" norm, to me, is a bizarre one for strangers to get upset over deviations from.

Vocal criticisms for a former employer will do nothing but come back to bite you. It looks pretty bad to future employers and burns bridges unnecessarily with the former employer, who you generally have to rely on for recommendations. In this case the public criticism being in general a bad idea just highlighted the lack of political acumen that this guy had already shown.

This becomes the chilling effect that one must never criticize their former employers, regardless of what happened or how one feels; they are to be treated as above reproach. Which is exactly the worry.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#206

Post by skywhopper »

edtechdev wrote: post #161
skywhopper wrote: post #155

If the author was really "point[ing] out problems with resource allocation, poor distribution of teaching load, lack of diversity among both our faculty and students, terrible graduate admissions systems, looking the other way regrading student plagiarism, and our neglect of our undergraduate programs" from the start, then I'm not surprised at the outcome. While I'm sure most or all of what the author complained abou…

If any of those items were true (and I highly doubt that), his colleagues should have simply mentioned it rather than stay quiet, passive aggressive, and butthurt.

I'm guessing they _were_ trying to mention it and he interpreted it as "don't make waves till you get tenure". And sure, some people explicitly say that, but the fact is, new people in an old organization do not understand the complexities, and telling everyone they're wrong is not going to win friends or influence people.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#207

Post by sametmax »

oldmanjay wrote: post #181
crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Being political is a ton of work. I find doing what OP suggests, which amounts to silently taking responsibility for other people's feelings instead of openly communicating about them, to be taxing as hell. Putting on an emotional mask usually is. Being "political" in this sense is a codependent behavior. Instead of operating out of fear of others' reactions, I prefer to give people the space they need to fee…

Or do what I do, express yourself like a human instead of a business machine, leave, go do the rejected right thing for a competitor, and send the product brochure to the people who cared more about their feelings than the work. You have to be willing to do a lot of walking away, but the inevitable "you were right" has been satisfying so far. Or I guess another way to say it is if you can, do, and if you can't, by al…

This is super passive aggressive, like a child saying "I'm leaving, you will miss me guys, you'll be sorry, you'll see I was right and I'll be the one laughting !".

Besides, this assumes people rejecting your idea are bad, while they are just being humans. Humans are weak unefficient creatures, it's no use to take offense in it, we all are weaks in some areas.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#208

Post by tdb7893 »

Chinjut wrote: post #205
tdb7893 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vocal criticisms for a former employer will do nothing but come back to bite you. It looks pretty bad to future employers and burns bridges unnecessarily with the former employer, who you generally have to rely on for recommendations. In this case the public criticism being in general a bad idea just highlighted the lack of political acumen that this guy had already shown.

This becomes the chilling effect that one must never criticize their former employers, regardless of what happened or how one feels; they are to be treated as above reproach. Which is exactly the worry.

An analogy for it might be someone complaining about their ex on Facebook. You can still complain in private and voice your opinions when it's relevant but doing it in a public forum without prompting just screams immaturity. I mean it does have a chilling effect but I don't think that's always a bad thing (people's reaction to this post being a prime example as to why)

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#210

Post by roel_v »

robotresearcher wrote: post #146
roel_v wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how does he know they're so great then? In academic career progress contexts, citations are what matters. If your 'great' papers have 2 citations, they're objectively not great - in fact, they're pretty shit even. They might become 'great' next year, time will tell - but making a case of how great a researcher you are with a paper selection like that is, well, not very smart.

If they are new, they are neither proven great or shit. Like a new novel or work of art, or any IP. The author is proposing that people read those papers becaus he is proud of them. Nothing wrong with that.

No, not true. He's arguing he's an asset to the university, and one of his arguments is his publishing track record. In that context, there are two way papers are 'good': they are published in Nature or The Lancet, or they have high citation counts. Whether a paper has the potential to get lots of citations doesn't count for anything. Likewise, if the content is super out of this world great, but nobody has cited it - the paper is shit.

In all sorts of other contexts, obviously there are many ways in which something can be good. In the specific way he used it, there is a very well-defined and objective standard, and he fails it.

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