Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

blue.cse.buffalo.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 215 posts

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#51

Post by fencepost »

joeclark77 wrote: post #40
apathy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how tenure works. Up or out -- you get tenure or you hit the road. So this is actually fairly common in academia. Sort of a parting shot, if you will.

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?

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#52

Post by CalChris »

joeclark77 wrote: post #42
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.

I guess you're right. I took a class once where the prof was denied tenure about half way through. He was completely deflated and it affected his teaching considerably. He'd expected he'd get tenure.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#53

Post by SolaceQuantum »

kevhito wrote: post #43
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 camp…

Mind you I don't really know the rest of the "behind closed doors" stuff, so I can't tell if this is just a one-off chastizement or if this was a system-wide thing. I have heard of some broader school-wide drama associated with funding; in fact, more than one computer science professor had expressed concerns through personal blogs regarding the overhead taken from funding for research when I attended. So I don't think these concerns are necessarily unfounded or written by a wannabe superstar.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#54

Post by seibelj »

I work in industry, but the key to getting stuff done in a hierarchical organization is tact. I think he is a poor politician, and is clearly very unhappy about being denied tenure. I think putting out feelers and going about a new job more quietly would be more effective.

Hypothetically, let's say you (the person reading this comment) want to make a big change in your organization. You identified a problem, and honestly think the solution is a fundamental change in direction. The incorrect next step is to bring up your opinion in front of the decision makers! This causes strife, anger, embarrassment, negative attention, etc.

The correct plan is to quietly gauge support, get allies, make your case one-on-one, and get things going with multiple stakeholders on board. No one embarrassed, the majority in agreement. Rocking the boat publicly (as this post clearly shows he is OK with) is not the mark of good political skills.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#55

Post by rdtsc »

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 see academia as somewhere where people can make immense contributions to human knowledge

The problem is just like the industry (or even more so), academia is plagued with infighting, personal vendettas, skewed incentives and lots of politics.

I think many believe academia is more pure, more rational and calm environment where it is all sharing, and peaceful pursuit of knowledge and so on. The reality is very different from it.

> but they have to jump through certain hoops to do so

The hoops are part of the problems. It seems he cared for focused more on teaching and administration instead of sucking up to other faculty or just cranking out publications like crazy.

The most important bit is probably him trying to improve things.

Improving things mean undoing something that is already there. Due to tenure and length of time people with tenure hang around in academia, the status quo was established by many of the tenured people there. Saying "I want to improve that" was read as, "what you did sucked, I will make it better". That stuff is never acknowledged publicly but come voting time, it won't be forgotten either.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#56

Post by dluan »

kevhito wrote: post #49
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 th…

Often feeling that any criticism of your work is unfair can blind you to what the real criticism is.

Yeah, there's probably a few folks who you can't win over no matter what. But, there are also valid and real takeaways that colleagues are offering, and holding your hands over your ears saying the system is rigged isn't going to help one to continue to grow.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#57

Post by cycomachead »

skosuri wrote: post #27
gsylvie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He obviously pissed off his department, and so they voted with an aim to punishing him. He's a fool not to appeal it, though. If he appeals then the decision will be made by people outside of his department who won't have the same emotional stakes in the decision. Rage quit after you win your appeal, if you must! $3,000,000 in funding, most of it still active is astonishing ( https://blue.cse.buffalo.edu/proposals/ )…

It looks like he also flipped classrooms and was active within the department service-wise. That's a pretty crazy decision not to tenure him from the outside.

As sad as it is, there are lots of places where these things are met with skepticism and argument.

I know people who specifically waited years to redesign courses until they had tenure.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#58

Post by dluan »

detaro wrote: post #13
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…

Tenure is just an employment contract that can only be terminated with just cause. (And the number of tenure-track positions is going down as far as I know)

Tenure is shrinking because universities are realizing that the core of their workforce isn't tenured scientists - it's assistants and adjuncts, post-docs, and grad students. In the business model world of big science being publish, get grant funding, take overhead, tenured professors are mainly just project managers.

Why make a commitment to support 2x more tenure track positions when you have 1-2 good enough to attract wide-eyed grad students? This is the market correcting itself to shrinking federal budgets and ballooning workforce supply.

Re: The Best Way to Not Get Tenure

#59

Post by rdtsc »

seibelj wrote: post #54

I work in industry, but the key to getting stuff done in a hierarchical organization is tact . I think he is a poor politician, and is clearly very unhappy about being denied tenure. I think putting out feelers and going about a new job more quietly would be more effective. Hypothetically, let's say you (the person reading this comment) want to make a big change in your organization. You identified a problem, and hon…

Agree with that.

He set out to improve things, which is a good goal. Improving means criticizing the status quo at some level. In case of academia, with tenured people lingering there for life, status quo is probably the result of their work (for better or for worse). Wanting to "improve" that was probably perceived as an insult something like "what you did before sucks, I'll make it better". Unless he was dealing with unusually rational colleagues, that stuff is never forgotten and surfaces at voting times.

But also playing devil's advocate here. It could also be that this is a "well the grapes are too sour anyway" type story. That is, maybe his research wasn't seen as very good, innovative or interesting to deserve a tenure. Maybe he knew it too so set out to instead focus on teaching and other aspects. I've seen people do that. Can't code so they become really strong proponents of documenting everything, or they look for other busy work to justify their salary. That is not necessarily all bad or wrong, but it is interesting to consider here. We haven't really heard from other side so to speak.

Post reply on HN