
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-track-faculty Life - hiteshiitk
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/07/21/the-awesomest-7-year-postdoc-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-tenure-track-faculty-life
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jforman
This strategy would quickly lose its merit outside of Harvard. Failing to gain
tenure at Harvard is the expected outcome, so a) the sense of rejection is
less, and b) your remaining job prospects are good because this is generally
recognized (and it's Harvard).

Asking somebody at a high-tenure-rate, second-tier school to treat their
tenure track position as an extended post-doc is essentially asking them to
have a failed career, on the other hand.

(it's worth noting that Harvard has actually changed tack recently, such that
they're increasingly promoting junior faculty...the above is still true
regardless, at least for the time being)

~~~
mdwelsh
This isn't true in computer science at Harvard - I speak from experience,
having gone through the tenure process there myself. Being denied tenure in CS
at Harvard is about as bad as being denied tenure anywhere else; people don't
usually end up in very good jobs afterwards. In my 8 years at Harvard, we
awarded tenure to 5 junior faculty, and denied tenure to two.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
How does Harvard CS even work in the shadow of MIT and its own very strong
liberal arts program? I mean, it is a good department, definitely a top 20.

~~~
willsun
From an undergraduate standpoint, there certainly isn't a lack of interest in
the program - the intro CS course is consistently one of the largest
undergraduate courses. Though the smaller department size means certain
courses aren't always offered, the quality of instruction tends to make up for
this (as well as the possibility of cross-registering at MIT). A side effect
of CS being an up-and-coming department is that many CS undergrads come to
Harvard intending to study something else (say math, physics, or economics)
and thus bring with them their diverse interests and skills to the classroom.

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mdwelsh
The author of this article is a friend and former colleague (I had the office
next door to hers at Harvard, when I was on the faculty there). Many of the
reasons she cites for being "miserable" as a faculty member reflect why I left
a tenured faculty job for industry. Nearly all junior faculty I know describe
it as a survival process. Given this I fail to understand why being a
professor remains such an attractive career path.

~~~
spartango
What's scary is that this represents a fairly luxurious set of pain-points
relative to the ones I've seen junior faculty members in the biological
sciences exposed to at Harvard.

The conveniences and cultural differences of the CS community are a stark
contrast to academic biology. Considering the author's observations:

First, the opt-out options are often fewer and further between; making the
jump between basic science work and industrial biotech/pharma can be very
difficult depending on your area of interest.

Then, as a biologist, it can be incredibly difficult to restrict your working
hours, as experimental (e.g. cell culture) work can operate with delays or
intervals. Stepping out at the wrong time means your cells die.

Beyond the unpredictable timing, there's more uncertainty around whether
experiments will physically work, and it can be nigh impossible engineer your
way out of certain failures.

Further, the benchmarks for "contribution to the field" in biology can be
extremely unforgiving; publishing papers in journals outside of Nature,
Science, or Cell fails to paint a compelling picture.

These things are added on to the things pointed out in the piece. Extra
hurdles.

That's not to say that biological science fields are evil or that faculty
paths are never worth considering. But having worked in the lab of a junior
faculty member, you can see the pressure and challenges.

~~~
dnautics
>Then, as a biologist, it can be incredibly difficult to restrict your working
hours, as experimental (e.g. cell culture) work can operate with delays or
intervals. Stepping out at the wrong time means your cells die.

That's where personnel management comes in. I've got an undergrad intern at
the moment, who has only a modest amount of lab research experience. In a
month and a half, I've taught him molecular biology from scratch (beginning
with the fundamentals of PCR) and from what i taught him, I gave him a list of
48 mutations. He designed primers to make those mutations, does the molecular
biology, checks the sequences, then does the biochemical experiment on the
enzyme that's being mutated. He's finished about half of the mutants. We are
able to get this done because the experiments were planned out to be
paralellizable and scaleable, and if something is finishing up when it needs
to be picked up at the end of the day (like a transformation recovery), I do
it, because he comes in early and I stay in late. I also drop in on the
weekends to start cultures- but usually only briefly -, to make the most
efficient use of his and my time. He is in usually around 9:00-9:15 and I make
sure he leaves at 5:00 and I really get angry if he's around past 5:15 except
in exigent conditions.

Bottom line: Even in Biology, you can restrict your working hours if you're a
team player if you have good management skills.

If you're overworking. Since science entails failure that you cannot engineer
your way out of - you will wind up burning out, since the working hard
followed by failure is exactly an optimal way of conditioning laziness.

~~~
spartango
You're absolutely right, it is possible and even important to structure your
experiments in such a way that they don't dominate your life. It's something
that I've learned to do pretty effectively (and my chosen discipline makes it
easier).

I think there are certainly organizational things that can be done to
facilitate more reasonable working hours, and I've seen this done well in
industrial settings. From pipelined experiments to working with automation,
technicians, and teammates.

With all that said, it's not easy, especially as a junior faculty member with
limited resources. Building a sane lab environment is 100% worth it IMO, but
it is challenging and comes with a few perceived compromises.

~~~
dnautics
I think the reason why it's not easy is because the academic selection process
does not select for good managers.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Biology could also be a very competitive field that seems to have devolved
into basically a rat race. How do you compete with your equally capable peer
when they work 80 hours a week and you work 40? Yes, its not sustainable, but
maybe that's where we are right now (disclaimer, I don't work in Biology, but
have friends that do).

~~~
dnautics
pick your projects smarter. Most people doing 80 hour weeks are not doing
projects that are turning up publishable results. I was there.

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patio11
Relatedly: Philip Greenspun, on why it's difficult to convince women and other
sane people to enter an academic career in the sciences.

[http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-
science](http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science)

~~~
Dewie
Larry Summers really didn't play his cards right. If he had just used this
reasoning and concluded that it was because men are stupid, he at least
wouldn't have been fired.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Larry Summers was forcing faculty members to _show up for work_. Worse than
that, he was forcing some of them to _change offices_ and move to the other
side of the river!

They would have gotten him somehow, it's only a question of how.

~~~
kaitai
Hey, if we have to show up we'll never get anything done!

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dkrich
Not to sound overly critical, but is it just me or does this come off as a
somewhat selfish point of view?

My father was a tenured professor and growing up I heard enough horror stories
from his department to know that a career as a professor at a research
university is no easy career.

But at the same time, isn't a major part of your job instructing students? I
understand the importance of grants, conducting research, etc. as it relates
to getting tenure, but if your only focus is jumping through hoops with the
end goal of getting tenured there are probably a lot easier ways to get job
security and at higher pay. My point is that I would hope that those who go
into a career in academia as a professor have a major interest in teaching and
aren't just there to get the next promotion.

~~~
jamesaguilar
People optimize for the metrics they are set. To the degree teaching is
rewarded, they will focus on teaching.

I know a number of PhDs with aspirations of tenure. Not one has said they went
into it to teach.

~~~
jimmahoney
You may be looking for us in the wrong places.

I'm an MIT Physics PhD who aimed at teaching from early on. I agree that we're
in the minority, but folks like us aren't typically looking for jobs at R1
universities but instead at small schools where teaching is actually valued.
Unless you're part of that culture, we may not be the PhDs that you know.

I have a number of PhD friends like me, teaching at small liberal arts
colleges and community colleges. It's a career path that doesn't typically
have the sexy budgets and bright city lights, but IMHO can still lead to an
academically rigorous and balanced life.

~~~
hondje
I studied math/physics at Colorado State Pueblo, a small school with very
minimal focus on research. I would absolutely recommend it to my kids when
they're deciding on a school, because having actual professors teach what they
love in a dept that actually cared if the students learned was wonderful....
And the professors were happy, too.

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vsbuffalo
As someone headed into academia, I ponder how the tenure-track process filters
out folks. Simply put, I think many of the best scientists have been nerds,
and many smart nerds really don't see the utility in playing the political
tenure game. I'd argue that the competition is fiercer now than it's ever been
in the sciences, so these selectionary forces against nerd-types are getting
stronger.

We end up with the situation where scientists in academic jobs are enriched
for those good at politics and playing the game, and we lose brilliant minds
to companies. Companies also do their part, and offer alluring salaries and
job security (I've had quite a few recruitment attempts for wonderful
companies, and almost left academia on several occasions).

With the folks in academic positions being political (and sometimes downright
manipulative), it's no surprise that some make terrible mentors. Their success
quite often relies on extracting work from postdocs that will never have their
success. Sadly, there's no incentive for symbiotic relationships sometimes.
Luckily, finally, I have met mentors that are exceptions to this, and are
nerds like me (and quite frankly, keep me in the sciences). But it took a long
time to find such mentors, and other very smart people are not so lucky as to
find these types of mentors and they leave the sciences. Sadly, this enriches
for more bad mentor types. I think the role my mentors' mentors had is huge
too; often my mentors talk about how important their mentors were.

~~~
dnautics
>I think many of the best scientists have been nerds, and many smart nerds
really don't see the utility in playing the political tenure game.

I think this is 75% of the "problem". It gets worse because the smart nerds
who do like to play the political game are often so solipsistic and selfish
that they are really spectacularly atrocious managers, many of whom take a
scorched earth attitude to solving their scientific problems. This becomes a
vicious cycle as that becomes the percieved way to act within the culture.

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impendia
At Harvard it really _is_ easy to stop worrying, if you have an open mind.

As a mathematician, I know excellent academics who narrowly missed getting
tenured at MIT and Princeton. They were highly in demand, and are now happily
working at other top-20 universities.

(ed: I am in math, and described what I observed. I see elsewhere in the
thread that mdwelsh observed the opposite.)

~~~
mdwelsh
You are right that being a mathematician at Harvard, it hardly matters if you
get tenure or not. (In fact, for a long time you basically had to win the
Fields Medal to get tenure in math at Harvard). Harvard is nowhere near as
well known in Computer Science, and is more of a "top 20" rather than "top 5"
school.

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startupstella
This article is great because the author has an authentic voice and explains
how she achieved a measure of success without succumbing to outside pressures
or norms.

It's a good framework for thinking about any high stress, competitive career
track. Ultimately, stress/pressure greatly affect performance and peoples'
perceptions of you, both of which are paramount in ascending hierarchies.

------
read
First off, it's inspiring and courageous to write candidly about such a topic.
Including the epiphany: _That what I can do, is try to be the best whole
person that I can be._ That mindset would be helpful outside academia too.

But the more I read through stories like this the more I become convinced it's
important to fool yourself: to convince yourself there's no pressure. As if
the act itself unblocks some kind of neural pathways that allow you to do
things you wouldn't have let yourself do otherwise.

The author might be a lot more courageous that they think, even if they hadn't
realized it at the time: " _But its not because I have extra courage. Rather,
by demoting the prize, the risk becomes less._ "

Anecdotally, a professor once told me (when they look back on their tenure
track) that it now seems irresponsible to them that they were devoting such
little time to revising journal papers or writing such few grand proposals. (I
got the feeling they were doing things that don't scale). Another said they
were sure upfront they'd fire them at the end, so they tried to enjoy they
ride while it lasted. Both of them got tenure.

Another thing this story shows is how logistics become manageable if you try.
Like the approach to give the other person a weekend day off as counter-
balance to you going on an extra trip is probably what prevents you from going
astray. It's the right sort of tension. You pay twice for a workday like that
(one for the trip, one for parent duty), so you now have a concrete measure to
make that decision rather the vagueness of "it will help my career".

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eykanal
Awesome.

On the "stop taking advice" idea: when I was a grad student (and postdoc), I
kept notes in a personal wiki. I had a page entitled "Things Other People Have
Suggested I Do". I didn't do most of them. Even more so, it was such a
liberating feeling to look at it and tell myself, "I don't have to do any of
that crap, I have my own research plan."

~~~
dnautics
I have to say, that my graduate degree was salvaged because I took the advice
of a grad student, a postdoc, and an assistant professor (and totally blew off
my advisors/committee). So, not all advice is bad.

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dnautics
It's unbelievably easy and condescending for someone who has a tenure-track
junior faculty position at harvard to call it a "seven-year postdoc". However,
the advice is generally good.

I do however take issue with this: "I guess my hope is to add one more option
to the list, which is covering your ears and making up your own rules." No...
That shouldn't be a hope. You should just do it.

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grundprinzip
Even if not all of the aspects that she wrote about may related to everybodys
problems, it's a very good read because it allows to relate to her situation.
Being a post-doc in CS myself and having two kids I exactly know how hard it
is to juggle everything. In addition, I think that many of the comments here
try to interpret the article as a list of advices and treat them as such. But
If you read carefully you would have seen that this is especially something
she didn't want to.

My key take-away from this post is that: Yes, the system is designed for
young, childless PhDs who are willing to put 80hs/weeks into work and robot-
like follow the advice of others. But, it does not have to be like that. It's
_paramount_ to remember everyday why you are doing this job and why you love
research _and_ teaching.

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willsun
For those interested in the Harvard tenure process, this article detailed some
of the history and statistics:
[http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/4/11/scrutiny-
tenure-...](http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/4/11/scrutiny-tenure-
harvard/)

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lettergram
I highly recommend reading The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. The essence of the
book as well as this article are interesting in that the more relaxed you are
the higher your productivity and interestingly enough you can only learn/do so
much in a day. The point being, likely not pursuing the tenure track made her
more productive and allowed her to form better relationships, making her one
of the better junior faculty (or at least one of the more pleasant).

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mathattack
I like the idea. When you free yourself from undue external pressure
creativity comes out. This doesn't work for everyone. You have to be very
prescient to avoid all advice. Being smart and in computer science allows one
great backup plans. (Tell the 7th year English professor not to worry)

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cafard
Excellent, but I question how far it can be generalized.

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rogerchucker
I think the key to nailing this her way is to become a time management nazi
and to be profoundly efficient and productive in every category. And that is
where most of us fail unfortunately.

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electronous
Another thing to take away from this article: people with kids have less time
to spend doing their jobs.

~~~
rwallace
Another thing to take away from that: hire someone with kids if you have the
option. Maximum output of intellectual work is achieved with a 30-40 hour
working week. The author settled on a 50+ hour working week, which is higher
than optimum, enough to degrade her judgment and productivity - but only
somewhat, not catastrophically; she was still able to get good work done. It's
clear that without children, she would have settled on a substantially longer
working week, probably enough to destroy her judgment and the quality of her
work.

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maglos
On a side note, I hear suicide is legal in japan.

