[code_sardaukar]

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 granted tenure, the process is mostly fair, but of course most people are going to want to do everything they can to maximize their chances. 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.

As someone in industry, I see academia as somewhere where people can make immense contributions to human knowledge, that cannot be done elsewhere, but they have to jump through certain hoops to do so. Outside of academia there is very little opportunity to do research. Industry is conservative, and prefers to implement and refine known techniques.

[kevhito]

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 instead? Or were there perhaps legitimate reasons why others didn't want to change the existing course?

> I led a complete overhaul of our department’s undergraduate computer science curriculum. It includes two new exciting introductory programming courses that I spent a great deal of time designing.

Let me guess: the existing curriculum was terrible, boring, not at all rigorous, and there was no reason to keep any of it, and the author made sure everyone knew it. And why did the author have to spend a great deal of time? Because no one else in the department was capable of doing as good a job? Because nobody else could comprehend this grand vision?

Everything listed under "speaking out" gives me the same vibe. It doesn't seem to have crossed this person's mind that there are reasons why other people have different approaches to teaching, research, administration, hiring, etc., beyond others being obstructionist, brainwashed, or just stupid. I'm reminded of the parable reminding us [1] to not take down a fence until we have truly understood why the fence was erected in the first place.

And really... bringing a dog to work in violation of a clearly stated campus policy, repeatedly, even after having been warned, then encouraging a student petition and getting your name in a local paper about the incident? That's just asking for trouble.

(Full disclosure: I'm coming up for tenure myself, and one lesson it has taken me 5 years to understand is that people who disagree with me on campus aren't doing so out of spite, stupidity, or carelessness, they often just have different priorities than I do. Just because our department absolutely needs more resources to do a good job handling our rapidly growing student population, doesn't mean the college should make this a priority over other things.)

[1] http://www.chesterton.org/taking-a-fence-down/

[SolaceQuantum]

> 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 chastizing a more junior faculty over how student feedback was used in remaking the program.

I can't say for anything else (including the dog situation, since I know other faculty in other departments also bring their pets to school), but I know there was some severe and public obstruction from senior faculty to more junior faculty going on during the remaking.

[kevhito]

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.

[SolaceQuantum]

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.

[Thriptic]

> Full disclosure: I'm coming up for tenure myself, and one lesson it has taken me 5 years to understand is that people who disagree with me on campus aren't doing so out of spite, stupidity, or carelessness, they often just have different priorities than I do

In my experience, one problem is that the priorities are frequently rooted in the self-interest of powerful PIs or staff and are to the detriment of the department / university as a whole. As a staff scientist working on many different types of projects, I frequently bump up against stupid problems which should be fixed at a university level. At one point, I tried spear heading a number of these projects (creation of a central index of core facilities and support services for our university so people can actually find resources efficiently, centralized billing and training services for shared facilities across departments, secure storage and an EMR for investigators working with patient information).

All of these projects failed to launch for selfish reasons:

central index: powerful PIs feared discovery of their private core labs which they were abusing; core labs feared institute-level data would lead to institute wide optimization and loss of local control.

centralized billing: financial admins feared loss of control and had job security issues

centralized training: core labs feared loss of control

secure storage and EMR: PIs thought this was too inconvenient, preferred leaving shit on external hard drives with no access control. Feared if this were created they would be forced to use it.

I don't ever try to fix anything now beyond the lab level, and even that is frequently challenging.

I've also seen two talented investigators passed by for tenure in our department because my PI is powerful and other PIs fear that having another person from our lab in the department will further consolidate power in my PI's hands. Our department recently spent an enormous amount of money renovating a single floor in our aging building. That floor had the departmental chair's lab on it. In my experience, academia is full of people who for the most part are in it for themselves and have no interest in improving the situation of the group / lab / department / university as a whole.

[adrianratnapala]

I'm sorry but I suspect your deeply, deeply wrong and your work will damage your university. Everything you talk about is about centralising knowledge and control.

In practice, this never helps in the business of getting experiments done. Students and postdocs just pend some time doing pointless training courses, overheads increase, lead-times for ordering equiment increase. And to what purpose?

[Thriptic]

> Everything you talk about is about centralising knowledge and control. In practice, this never helps in the business of getting experiments done

We have researchers that literally cannot get work done efficiently because they don't know that core labs exist on campus to serve them, and labs that spend tens of thousands to buy instruments that they seldom use for the same reasons. At a department level (let alone an institute level), we have no idea what instruments or services people need, and no usage statistics for instruments that we already have. This means that it is likely that shared facilities are sub-optimally serving the community as a whole, and labs are buying multiple copies of the same pieces of equipment when one unit could do if it were shared. The lack of central indexing also means that most labs have no idea what other labs are working on, which hinders collaboration.

For training, right now EACH core lab forces researchers to do similar training courses for the same instruments; there is no way to prove you know how to use an instrument without taking each course. Similarly, every core lab employs different billing software which financial admins / lab admins have to sign up for and deal with.

How is this at all productive or efficient for anyone? If you were to suggest a similar setup for interacting business units, you would literally be laughed out of the room at a company.

The reason people like this current system is precisely because it's inefficient and confusing. This makes it difficult to regulate at a high level and makes it ripe for abuse by powerful people.

[sjg007]

This is why million dollar fines for HIPPA violations are a thing. Surprised that even said penalties wouldn't change things.

[karmelapple]

Some people are extremely allergic to dogs, and not just when the dog is in the room; dog dander sticks around in a room for a very long time.

Policies to keep pets out of certain spaces isn't because of a lack of a fun environment, but looking out for some people's sensitivities.

[mcguire]

The unofficial open dog door policy at my school was rescinded after the chairman found a puddle of vomit in the elevator. While escorting visitors. Twice.

[sjg007]

I like dogs, just not at work.

[reledi]

> people who disagree with me [...] aren't doing so out of spite, stupidity, or carelessness, they often just have different priorities than I do

This is an interesting perspective that I'd like to try. Thanks for sharing.

[squirrel]

You might find the techniques of Action Science helpful in adopting that framing: http://www.meetup.com/London-Action-Science-Meetup/pages/193...

[nostrademons]

It't a really powerful perspective, but when you do it, make sure that you actually do respect the people around you. And that you can remain true to yourself in the process. Empathy changes a person (if you're doing it right); make sure that you're changing in a way that you want to change.

[mcguire]

That's what "politics" is: how people resolve conflicting priorities and opinions. Not all of it is wildly functional, but there isn't an alternative.

[cycomachead]

It's not clear to me whether the curriculum work as all his vision or whether that was a fight, or he simply felt that others didn't view it as something helpful to his tenure case. It's not even clear whether it was all his vision or whether he was mostly trying to volunteer to lead the effort.

Every department is different, but I've definitely seen cases where the expectation is that you wait until you have tenure to participate in some changes or take on service work.

You're absolutely right about respecting others, but from his perspective others in the department also should at least listen to him, so it's hard to say whether "speaking out" is fighting or just trying to voice what he believes - which he should do if he does believe it would be helpful. (Doesn't mean he has to "win", but stopping speaking out or questioning things leads to problems.)

> Everything listed under "speaking out" gives me the same vibe. > then encouraging a student petition and getting your name in a local paper about the incident? That's just asking for trouble.

On the whole, it sounds like there's a clear view he's "loud" about his work, and this sounds like the biggest probem.

[adrianratnapala]

I share your doubts. But not your suspicions.

You see, I expect univeristies to prefer boring, non rigorous courses, because more students can do them. When I was an undgerad, I could see that my own course was duller and less rigorous than that of my seniors, but more interesting and and rigrorous than those of my juniors.

Why should the trend be different now?

[TheOtherHobbes]

>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 original research without pissing at least some people off. There will be petty jealousies, back-biting, gossip, and all the usual nonsense. Too much, too soon, and hackles will be raised.

It's very sad. Academia seems to have become stifling rather than expansive.

My working definition of organisational dysfunction is when politics and status become primary motivators, and quality of output - and pride in that quality - become secondary.

From the outside, that seems more true of academia now than it should be.

[sdenton4]

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.

[rdtsc]

> 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.

[blazespin]

"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 succeed in such environments.

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.

They are generally the exception rather than the norm, however.

[kevhito]

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 between not pissing off people on the committee and "obedience".

[TheOtherHobbes]

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.

[kevhito]

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.

[simonster]

As a student who has participated in some decisions regarding changing courses at my institution, I think classes here are usually bad because no one really cares. It requires tact to say "this course is garbage and you don't care about it anyway; let me handle it" without bruising egos.

But I think it's bullshit to say that not bruising egos is an important skill, especially in science. The kinds of scientists whose egos are easily bruised are the kinds of scientists who Max Planck was talking about when he said "science progresses one funeral at a time." People who refuse to acknowledge constructive criticism unless it's sugar-coated will continue to pursue the same ideas even after others have proved them wrong.

This is a systematic issue. Science is full of people with big egos. When scientist A criticizes scientist B's idea, ideally scientist A would think really hard about scientist B's criticism and either say "yes, you're right" or "no, here's what you're missing" (ideally with experiments). Scientists with big egos don't do this. They reject other scientists' criticism out of hand, and they criticize people based on feelings rather than ideas. The problem is contagious: Scientists with big egos attract more scientists with big egos, since those are the people who continue to believe they are great despite the barrage of nonsensical criticism. And egos tend to grow larger, not smaller, as people rise in rank.

Appropriately weighing others' evaluations of your ideas is really hard. It requires the technical skill necessary to come up with those ideas in the first place; the social skill to distinguish between sycophantic praise and true positive evaluation; and the emotional control to ignore anger or disappointment that might result from negative evaluation and focus on the content instead. In my experience, people who can do these things make much better scientists, and are much better to work with. They are less guarded when brainstorming ideas and more willing to change their minds in the face of superior evidence. But in modern science, there are relatively few incentives that favor accurate self-evaluation, and many that favor persistence above all else. In a world where ~5% of incoming graduate students go on to become tenured professors, people who aren't great and know it (or are great but don't know it) drop out early, and the people looking for positions end up being a combination of great people and mediocre people who think they're great.

[kevhito]

> no one really cares

Maybe. Or maybe they care and simply have a different perspective on what is the best approach. Or maybe they have different priorities. Optimizing for one variable (e.g. making one specific course awesome) at the expense of all others (hedging against future enrollment trends, pleasing the board of directors & alumni, limited faculty resources, ....) is simply not how universities work.

So I agree with you, somewhat, in some circumstances. In the science side of thing, maybe. But we're also talking about the college's dog policy here. The author seems to think it is completely obvious that he should be free to bring his dog to his campus lab, and shows no awareness that there may be good reasons there is a no dog policy. Maybe there are students with allergies? Or maybe UB has been sued for this in the past? Or maybe its a state law? I don't know.

So reading your comment carefully, it isn't actually obvious if you think it was the author's colleagues who had the big egos and won't listen to criticism, or the author himself.

[adrianratnapala]

Actualy I see the big egos as a benefit. They just say "No, you are wrong, thanks for our input." And they really mean both sentences.