[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?