[ok123456]

you don't 'get a postdoc'. It's not a degree. It's a job you get that requires a PhD. It's a form a purgatory until you can get a real academic job.

The goal of a post doc is to continue to do research work where you're the first position on publications to pad your CV to the point where it looks impressive enough when you're out giving job talks for tenure track positions.

If you have a very strong PhD thesis, produced a lot of good work during your PhD and made enough connections, you can skip that step.

[tinyhouse]

A postdoc is not a PhD but it can also be competitive in good places. Very hard to skip that step these days unless you're a superstar, even in CS. But it doesn't really matter. Are you trying to discredit him in some way? It's actually even more impressive he got to where he got without a degree from a top school. He needed to work harder than others.

[ok123456]

His connections (his dad is a distinguished professor of mechanical engineering) had more to do with that than hard work.

Getting out of purgatory was also competitive.

[ausbah]

and that discredits him somehow?

[ok123456]

Well he did stop doing anything that you could classify as research, and decided to become a youtube talk-show host instead.

It's almost as if he was there just long enough to associate his name with the school as an ends to impress dumb people.

[ausbah]

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=wZH_N7cAAAAJ...

he's had his name on publications over the past few years while still doing the podcast

[ok123456]

last position and chi pablum