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The funny thing is that I can tell more stories about shady postdocs and mediocre post-docs than I can about fantastic postdocs. Of all the journal articles wi

The funny thing is that I can tell more stories about shady postdocs and mediocre post-docs than I can about fantastic postdocs. Of all the journal articles with results that are mysteriously difficult to reproduce, most of them that I've come across have been from shady postdocs. One of the reasons I shied away from academia is the nature of the workforce, and how you have to treat them to get tenure.

merraksh 16y ago
Yet postdocs are in a unique position and do important work, no matter if they continue in Academia or not (Discmaimer: I was a postdoc up to some years ago). They usually have little teaching or service duties and can devote all of their time to research. It's the ideal position after a PhD, when you can focus on research (past and new) before you are hired as an assistant professor and get really busy with teaching, committees, etc. The fact that you can tell more stories about shady/mediocre postdocs vs. good ones is subjective. Many of today's professors preferred postponing their job to be postdocs somewhere else for a year or two.
- timdellinger 16y ago
  I, too, was once a postdoc. The real problem with being put in a unique position to do important work is that you're under the gun to do important work. That situation leads to lots of negative consequences. Especially when you notice that the number of people employed as postdocs at any given time is at least an order of magnitude larger than the number of assistant professors being hired that year. I certainly think that being a postdoc can have great value (it did for me, and it did for everyone I know who eventually became a professor), but in practice it's a mixed bag and the structure of the situation produces mixed results.
  - merraksh 16y ago
    The real problem with being put in a unique position to do important work is that you're under the gun to do important work. But so are you as a professor, at least up to tenure. I agree it is a double edged sword. It is intuitive that a research community prefers to evaluate someone before offering him a tenure-track job. PS The ratio postdocs/asst.prof can vary a lot. For example it was much lower than 10 in all of the departments I worked at, though not far from it in Europe.
billswift 16y ago
I've seen similar mentions about problems elsewhere. I think it is mostly the availability heuristic at work - assholes and incompetents are simply more memorable than people who quietly go about their work without making waves or screwing things up.

merraksh 16y ago

Yet postdocs are in a unique position and do important work, no matter if they continue in Academia or not (Discmaimer: I was a postdoc up to some years ago). They usually have little teaching or service duties and can devote all of their time to research. It's the ideal position after a PhD, when you can focus on research (past and new) before you are hired as an assistant professor and get really busy with teaching, committees, etc. The fact that you can tell more stories about shady/mediocre postdocs vs. good ones is subjective. Many of today's professors preferred postponing their job to be postdocs somewhere else for a year or two.

timdellinger 16y ago
I, too, was once a postdoc. The real problem with being put in a unique position to do important work is that you're under the gun to do important work. That situation leads to lots of negative consequences. Especially when you notice that the number of people employed as postdocs at any given time is at least an order of magnitude larger than the number of assistant professors being hired that year. I certainly think that being a postdoc can have great value (it did for me, and it did for everyone I know who eventually became a professor), but in practice it's a mixed bag and the structure of the situation produces mixed results.
- merraksh 16y ago
  The real problem with being put in a unique position to do important work is that you're under the gun to do important work. But so are you as a professor, at least up to tenure. I agree it is a double edged sword. It is intuitive that a research community prefers to evaluate someone before offering him a tenure-track job. PS The ratio postdocs/asst.prof can vary a lot. For example it was much lower than 10 in all of the departments I worked at, though not far from it in Europe.

billswift 16y ago

I've seen similar mentions about problems elsewhere. I think it is mostly the availability heuristic at work - assholes and incompetents are simply more memorable than people who quietly go about their work without making waves or screwing things up.