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

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.