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And yet: > An adjunct professor of computer science and engineering at MIT Adjunct? Does this mean something different at MIT? Or is it some form of convenien

by a3n 12y ago

And yet: > An adjunct professor of computer science and engineering at MIT Adjunct? Does this mean something different at MIT? Or is it some form of convenience for Stonebraker?

peterfirefly 12y ago
Most likely the latter. He was a full professor at Berkeley before that.
Turing_Machine 12y ago
He was a professor at Berkeley for 29 years. He's cashed out a number of successful businesses, so it's not likely that he needs money. He's in his 70s. I would guess he still likes to teach and do research, but maybe not as a full-time professor. Adjuncts don't have to go to committee meetings. :-)
- dgacmu 12y ago
  Yup. In the case of people like Stonebraker -- or Butler Lampson, who's also officially adjunct at MIT -- Think of it as: You get an office, a community, resources with which to do research (and a framework within which to ask for grant/funding if you want), opportunities to advise students, the ability to teach classes when you want. In exchange, you don't get much money -- but also almost zero responsibilities unless you choose to assume them. (source: I'm a CS professor and I got my Ph.D. at MIT while both Stonebraker and Lampson were there.)
dpritchett 12y ago
This is what adjuncting is supposed to be for - folks with industry experience moonlight as professors. The benefit is not primarily salary but networking, knowledge sharing, and helping the next generation of industry professionals. Now it's more of a way to have 2/3 or more of the department work for unliveable wages which allows for an ever-growing administrative overhead in colleges while tuitions double every decade.
- hga 12y ago
  As far as I know, not true at MIT, teaching is done by tenured or tenture track professors, with exceptions like this, or SF author Joe Haldeman, that prove the rule. But, yeah, I hear from lots of sources that adjuncts making peanuts have become the rule rather than the exception in general US academia, and there's no disputing how administrators are taking over higher education, now even desiring to wrest little the faculty still control from them.
- sitkack 12y ago
  Management in all organizations should be automated by AI, with copious amounts of override buttons sprinkled throughout. Education administration is a like a thorn stuck in my mind, they make _more_ than everyone else and for the most part only act as a gas to support their own structure.
  - a3n 12y ago
    This is how every bureaucracy works, whether government, commercial or academic. Once the institution has enough income/cash flow for momentum, then it attract people who are expert at operating the machine itself, rather than expert in what the machine is supposed to be accomplishing. After the first one lands, they continue to accrete. It's hard to recognize when it starts, but you'll know it's happened once you see a lot of people who are not connected with the apparent goal of the machine, and there are posters all over the place touting whatever programs the administrators have created to justify their existence, as well as packaged training programs from motivational/educational consultants (think Franklin Covey).
    - sitkack 12y ago
      Ha, A fork bomb of Agent Smith crossed with Nancy in Program Outreach. The accretion or calcification model of bureaucratic formation is compelling, something like how a coral reef grows. The randomized surface provides eddies and pockets of protection for other life to flourish, RFPs and SBIRs can nestle in a protected arena with low local competition. I just realized that large, messy codebases also follow the reef model of bureaucracy. Hadoop is like that coral reef, providing nooks and crannies for optimizations and integrations to take hold. I used to imagine Hadoop as Whale fall [0], but it is more of a mandlebulb. Had Hadoop not provided such a rich environment the secondary ecosystem wouldn't be as vibrant. Fail to Win? I find management structures fascinating. Whenever I interact with one I probe it to see how much autonomy each individual in it has, what rules they can bend or not follow. Once the agents participating in the bureaucracy cannot bend the rules I think it will tend towards dystopia. Maybe 1984 isn't a warning against fascism, but the natural tendency of all bureaucracies to only support them selves. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_fall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_fall note: I might sound like the stereo type of a hackernews-bitcoin-libertarian, but I assure you my politics are much more nuanced than that. I don't think that bureaucracy as a structure is bad, but it needs to be managed with something akin to the voting logic in a triple redundant control circuit [1] [2]. Most bureaucracies exist within a positive feedback loop, which rewards them for growth instead of efficiency. It is like getting paid by LOC instead of 1/LOC or 1/runtime. [1] ftp://ftp.unicauca.edu.co/Facultades/FIET/DEIC/Materias/Instrumentacion%20Industrial/Instrument_Engineers__Handbook_-_Process_Measurement_and_Analysis/Instrument%20Engineers'%20Handbook%20-%20Process%20Measurement%20and%20Analysis/1083ch1_10.pdf [2] http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19850021660.pdf http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/1985002...
army 12y ago
It means he doesn't have the commitments that come with being a full-time faculty member but that he can teach classes.
gsteinb88 12y ago
Adjunct definitely means something different at MIT. For instance, departments are only allowed to hire adjuncts up to 5% of the total normal faculty members of their department[1]. MIT EECS only has six [2]. In effect, this means that adjunct positions are only for really, really qualified people -- they're not there to fill out the teaching staff but to augment the experience of the rest of the faculty. Adjunct professors can also supervise research, which I believe is uncommon at other institutions. [1] http://web.mit.edu/policies/2/2.3.html#sub2 http://web.mit.edu/policies/2/2.3.html#sub2 [2] Four listed as "adjuncts" and four "professors of the practice", which are equivalent per [1]: https://www.eecs.mit.edu/people/faculty-advisors https://www.eecs.mit.edu/people/faculty-advisors

by a3n 12y ago

And yet: > An adjunct professor of computer science and engineering at MIT Adjunct? Does this mean something different at MIT? Or is it some form of convenience for Stonebraker?

peterfirefly 12y ago

Most likely the latter. He was a full professor at Berkeley before that.

Turing_Machine 12y ago

He was a professor at Berkeley for 29 years. He's cashed out a number of successful businesses, so it's not likely that he needs money. He's in his 70s. I would guess he still likes to teach and do research, but maybe not as a full-time professor. Adjuncts don't have to go to committee meetings. :-)

dgacmu 12y ago
Yup. In the case of people like Stonebraker -- or Butler Lampson, who's also officially adjunct at MIT -- Think of it as: You get an office, a community, resources with which to do research (and a framework within which to ask for grant/funding if you want), opportunities to advise students, the ability to teach classes when you want. In exchange, you don't get much money -- but also almost zero responsibilities unless you choose to assume them. (source: I'm a CS professor and I got my Ph.D. at MIT while both Stonebraker and Lampson were there.)

dpritchett 12y ago

This is what adjuncting is supposed to be for - folks with industry experience moonlight as professors. The benefit is not primarily salary but networking, knowledge sharing, and helping the next generation of industry professionals. Now it's more of a way to have 2/3 or more of the department work for unliveable wages which allows for an ever-growing administrative overhead in colleges while tuitions double every decade.

hga 12y ago
As far as I know, not true at MIT, teaching is done by tenured or tenture track professors, with exceptions like this, or SF author Joe Haldeman, that prove the rule. But, yeah, I hear from lots of sources that adjuncts making peanuts have become the rule rather than the exception in general US academia, and there's no disputing how administrators are taking over higher education, now even desiring to wrest little the faculty still control from them.
sitkack 12y ago
Management in all organizations should be automated by AI, with copious amounts of override buttons sprinkled throughout. Education administration is a like a thorn stuck in my mind, they make _more_ than everyone else and for the most part only act as a gas to support their own structure.
- a3n 12y ago
  This is how every bureaucracy works, whether government, commercial or academic. Once the institution has enough income/cash flow for momentum, then it attract people who are expert at operating the machine itself, rather than expert in what the machine is supposed to be accomplishing. After the first one lands, they continue to accrete. It's hard to recognize when it starts, but you'll know it's happened once you see a lot of people who are not connected with the apparent goal of the machine, and there are posters all over the place touting whatever programs the administrators have created to justify their existence, as well as packaged training programs from motivational/educational consultants (think Franklin Covey).
  - sitkack 12y ago
    Ha, A fork bomb of Agent Smith crossed with Nancy in Program Outreach. The accretion or calcification model of bureaucratic formation is compelling, something like how a coral reef grows. The randomized surface provides eddies and pockets of protection for other life to flourish, RFPs and SBIRs can nestle in a protected arena with low local competition. I just realized that large, messy codebases also follow the reef model of bureaucracy. Hadoop is like that coral reef, providing nooks and crannies for optimizations and integrations to take hold. I used to imagine Hadoop as Whale fall [0], but it is more of a mandlebulb. Had Hadoop not provided such a rich environment the secondary ecosystem wouldn't be as vibrant. Fail to Win? I find management structures fascinating. Whenever I interact with one I probe it to see how much autonomy each individual in it has, what rules they can bend or not follow. Once the agents participating in the bureaucracy cannot bend the rules I think it will tend towards dystopia. Maybe 1984 isn't a warning against fascism, but the natural tendency of all bureaucracies to only support them selves. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_fall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_fall note: I might sound like the stereo type of a hackernews-bitcoin-libertarian, but I assure you my politics are much more nuanced than that. I don't think that bureaucracy as a structure is bad, but it needs to be managed with something akin to the voting logic in a triple redundant control circuit [1] [2]. Most bureaucracies exist within a positive feedback loop, which rewards them for growth instead of efficiency. It is like getting paid by LOC instead of 1/LOC or 1/runtime. [1] ftp://ftp.unicauca.edu.co/Facultades/FIET/DEIC/Materias/Instrumentacion%20Industrial/Instrument_Engineers__Handbook_-_Process_Measurement_and_Analysis/Instrument%20Engineers'%20Handbook%20-%20Process%20Measurement%20and%20Analysis/1083ch1_10.pdf [2] http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19850021660.pdf http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/1985002...

army 12y ago

It means he doesn't have the commitments that come with being a full-time faculty member but that he can teach classes.

gsteinb88 12y ago

Adjunct definitely means something different at MIT. For instance, departments are only allowed to hire adjuncts up to 5% of the total normal faculty members of their department[1]. MIT EECS only has six [2]. In effect, this means that adjunct positions are only for really, really qualified people -- they're not there to fill out the teaching staff but to augment the experience of the rest of the faculty. Adjunct professors can also supervise research, which I believe is uncommon at other institutions. [1] http://web.mit.edu/policies/2/2.3.html#sub2 http://web.mit.edu/policies/2/2.3.html#sub2 [2] Four listed as "adjuncts" and four "professors of the practice", which are equivalent per [1]: https://www.eecs.mit.edu/people/faculty-advisors https://www.eecs.mit.edu/people/faculty-advisors