6 ms·

What are you waiting for?

141 points by lemoncurd 8y ago

iaaacdev 8y ago
What is the impact outside of academia? Are there similar effects in the corporate sector?
- rococode 8y ago
  Not sure about the corporate sector, but it certainly seems to at least have an impact on American politics. Some 2014 statistics [0] have the average age of representatives and senators at 57 and 62, and several current senators have served for well over 25 years (3 senators right now have been in their offices for over 35 years) [1]. I'm sure it's hard for even the brightest young politician to oust someone who's been in office since before they were born, especially if they're in the same party. [0] https://www.senate.gov/CRSpubs/0b699eff-adc5-43c4-927e-f63045bdce8e.pdf https://www.senate.gov/CRSpubs/0b699eff-adc5-43c4-927e-f6304... [1] https://www.senate.gov/senators/longest_serving_senators.htm https://www.senate.gov/senators/longest_serving_senators.htm
- thucydidesofusa 8y ago
  Just like academia - it's only a problem for cushy jobs. A lot of people in business retire as quickly as feasible, but a lot of people with cushy jobs or neat perks try to die behind their desks. I had the displeasure of personally knowing a CEO who fought a hostile take over partially because his office, patio, and executive dining were at stake.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- fhbdukfrh 8y ago
  Tenure is a pretty artificial condition intended to prevent controversial research from being eliminated out of fear of losing your job. It seems in the corporate world execs do something controversial, get fired and get paid off. I believe average length of tenure in c-suite positions is actually decreasing, so moving in the other direction without any law limiting it.
friedman23 8y ago
Somewhat unrelated but this article reminded me about a passage from "The Book of the New Sun" where the protagonist of the book meets with the master of the guild of librarians. The library is pitch black and the librarian in his old age has gone blind but still holds onto his position as master librarian and his apprentice who is now a balding man in his middle years still attends him waiting for his master to pass away so that he can assume the mantle. The master in the story still exceeds at his work despite his blindness and his blindness is actually what enabled him to discover via touch that the material of the books themselves was just as impressive as the contents :) I imagine the result of removing something like forced retirement ages is similarly nuanced
SomewhatLikely 8y ago
Naive question: why can't they just have more tenure positions?
- jjoonathan 8y ago
  Money.
- buboard 8y ago
  Then they 'd have to enroll more students.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Or stop one-upping each other by building ever more expensive sports facilities?
    - sgillen 8y ago
      Schools that don’t do this still have the same money problems.
    - fhbdukfrh 8y ago
      You're referring to MIT's championship football team?
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        I'm referring to all the times I've heard on HN that US universities one-up each other in building sports facilities.
        nine_k 8y ago
        I heard sport facilities are actually a source of profit for the universities?
- rococode 8y ago
  It sounds like his pay as a "professor, post-tenure" was reduced to 49% of what it was before, so it's almost certainly a money problem.
lifeisstillgood 8y ago
I am not tenure material but I am working towards a plan - I intend to self fund my own tenure (at least 6 months a year), just to work on the stuff I want to. One day (not really UBI) we shall all self fund tenures ...
- eykanspelgud 8y ago
  Interesting. If you don't mind me asking, how do you plan to do this? Grants? Investors? Trust fund? If you can sustain yourself longer than 6 months, have you considered just starting your own lab/business?
  - lifeisstillgood 8y ago
    The plan is basically early semi-retirement - not tax payer funded tenure. That seems to have come across wrong - the idea is to find a way to fund myself (through my own earnings /savings /business) so Incan do the things I really want.
phkahler 8y ago
>> After all, the number of available tenure-track faculty slots is essentially fixed—at MIT, there are approximately 1000. To create room for a new faculty member, an existing one has to leave. But after a brief dip, we thought, retirements should return to normal, creating room for new recruits. I would have hoped for better intuition from professors at MIT. To me it seems obvious that if the average term of service lasts longer, you'll need replacements at a lower rate. To me it just pointed to the fact that there are more people looking for such positions as there are positions. The later retirement just made an existing problem worse.
- nexusofhope 8y ago
  I was hoping to find this comment here. Exactly my thought as well. I mean, a professor at the MIT, that is someone supposed to be a smart person, right? But still so dead wrong about the obvious here. Pains me a bit to see, honestly. I wonder if this is a case where the "intuition" is influenced by the classic, you know "it can't be true, because I don't want it to be true"..
- sokoloff 8y ago
  Just because the average retirement age moves later does not necessarily mean the average term of tenured service is longer. (The average age at earning tenure could well move up.)
- dahart 8y ago
  > To me it seems obvious that if the average term of service lasts longer, you’ll need replacements at a lower rate. I feel dumb right now that it wasn’t obvious to me. I was thinking in terms of throughput vs latency, and how for a single pipe, increasing latency doesn’t affect throughput. So why would it change for multiple pipes? My bad intuition was that letting people stay longer would drop throughput until everyone that was in the pipe during the latency change retired, and then throughput would restore to the same as before. Doing the arithmetic, it’s easy to see why you’re right, but because it wasn’t obvious to me, I’m not surprised it wasn’t obvious to others. Or at least it makes me feel better...
  - 8y ago
timbit42 8y ago
I'm waiting for a headline that describes what the article is about.
- fidla 8y ago
  It's about an old dude just realizing that by staying in his job past 65, he's put 9 people out of work.
  - stabbles 8y ago
    Not 9 people; he realizes he removed 9 years from someone else's career.
leroy_masochist 8y ago
Slightly off-topic, but isn't it a bit weird that Science Magazine isn't running on HTTPS?
- sh87 8y ago
  Article isn't paywalled. Did not need me to login/register. They did not ask me for my email. Don't care about http/https. Should I ?
  - someguy101010 8y ago
    If you are on a public internet connection you should. I could theoretically replace the content of that page with whatever I want. A crypto currency miner, some zero day JavaScript exploit that will download a key logger on your computer etc. Https helps to mitigate these sort of man in the middle attacks, even on static content.
    - rand_r 8y ago
      I'm on a public internet connection, but I'm not too worried because to perform such an attack, you would have to compromise some physical network infrastructure between me and sciencemag.org, and do it in a such a way to not get yourself in trouble with the law. It's possible sure, but it seems difficult enough to not worry about.
      - someguy101010 8y ago
        You don't even have to go that far, it's usually done between you and the router.
      - fjsolwmv 8y ago
        It's easy for an attacker on your WiFi network, in some cases. Your WiFi network might be encrypted, which might be a broken encryption, or might be unencrypted to discourage excessive use.
fidla 8y ago
this goes into the "obviously" column
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

141 points by lemoncurd 8y ago

iaaacdev 8y ago

What is the impact outside of academia? Are there similar effects in the corporate sector?

rococode 8y ago
Not sure about the corporate sector, but it certainly seems to at least have an impact on American politics. Some 2014 statistics [0] have the average age of representatives and senators at 57 and 62, and several current senators have served for well over 25 years (3 senators right now have been in their offices for over 35 years) [1]. I'm sure it's hard for even the brightest young politician to oust someone who's been in office since before they were born, especially if they're in the same party. [0] https://www.senate.gov/CRSpubs/0b699eff-adc5-43c4-927e-f63045bdce8e.pdf https://www.senate.gov/CRSpubs/0b699eff-adc5-43c4-927e-f6304... [1] https://www.senate.gov/senators/longest_serving_senators.htm https://www.senate.gov/senators/longest_serving_senators.htm
thucydidesofusa 8y ago
Just like academia - it's only a problem for cushy jobs. A lot of people in business retire as quickly as feasible, but a lot of people with cushy jobs or neat perks try to die behind their desks. I had the displeasure of personally knowing a CEO who fought a hostile take over partially because his office, patio, and executive dining were at stake.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
fhbdukfrh 8y ago
Tenure is a pretty artificial condition intended to prevent controversial research from being eliminated out of fear of losing your job. It seems in the corporate world execs do something controversial, get fired and get paid off. I believe average length of tenure in c-suite positions is actually decreasing, so moving in the other direction without any law limiting it.

friedman23 8y ago

Somewhat unrelated but this article reminded me about a passage from "The Book of the New Sun" where the protagonist of the book meets with the master of the guild of librarians. The library is pitch black and the librarian in his old age has gone blind but still holds onto his position as master librarian and his apprentice who is now a balding man in his middle years still attends him waiting for his master to pass away so that he can assume the mantle. The master in the story still exceeds at his work despite his blindness and his blindness is actually what enabled him to discover via touch that the material of the books themselves was just as impressive as the contents :) I imagine the result of removing something like forced retirement ages is similarly nuanced

SomewhatLikely 8y ago

Naive question: why can't they just have more tenure positions?

jjoonathan 8y ago
Money.
buboard 8y ago
Then they 'd have to enroll more students.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Or stop one-upping each other by building ever more expensive sports facilities?
  - sgillen 8y ago
    Schools that don’t do this still have the same money problems.
  - fhbdukfrh 8y ago
    You're referring to MIT's championship football team?
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      I'm referring to all the times I've heard on HN that US universities one-up each other in building sports facilities.
      - nine_k 8y ago
        I heard sport facilities are actually a source of profit for the universities?
rococode 8y ago
It sounds like his pay as a "professor, post-tenure" was reduced to 49% of what it was before, so it's almost certainly a money problem.

lifeisstillgood 8y ago

I am not tenure material but I am working towards a plan - I intend to self fund my own tenure (at least 6 months a year), just to work on the stuff I want to. One day (not really UBI) we shall all self fund tenures ...

eykanspelgud 8y ago
Interesting. If you don't mind me asking, how do you plan to do this? Grants? Investors? Trust fund? If you can sustain yourself longer than 6 months, have you considered just starting your own lab/business?
- lifeisstillgood 8y ago
  The plan is basically early semi-retirement - not tax payer funded tenure. That seems to have come across wrong - the idea is to find a way to fund myself (through my own earnings /savings /business) so Incan do the things I really want.

phkahler 8y ago

>> After all, the number of available tenure-track faculty slots is essentially fixed—at MIT, there are approximately 1000. To create room for a new faculty member, an existing one has to leave. But after a brief dip, we thought, retirements should return to normal, creating room for new recruits. I would have hoped for better intuition from professors at MIT. To me it seems obvious that if the average term of service lasts longer, you'll need replacements at a lower rate. To me it just pointed to the fact that there are more people looking for such positions as there are positions. The later retirement just made an existing problem worse.

nexusofhope 8y ago
I was hoping to find this comment here. Exactly my thought as well. I mean, a professor at the MIT, that is someone supposed to be a smart person, right? But still so dead wrong about the obvious here. Pains me a bit to see, honestly. I wonder if this is a case where the "intuition" is influenced by the classic, you know "it can't be true, because I don't want it to be true"..
sokoloff 8y ago
Just because the average retirement age moves later does not necessarily mean the average term of tenured service is longer. (The average age at earning tenure could well move up.)
dahart 8y ago
> To me it seems obvious that if the average term of service lasts longer, you’ll need replacements at a lower rate. I feel dumb right now that it wasn’t obvious to me. I was thinking in terms of throughput vs latency, and how for a single pipe, increasing latency doesn’t affect throughput. So why would it change for multiple pipes? My bad intuition was that letting people stay longer would drop throughput until everyone that was in the pipe during the latency change retired, and then throughput would restore to the same as before. Doing the arithmetic, it’s easy to see why you’re right, but because it wasn’t obvious to me, I’m not surprised it wasn’t obvious to others. Or at least it makes me feel better...
- 8y ago

timbit42 8y ago

I'm waiting for a headline that describes what the article is about.

fidla 8y ago
It's about an old dude just realizing that by staying in his job past 65, he's put 9 people out of work.
- stabbles 8y ago
  Not 9 people; he realizes he removed 9 years from someone else's career.

leroy_masochist 8y ago

Slightly off-topic, but isn't it a bit weird that Science Magazine isn't running on HTTPS?

sh87 8y ago
Article isn't paywalled. Did not need me to login/register. They did not ask me for my email. Don't care about http/https. Should I ?
- someguy101010 8y ago
  If you are on a public internet connection you should. I could theoretically replace the content of that page with whatever I want. A crypto currency miner, some zero day JavaScript exploit that will download a key logger on your computer etc. Https helps to mitigate these sort of man in the middle attacks, even on static content.
  - rand_r 8y ago
    I'm on a public internet connection, but I'm not too worried because to perform such an attack, you would have to compromise some physical network infrastructure between me and sciencemag.org, and do it in a such a way to not get yourself in trouble with the law. It's possible sure, but it seems difficult enough to not worry about.
    - someguy101010 8y ago
      You don't even have to go that far, it's usually done between you and the router.
    - fjsolwmv 8y ago
      It's easy for an attacker on your WiFi network, in some cases. Your WiFi network might be encrypted, which might be a broken encryption, or might be unencrypted to discourage excessive use.

fidla 8y ago

this goes into the "obviously" column

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]