tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post594373733986557037..comments2024-03-18T23:13:09.570-05:00Comments on Computational Complexity: Factors for getting a job- Arbitrary, random, and complexLance Fortnowhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06752030912874378610noreply@blogger.comBlogger66125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-10714592357455038212010-07-31T23:31:30.056-05:002010-07-31T23:31:30.056-05:00Vinod Vaikuntanathan -> Toronto (from 2011)Vinod Vaikuntanathan -> Toronto (from 2011)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-78111646029889015162010-07-27T15:57:26.436-05:002010-07-27T15:57:26.436-05:00@Anon64
And if there's some under-representat...@Anon64<br /><br />And if there's some under-representation of income class W/ethnicity X/race Y/gender Z or some combination of these, it must be "proof" in the liberal book of how "the Man" is keeping them down.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-84450118174289701162010-07-27T05:49:02.539-05:002010-07-27T05:49:02.539-05:00Anon63:
If right-wingers say there's no sexua...Anon63:<br /><br />If right-wingers say there's no sexual bias then it must be true! After all, if you can find a single person who doesn't think they were discriminated against, then clearly no one is. Proof by induction!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-83732914733206968452010-07-25T17:04:42.767-05:002010-07-25T17:04:42.767-05:00"being a woman can hurt you, because if you h..."being a woman can hurt you, because if you have any accomplishments, people can attribute it to the "affirmative action" that you got you this far."<br /><br />Yeah, right! <br /><br />http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/04/on_women_stem_and_hidden_bias.html<br /><br />Time to go now. Need to get back to worshiping at the diversity altar.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-48880763558357517322010-07-24T00:00:33.076-05:002010-07-24T00:00:33.076-05:00Another reason why a long cv for a junior person i...Another reason why a long cv for a junior person is suspect because it raises the possibility that this person got on a lot of papers by making "just enough" contribution.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-4235245611174113282010-07-23T17:52:23.878-05:002010-07-23T17:52:23.878-05:00Your list is a good example why long CV is not nec...Your list is a good example why long CV is not necessarily a problem. But the discussion here was about junior people looking for a job. And this is the key point you are missing, and why Jeffe's argument has a lot of truth to it. A senior person has lots of ideas, and collaborates a lot with junior people. At the end, though, the junior people do most of the "boring" work - writing the result, polishing the paper, etc. It is not necessarily wrong, the senior person usually worked hard to achieve these "perks" - and also often has to do other tedious work, such as grant writing, to justify the fact that he/she only does the "fun" part of research.<br /><br />The point being that a senior person - especially famous - can easily write 15+ very strong papers a year, by collaborating with willing junior people on the "fun" part, and letting them to do the rest. On the other hand, a junior person DOES NOT HAVE TIME to do a good job of being a major writer of so many good papers. So it is highly suspicious if a junior person has time to write so many good papers a year. This supports Jeffe's claim.<br /><br />Still, an interesting question remains. Assume a junior person has enough high quality papers, but also padded the CV with a lot of "junk". Is this bad? The answer can go both ways, but is usually "yes". The point is that the junior person "wastes" his/her time on weak research, taking away from what he/she could have done. Even though he/she has enough good papers, it raises the question WHY not to have EVEN MORE. At best, the junk did not take too much time (e.g., collaboration with another weak junior student who did all the work on the junk paper). Still, it took some time, so why bother? There is no advantage for junk, only question marks, so why risk it?<br /><br />In other words, if you are good, there is no upside to produce junk and pad your CV. If you are average, producing junk can fool some people, or can alienate some people - usually the latter (especially if applying to a "serious" place). If you are weak, padding the CV is your only chance to fool somebody. Given this, Jeffe's claim is correct: modulo some extremely rare "gems" (who are easy to recognize anyway by other factors), long CV for a JUNIOR person is highly suspicious.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-19142235544101259072010-07-23T17:51:01.667-05:002010-07-23T17:51:01.667-05:00On the one hand, I agree it is unfair to punish so...On the one hand, I agree it is unfair to punish somebody just because they have a lot of papers, including (many but not all) weak papers. And your list is a good example why this is not necessarily the case.<br /><br />But the discussion here was about junior people looking for a job. And this is the key point you are missing, and why Jeffe's argument has a lot of truth to it. A senior person has lot of ideas, and collaborates a lot with junior people. Often, junior people seek such collaboration (e.g., students but also others faculty if the senior person well known). At the end, though, the junior people do most of the "boring" work - writing the result, polishing the paper, etc. It is not necessarily wrong, the senior person usually worked hard to achieve these "perks" - and also often has to do other tedious work, such as grant writing, to justify the fact that he/she only does the "fun" part of research.<br /><br />The point being that a senior person - especially famous - can easily write 15+ very strong papers a year, by collaborating with willing junior people on the "fun" part, and letting them to do the rest. On the other hand, a junior person DOES NOT HAVE TIME to do a good job of being a major writer of so many good papers. So it is highly suspicious if a junior person has time to write so many good papers a year. This supports Jeffe's claim.<br /><br />Still, an interesting question remains. Assume a junior person has enough high quality papers, but also padded the CV with a lot of "junk". Is this bad? The answer can go both ways, but is usually "yes". The point is that the junior person "wastes" his/her time on weak research, taking away from what he/she could have done. Even though he/she has enough good papers, it raises the question WHY not to have EVEN MORE. At best, the junk did not take too much time (e.g., collaboration with another weak junior student who did all the work on the junk paper). Still, it took some time, so why bother? There is no advantage for junk, only question marks, so why risk it?<br /><br />In other words, if you are good, there is no upside to produce junk and pad your CV. If you are average, producing junk can fool some people, or can alienate some people - usually the latter (especially if applying to a "serious" place). If you are weak, padding the CV is your only chance to fool somebody. Given this, Jeffe's claim is correct: modulo some extremely rare "gems" (who are easy to recognize anyway by other factors), long CV for a JUNIOR person is highly suspicious.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-12678890563012653542010-07-23T17:50:21.387-05:002010-07-23T17:50:21.387-05:00On the one hand, I agree it is unfair to punish so...On the one hand, I agree it is unfair to punish somebody just because they have a lot of papers, including (many but not all) weak papers. And your list is a good example why this is not necessarily the case.<br /><br />But the discussion here was about junior people looking for a job. And this is the key point you are missing, and why Jeffe's argument has a lot of truth to it. A senior person has lot of ideas, and collaborates a lot with junior people. Often, junior people seek such collaboration (e.g., students but also others faculty if the senior person well known). At the end, though, the junior people do most of the "boring" work - writing the result, polishing the paper, etc. It is not necessarily wrong, the senior person usually worked hard to achieve these "perks" - and also often has to do other tedious work, such as grant writing, to justify the fact that he/she only does the "fun" part of research.<br /><br />The point being that a senior person - especially famous - can easily write 15+ very strong papers a year, by collaborating with willing junior people on the "fun" part, and letting them to do the rest. On the other hand, a junior person DOES NOT HAVE TIME to do a good job of being a major writer of so many good papers. So it is highly suspicious if a junior person has time to write so many good papers a year. This supports Jeffe's claim.<br /><br />Still, an interesting question remains. Assume a junior person has enough high quality papers, but also padded the CV with a lot of "junk". Is this bad? The answer can go both ways, but is usually "yes". The point is that the junior person "wastes" his/her time on weak research, taking away from what he/she could have done. Even though he/she has enough good papers, it raises the question WHY not to have EVEN MORE. At best, the junk did not take too much time (e.g., collaboration with another weak junior student who did all the work on the junk paper). Still, it took some time, so why bother? There is no advantage for junk, only question marks, so why risk it?<br /><br />In other words, if you are good, there is no upside to produce junk and pad your CV. If you are average, producing junk can fool some people, or can alienate some people - usually the latter (especially if applying to a "serious" place). If you are weak, padding the CV is your only chance to fool somebody. Given this, Jeffe's claim is correct: modulo some extremely rare "gems" (who are easy to recognize anyway by other factors), long CV for a JUNIOR person is highly suspicious.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-71705162456131738632010-07-23T14:11:22.942-05:002010-07-23T14:11:22.942-05:00ISI has such bad coverage of conferences that it c...ISI has such bad coverage of conferences that it couldn't be used to rank departments, let alone professors. Here's the same list, first by H-index and then by age weighted H-index:<br /><br />Raw H-index:<br /><br />Papadimitriou 88 61<br />Vardi 70 36<br />Sharir 67 29<br />Goldreich 66 39<br />Alon 61 39<br />Halpern 56 36<br />Wigderson 55 31<br />Muthukrishnan 52 35<br />Mehlhorn 51 27<br />Agarwal 49 27<br />Eppstein 46 25<br />Demaine 37 27<br />Ibarra 36 18<br />Spirakis 27 21<br />Hemaspaandra 24 15<br /><br /><br />Age weighted H-index:<br /><br />Papadimitriou 88 61<br />Goldreich 66 39<br />Alon 61 39<br />Halpern 56 36<br />Vardi 70 36<br />Muthukrishnan 52 35<br />Wigderson 55 31<br />Sharir 67 29<br />Demaine 37 27<br />Mehlhorn 51 27<br />Agarwal 49 27<br />Eppstein 46 25<br />Spirakis 27 21<br />Ibarra 36 18<br />Hemaspaandra 24 15<br /><br /><br />Lastly, I don't see how any of the statistics given, even the flawed ones from MathSciNet and ISI, in any way supports Jeffe's comment. <br /><br />His comment was that work from 15+ papers-a-year authors was "more often than not" not very good. The list above flat out contradicts that statement. The work of all or at least most of those above is very good, even if of varying quality.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-12091079016233921542010-07-23T12:50:02.658-05:002010-07-23T12:50:02.658-05:00> If you are going to count citations > you ...> If you are going to count citations > you should use google scholar as <br />> MathSciNet is not very accurate <br />> when it comes to computer science.<br />> As it is the stats posted are<br />> pretty much useless.<br /><br />Google scholar would be useless as well, there is too much junk, self-citations, etc. <br /><br />The fact that Mathscinet vs STOC/FOCS are pretty correlated wheras Mathscinet vs ISI is not correlated is surprising, why is that? Probably ISI collects citations from more junky papers.<br /><br />Google scholar should give a page-rank style (with customizable formulas) ranking procedure.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-32904079190643008122010-07-23T12:20:57.477-05:002010-07-23T12:20:57.477-05:00ISI Web of Knowledge,
345, 268, 267 -Oded Goldrei...ISI Web of Knowledge,<br /><br />345, 268, 267 -Oded Goldreich<br />259, 214, 200 -Joe Halpern <br />523, 220, 195 -Christos Papadimitrou<br />354, 312, 187 -Leo Guibas<br />187, 167, 160 -Micha Sharir<br />235, 167, 150 -Noga Alon <br />240, 165, 133 -Oscar Ibarra<br />222, 221, 126 -Moshe Vardi<br /> 97, 93, 93 -Kurt Mehlhorn<br />270, 194, 86 -Avi Wigderson<br /><br /> 64, 60, 56 -Pankaj Agarwal <br />196, 65, 55 -David Eppstein<br /> 56, 47, 39 -Paul Spirakis<br /> 50, 41, 39 -S. Muthukrishnan<br /> 28, 28, 28 -Erik Demaine<br /> 31, 24, 20 -Lane HemaspaandraAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-83081039756068794262010-07-23T12:10:34.703-05:002010-07-23T12:10:34.703-05:00total citations, top three cited papers (books and...<i>total citations, top three cited papers (books and survey articles<br />excluded) in MathSciNet.</i><br /><br />If you are going to count citations you should use google scholar as MathSciNet is not very accurate when it comes to computer science. As it is the stats posted are pretty much useless.<br /><br />You also need to adjust for age, as older papers are more cited than younger papers.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-32555501431651342832010-07-23T11:52:35.898-05:002010-07-23T11:52:35.898-05:00Why is that the right metric? Why don't you us...Why is that the right metric? Why don't you use<br />the number of STOC/FOCS papers instead?<br /><br />82 -Avi Wigderson<br />52 -Christos Papadimitrou<br />50 -Noga Alon <br />47 -Oded Goldreich<br /><br />25 -Micha Sharir<br />20 -Moshe Vardi<br />19 -Leo Guibas<br /> <br />15 - Joe Halpern <br />14 -S. Muthukrishnan<br />11 -David Eppstein<br /><br /> 8 -Paul Spirakis<br /> 8 -Oscar Ibarra<br /> 7 -Pankaj Agarwal <br /> 6 -Kurt Mehlhorn<br /> 6 -Erik Demaine<br /><br /> 1 -Lane HemaspaandraAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-18374435740653964672010-07-23T11:17:39.244-05:002010-07-23T11:17:39.244-05:00That just supports JeffE's comments. There is ...That just supports JeffE's comments. There is a *huge* variance among<br />those you listed. If you want to be quantitative, here is the same list <br />with total citations, top three cited papers (books and survey articles <br />excluded) in MathSciNet. The number of citations to the third most cited<br />paper kind of gives it away.<br /><br />2141 | 165, 62, 61 -Christos Papadimitrou<br />3973 | 89, 82, 67 -Noga Alon <br />1278 | 88, 71, 60 -Oded Goldreich<br />1061 | 73, 67, 60 -Avi Wigderson<br /><br /> 786 | 51, 51, 40 -Leo Guibas<br />1465 | 51, 40, 39 -Micha Sharir <br /> 629 | 109, 31, 30 -Moshe Vardi<br /><br />1052 | 62, 33, 23 -Pankaj Agarwal<br /> 236 | 27, 25, 22 -Paul Spirakis<br /> 346 | 32, 29, 19 -Joe Halpern<br /> 632 | 35, 21, 19 -David Eppstein <br /><br /> 622 | 24, 19, 15 -Kurt Mehlhorn<br /> 371 | 24, 17, 15 -Lane Hemaspaandra <br /> 244 | 16, 14, 13 -S. Muthukrishnan<br /> 339 | 15, 14, 12 -Erik Demaine<br /> 270 | 44, 25, 9 -Oscar IbarraAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-88639645128462551862010-07-23T09:15:18.172-05:002010-07-23T09:15:18.172-05:00a question was asked whether these 15+ papers are ...<i> a question was asked whether these 15+ papers are good or not.<br /><br />...because more often than not, the answer is no. </i><br /><br />Have a look at the list of most prolific theory authors in DBLP with ~15 papers a year<br /><br />-Micha Sharir<br />-Noga Alon<br />-Moshe Vardi<br />-Joe Halpern<br />-Christos Papadimitrou<br />-Paul Spirakis<br />-Erik Demaine<br />-David Eppstein<br />-Leo Guibas<br />-Kurt Mehlhorn<br />-Oscar Ibarra<br />-Oded Goldreich<br />-Lane Hemaspaandra<br />-Pankaj Agarwal<br />-S. Muthukrishnan<br />-Avi Widgerson<br /><br />I'll let the readers decide.<br /><br />There is a bit of circular reasoning in your comments: I don't like candidates that publish a lot because they publish a lot. Also their students tend to publish a lot and did I mention that I don't like candidates that publish a lot? Hence I don't like candidates that publish a lot as they poison the environment. QED.<br /><br />Some people publish three or four paper a year each of which is a gem while others, like those listed above, are fountains of insight and ideas, big and small. There is simply no shortcut in evaluating candidates by length of CV.<br /><br />It also strikes me that I've heard all of these criticisms before, in a slightly different context. The person being criticized for publishing too much "irrelevant" work was one P. Erdos.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-82481808769477248352010-07-23T09:10:22.948-05:002010-07-23T09:10:22.948-05:00a question was asked whether these 15+ papers are ...<i> a question was asked whether these 15+ papers are good or not.<br /><br />...because more often than not, the answer is no. </i><br /><br />Have a look at the list of most prolific theory authors in DBLP with ~15 papers a year<br /><br />-Micha Sharir<br />-Noga Alon<br />-Moshe Vardi<br />-Joe Halpern<br />-Christos Papadimitrou<br />-Paul Spirakis<br />-Erik Demaine<br />-David Eppstein<br />-Leo Guibas<br />-Kurt Mehlhorn<br />-Oscar Ibarra<br />-Oded Goldreich<br />-Lane Hemaspaandra<br />-Pankaj Agarwal<br />-S. Muthukrishnan<br />-Avi Widgerson<br /><br />I'll let the readers decide.<br /><br /><i>Even if there are diamonds in the slurry, I have to ask—why did they publish all that other stuff? Why didn't they make one big splash instead of this long, meager dribble? Did they not notice that most of their papers were weak? Are they publishing so many papers to advance the state of the art, or only to make their CV longer? Are they going to value quantity over quality in their own PhD students? Or am I in fact witnessing a miracle candidate?<br /><br />Despite what Dr. Anonymous two steps above me suggests, these are not irrelevant issues. I don't want my department associated with someone known to publish reams of crap, or who wastes my colleagues' time reviewing tons of incremental papers, or who thinks they're Thor's gift to computer science when they're not, or who tries to convince PhD students that their CVs need to look like the Manhattan Yellow Pages. Those aren't the people I want to work with; that's not the culture I want to work in; that's not (in my opinion) what's best for the Advancement of Knowledge™.<br /><br />The problem isn't just that they may not have significant contributions, but also that they may have too many not-significant contributions. (See my earlier comment about "max" vs "sum".)</i><br /><br />This is circular reasoning: I don't like candidates that publish a lot because they publish a lot. Also their students tend to publish a lot and did I mention that I don't like candidates that publish a lot? Hence I don't like candidates that publish a lot as they poison the environment. QED.<br /><br />Absent there are actual reasons why someone with substantial contributions plus a bunch of smaller papers is bad for science. <br /><br />Different researchers have different styles. Some people publish three or four paper a year each of which is a gem while others, like those listed above, are fountains of insight and ideas, big and small. There is simply no shortcut in evaluating candidates by length of CV.<br /><br />It also strikes me that I've heard all of these criticisms before, in a slightly different context. The person being criticized for publishing too much "irrelevant" work was one P. Erdos.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-43573388801231193352010-07-23T09:09:06.724-05:002010-07-23T09:09:06.724-05:00a question was asked whether these 15+ papers are ...<i> a question was asked whether these 15+ papers are good or not.<br /><br />...because more often than not, the answer is no. </i><br /><br />Have a look at the list of most prolific theory authors in DBLP with ~15 papers a year<br /><br />-Micha Sharir<br />-Noga Alon<br />-Moshe Vardi<br />-Joe Halpern<br />-Christos Papadimitrou<br />-Paul Spirakis<br />-Erik Demaine<br />-David Eppstein<br />-Leo Guibas<br />-Kurt Mehlhorn<br />-Oscar Ibarra<br />-Oded Goldreich<br />-Lane Hemaspaandra<br />-Pankaj Agarwal<br />-S. Muthukrishnan<br />-Avi Widgerson<br /><br />I'll let the readers decide.<br /><br /><i>Even if there are diamonds in the slurry, I have to ask—why did they publish all that other stuff? Why didn't they make one big splash instead of this long, meager dribble? Did they not notice that most of their papers were weak? Are they publishing so many papers to advance the state of the art, or only to make their CV longer? Are they going to value quantity over quality in their own PhD students? Or am I in fact witnessing a miracle candidate?<br /><br />Despite what Dr. Anonymous two steps above me suggests, these are not irrelevant issues. I don't want my department associated with someone known to publish reams of crap, or who wastes my colleagues' time reviewing tons of incremental papers, or who thinks they're Thor's gift to computer science when they're not, or who tries to convince PhD students that their CVs need to look like the Manhattan Yellow Pages. Those aren't the people I want to work with; that's not the culture I want to work in; that's not (in my opinion) what's best for the Advancement of Knowledge™.<br /><br />The problem isn't just that they may not have significant contributions, but also that they may have too many not-significant contributions. (See my earlier comment about "max" vs "sum".)</i><br /><br />This is circular reasoning: I don't like candidates that publish a lot because they publish a lot. Also their students tend to publish a lot and did I mention that I don't like candidates that publish a lot? Hence I don't like candidates that publish a lot as they poison the environment. QED.<br /><br />Absent there are actual reasons why someone with substantial contributions plus a bunch of smaller papers is bad for science. <br /><br />Facts are that different researchers have different styles. Some people publish three or four paper a year each of which is a gem while others, like those listed above are fountains of insight and ideas, big and small. There is simply no shortcut in evaluating candidates by length of CV.<br /><br />It also strikes me that I've heard all of these criticisms before, in a slightly different context. The person being criticized for publishing too much "irrelevant" work was one P. Erdos.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-88454237640220595992010-07-23T09:08:11.592-05:002010-07-23T09:08:11.592-05:00a question was asked whether these 15+ papers are ...<i> a question was asked whether these 15+ papers are good or not.<br /><br />...because more often than not, the answer is no. </i><br /><br />Have a look at the list of most prolific theory authors in DBLP with ~15 papers a year<br /><br />-Micha Sharir<br />-Noga Alon<br />-Moshe Vardi<br />-Joe Halpern<br />-Christos Papadimitrou<br />-Paul Spirakis<br />-Erik Demaine<br />-David Eppstein<br />-Leo Guibas<br />-Kurt Mehlhorn<br />-Oscar Ibarra<br />-Oded Goldreich<br />-Lane Hemaspaandra<br />-Pankaj Agarwal<br />-S. Muthukrishnan<br />-Avi Widgerson<br /><br />I'll let the readers decide.<br /><br /><i>Even if there are diamonds in the slurry, I have to ask—why did they publish all that other stuff? Why didn't they make one big splash instead of this long, meager dribble? Did they not notice that most of their papers were weak? Are they publishing so many papers to advance the state of the art, or only to make their CV longer? Are they going to value quantity over quality in their own PhD students? Or am I in fact witnessing a miracle candidate?<br /><br />Despite what Dr. Anonymous two steps above me suggests, these are not irrelevant issues. I don't want my department associated with someone known to publish reams of crap, or who wastes my colleagues' time reviewing tons of incremental papers, or who thinks they're Thor's gift to computer science when they're not, or who tries to convince PhD students that their CVs need to look like the Manhattan Yellow Pages. Those aren't the people I want to work with; that's not the culture I want to work in; that's not (in my opinion) what's best for the Advancement of Knowledge™.<br /><br />The problem isn't just that they may not have significant contributions, but also that they may have too many not-significant contributions. (See my earlier comment about "max" vs "sum".)</i><br /><br />This is circular reasoning: I don't like candidates that publish a lot because they publish a lot. Also their students tend to publish a lot and did I mention that I don't like candidates that publish a lot? Hence I don't like candidates that publish a lot as they poison the environment. QED.<br /><br />Absent there are actual reasons why someone with substantial contributions plus a bunch of smaller papers is bad for science. <br /><br />Facts are that different researchers have different styles. Some people publish three or four paper a year each of which is a gem while others, like those listed above are fountains of insight and ideas, big and small. There is simply no shortcut in evaluating candidates by length of CV.<br /><br />It also strikes me that I've heard all of these criticisms before, in a slightly different context. The person being criticized for publishing too much "irrelevant" work was one P. Erdos.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-54966073300265987922010-07-22T19:04:14.541-05:002010-07-22T19:04:14.541-05:0010 was an example. The question I was trying to as...10 was an example. The question I was trying to ask is, if someone has enough good papers but also many papers which are of lower quality, and just lists those top ones as her main product of his research, would you still consider having many papers of lower quality as a negative?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-59677429835251831372010-07-22T18:07:50.343-05:002010-07-22T18:07:50.343-05:00Just wondering, what if someone publishes lots of ...<i>Just wondering, what if someone publishes lots of papers of diverse quality, but only puts her top 10 on her CV?</i><br /><br />will they hit Google Scholar and try to figure out why you are embarrassed to list the other papersAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-16365221433672073332010-07-22T17:23:04.880-05:002010-07-22T17:23:04.880-05:00Just wondering, what if someone publishes lots of ...<i>Just wondering, what if someone publishes lots of papers of diverse quality, but only puts her top 10 on her CV?</i><br /><br />it depends on the school and the length of time in the research world<br /><br />there are departments that will drop you right in the 'no' stack if you don't have a high enough papers:years ratio for the position according to their own metricAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-56302283663828904552010-07-22T16:37:22.833-05:002010-07-22T16:37:22.833-05:00Just wondering, what if someone publishes lots of ...Just wondering, what if someone publishes lots of papers of diverse quality, but only puts her top 10 on her CV?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-42668646221742427002010-07-22T01:39:43.794-05:002010-07-22T01:39:43.794-05:00I've seen candidates publishing more than 15 p...<em>I've seen candidates publishing more than 15 papers a year and then a question was asked whether these 15+ papers are good or not.</em><br /><br />...because more often than not, the answer is no. <em>Most</em> of the uncharacteristically long CVs I've seen in hiring committee meetings are chock full of crap. Or they're good in the aggregate, but appear to advance their research in too many incremental steps. Even if there are diamonds in the slurry, I have to ask—why did they publish all that other stuff? Why didn't they make one big splash instead of this long, meager dribble? Did they not notice that most of their papers were weak? Are they publishing so many papers to advance the state of the art, or only to make their CV longer? <b>Are they going to value quantity over quality in their own PhD students?</b> Or am I in fact witnessing a miracle candidate?<br /><br />Despite what Dr. Anonymous two steps above me suggests, these are <em>not</em> irrelevant issues. I don't want my department associated with someone known to publish reams of crap, or who wastes my colleagues' time reviewing tons of incremental papers, or who thinks they're Thor's gift to computer science when they're not, or who tries to convince PhD students that their CVs need to look like the Manhattan Yellow Pages. Those aren't the people I want to work with; that's not the culture I want to work in; that's not (in my opinion) what's best for the Advancement of Knowledge™.<br /><br />And notice I said “suspicious”, not “deadly”. <em>Of course</em> we read recommendation letters and search citation indices and even (gasp) read the actual papers. Sometimes that's enough to allay my suspicions; yes, there are miracle candidates. But just often enough for me to keep my suspicions, they're proven right.<br /><br /><em>So where exactly does the long CV comes in as a negative, rather than the fact that the person does not have significant contributions?</em><br /><br />The problem isn't just that they may not have significant contributions, but also that they may have too many not-significant contributions. (See my earlier comment about "max" vs "sum".)<br /><br /><em>Sounds like you guys are rationalizing a case of paper envy, rather than following sound academic decisions.</em><br /><br />What the hell is “paper envy”? Result envy or impact envy or reputation envy I could get behind, but <em>paper</em> envy? Really? Since when are papers something to be envious about?<br /><br /><br />Also: Not publicly taking credit for your opinions? <em>Deeply</em> suspicious.JeffEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17633745186684887140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-12780816980052405372010-07-21T20:54:43.412-05:002010-07-21T20:54:43.412-05:00There are some interesting political issues that c...There are some interesting political issues that can either work for or against you. For instance, I am a Canadian, and after I published a paper in a well-regarded international publication, for two years I was short-listed for every position I applied for outside of Canada, but have never been short-listed within Canada. A close friend of mine recently suggested that because my Ph.D. supervisor has a reputation for rejecting NSERC grant applications. his recent grad students pay a price. I am working in industry now.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3722233.post-61811491924183906022010-07-21T10:07:00.877-05:002010-07-21T10:07:00.877-05:00I think the point is not that these are the RIGHT ...I think the point is not that these are the RIGHT factors, it is that these are REAL factors that are used in making hiring decisions everyday whether or not they are right or wrong.<br /><br />And in most cases there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com