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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

Wow this guy seems so incredibly young to be a professor! Did he get a professorship right after finishing his PhD?

As others have said in the US if you're teaching a class in a university or college you're generally called a professor. I definitely used that title for all my teachers throughout my college career.

Yes - at the time Matt graduated, this was still the norm in CS. Things are changing and it's becoming more common to do a post-doc, but it's still not unusual to go directly (in the US).

Where do they go from there if they're already a professor from day one? Is there no promotion?

In the UK you won't get to be a professor until your forties, and many people never do.

You start at assistant professor.

To further clarify: The UK has the distinct titles "reader" and "lecturer" before "professor." In the US, if you have a PhD and you're teaching a college class, you're called a professor, even if you're an adjunct (not tenure track). The tenure track titles are "assistant professor", "associate professor" and then just "professor." Informally, we tend to use "professor" to refer to all of them, and it's common for people to say "Professor Doe" even if the person is an assistant professor.

Oh sorry I did know that I remember now.

Here professor is quite a distinguished title, and while it isn't legally protected, I've never seen it used for anyone except a very senior academic who has been formally appointed as a professor.

The US still has lecturers (who normally have PhDs), but the title is different from the UK one.

I have never seen the title "lecturer" used in the US. Can you recall where you saw it? The title "instructor" is quite common when the person does not have a PhD.

Lecturers are part- or full-time teaching faculty (usually not tenure-track, but some schools like UC's have tenure-track Lecturer tracks) e.g., https://profiles.stanford.edu/48960

Interesting, it was not a title used in the schools I attended (Virginia Tech, William and Mary) or have I seen it used elsewhere. I just checked Harvard, and they use it, too, so it's not just a west coast thing.

Lecturer is used at the University of California for instructors with a PhD and no research responsibilities. Some of them even have a form of tenure, "security of employment."

A prominent example in computer science was Brian Harvey

https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~bh/

who designed and then taught the introductory computer science course (CS 61A) for many years and is now retired.

I believe lecturer is used even if they don't have PhDs. At least this was the case at UCSD where we had several.

https://www.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk=69c67db832c84ca4&from=se...

yep, this is often confusing for folks coming in from other countries: http://pgbovine.net/professor-job-titles.htm

Tenure track assistant professor for sixish years, associate professor, (regular) professor, [superlative] professor

In the US the important form of "promotion" is in the form of salary. Titles are nice and probably provide some motivation, but if you can become a chaired professor at a top university, you will bring in a salary several times that of a new hire.

see here for US-oriented details: http://pgbovine.net/professor-job-titles.htm

I was going to write that I disagree with you, but according to the Taulbee survey this is true:

    The percentage of Ph.D. graduates who took North American
    academic jobs rose in 2015-16 for the second straight year,
    to 30.7 from 29.0 last year. However, the percentage of
    graduates taking tenure-track positions in North American
    doctoral-granting computing departments fell from to 10.0 in
    2014-15 to 9.0 in 2015-16. The percentage taking positions in 
    North American non-Ph.D.-granting computing departments
    fell from 2.3 percent to 1.6 percent, while the percentage
    taking North American academic postdoctoral positions
    jumped from 9.7 percent to 14.3 percent.[1]

[1] https://cra.org/crn/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2017/05/2016-...

2002 PhD granted

2002-2003 Senior Researcher, Intel Research (Berkeley)

2003-2011 Harvard

according to his latest webpage at http://www.mdw.la/

First with 4 years as assistant Prof. From the CV:

Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science

July 1, 2010 July 1, 2011

Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor of Computer Science

July 1, 2007 June 30, 2010

Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Assistant Professor of Computer Science

July 1, 2003 June 30, 2007

Intel Research, Berkeley

Senior Researcher

August 2002 July 2003

Looks like he's about 45, which is extremely young to be a professor, but still leaves a 10 year gap between phd and tenure. I think he just looks very young.

In the US tenure track university faculty typically have three ranks: Assistant Professor (upon hire and prior to tenure) Associate Professor (typically awarded at tenure) and Full Professor. All of these ranks are referred to as "professor", in fact, non-tenure track faculty as also frequently referred to as professor.

45 is definitely not extremely young to be a professor. Not in the US, where you start as assistant professor. I know plenty of PhD's who graduate and start in a university as assistant professors, age range starting at around 26. My advisor started at 28.

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