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Comment by ronaldx | Hacker News Reader

Why does tenure lock you down? I'm not aware of this being the case in Europe.

I understand that tenure positions are hard to reach, but if you are providing value (whether that's through skill in research or education or pure 'prestige') - other universities should still want to employ you?

The only sense in which you are locked down is that you have a nice guaranteed job and a lifestyle that is no longer competitive with other opportunities - this is not something reasonable to complain about.

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The entire process is tough. Once you leave tenure at one university for another, you must go through that entire process again. And if ONE faculty member does not like you for some bizarre reason or another, you will not gain tenure. That's why most professors, or any sane person, wouldn't opt to do it all over again unless they are highly sought after.

For example, I'm pretty sure Terry Tao, math professor extraordinaire, would have NO problems moving around to any university and gaining tenure. However, the average Joe schmoe Ph.D. may not have the desired qualities to do that so easily.

It's quite common to move between tenured jobs. Typically you don't have to go through the whole six-year pre-tenure odyssey again. Applying for a tenured job is still quite a process, but that's often true for positions outside academia too, especially senior professional positions.

"Quite common" is an overstatement. The market is nowhere near as liquid. Only a small number of tenured jobs are advertised each year compared to the number of junior tenure-track jobs. Superstars can get hired somewhere else, but for the vast majority of tenured faculty there are not many options (most universities would prefer to hire a cheaper junior faculty member, and many are very limited in how much credit they can give an applicant towards tenure).

Whether it's "quite common" may vary a lot from department to department; in some places my statement may perhaps have been too strong. In the places I've seen firsthand it's quite common for tenured faculty to sometimes interview elsewhere. I did so, and made a jump.

This is also a common strategy for people angling for promotion or a big pay increase -- get an offer elsewhere, and then use that offer to get a promotion at your current institution. I'm not recommending it, but I've certainly seen it done. Common outside academia too, of course.

I can't speak for experiences outside my field, but generally movement happens in the senior academic market by word of mouth alone.

I think Terence Tao is one of the few professors in mathematics for whom the professorship market is truly liquid, and his salary history reflects that. His salary has skyrocketed to over $430k:

http://ucpay.globl.org/index.php?campus=&name=Terence+Tao&ti...

All the faculty getting paid more than him tend to be physicians and surgeons.

For comparison, the average pay of a tenured professor at Harvard (highest paying university on average) is "only" $198k: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/4/10/harvard_salaries... Tao isn't even at Harvard and he's paid over double the average for tenured faculty there. I can only assume UCLA is forced to match what he could get if he left to a place like Harvard.

Terrence Tao is a far stronger "get" than the average Harvard professor.

He is brilliant mathematician, eloquent educator (from introductory to proffesional topics), and a thought leader (with Gowers) in the mathematical research community on meta topics like research style.

Of course, that's the point. It takes such talent in academics to command the sort of job liquidity at the high end that is taken for granted in industry.

That Terence Tao is being paid twice the average tenured salary at Harvard while he's at UCLA speaks to both our points. Unlike most professors, Terence Tao is paid by UCLA what he could hypothetically get if he went to Harvard (speculatively, of course). Other professors would face much more friction in packing up their bags and hopping into tenured positions at peer institutions or higher.

I have never heard of a tenured professor taking a position at another school without retaining tenure.

Well, that makes sense, no sane professor would give up tenure, so any new university job they take would obviously have to offer tenure from the start.

Matt Welsh? He is quite sane and gave up tenure at Harvard to go work for Google.

afterburner meant professors are very unlikely to give up a tenured professor position for an untenured professor position. This is quite different from giving up a tenure professor position for a non-academic job.

My point is never say never. A sane person might give up a tenured position for a variety of reasons.

If you're saying that people leave tenured positions for non-professor positions, sure, happens all the time. But if you have tenure already, any professor position you get at another school will also be tenured. It would be an insult if a school offered a non-tenured position to an already tenured faculty.

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