Paul Graham postulates that credentials are becoming increasingly obsolete as small companies are paying people by performance, not by seniority. How does this relate to academic scientists? - Michael Kuhn

Paul Graham believes the solution to all of society's ills is the creation of more small startups. He is a man with a hammer in search of nails. - Chris Miller

Having been in both large (IBM) and small (startup) companies, it is hard not to agree a bit with Paul Graham. - Anders Norgaard

It's a bit tenuous, but it somewhat relates via the gradual disappearance of tenure and continued focus on performance beyond year 7. =) - Donnie Berkholz

I am with Donnie. Tenure MUST go - Deepak Singh

Graham's argument is unrelated to academic culture. The argument he makes is (1) the trend in organizations is to smaller companies; (2) smaller companies will tend to select more based on performance, rather than credentials. The reason he gives for (2) is essentially an argument "in the limit", to use the mathematicians' phrase: if all companies had just one person, then it would obviously be true. Therefore, you'd expect this to be more true in smaller companies. (cont) - Michael Nielsen

(cont) regardless of whether you believe any of this, none of the reasoning applies to academia, where the trend is to larger teams and larger organizations. - Michael Nielsen

Getting rid of tenure will lead, in my opinion, to a far more fashion-driven approach, with ever more people concentrating on this year's fad, to make sure their contract is renewed. The current grant system surely leads to enough fashion-driven research. (A few years ago the Australian Research Council announced "priority areas". Applications in those areas doubled in the first year, leading to a great concentration of Australian scientists working in a few highly fashionable areas. Not good, IMO.) - Michael Nielsen

Small companies put more value on street credentials (which expire fast) than on academic credentials. Big surprise. But is this really a new (or even growing) trend? Moreover there don't seem to be a lot more small companies relative to large companies (at least in the U.S.) than there were 10 or even 20 years ago: http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeye... - Eric Jain

Eric, I've posted a link to that page at a forum Paul Graham runs (http://news.ycombinator.com/item... ). With some upvotes, it'll get on the front page, and get some discussion. - Michael Nielsen

Michael Nielsen, I don't think tenure makes hiring any more or less fashion-driven than it already is... (1) b/c everyone already is fad-oriented, (2) there's no reason to assume that tenure is what drives quality of scientific output, and there's no reason to assume that once tenure disappears professor positions suddenly become impossible to hold on to (e.g. the private sector -- lack of tenure doesn't mean mass firings, and even if it did, who's to say those firings aren't good?) - Benjamin Tseng

Regardless of if you agree or disagree with the institution of tenure, Freakonomics author (and John Bates Clark medalist) Steven Levitt's comments are interesting to consider: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007... - Benjamin Tseng

There does need to be a route by which people can pursue what interests them, whether or not anyone else cares about it. Tenure at an academic institution seems to be that route, and it works OK AFAIK. - Mr. Gunn

We all probably agree that it is important to let a scientist be able to pursue what they want and tenure is a mechanism to do that. My problem has always been the criteria which get people tenure? It seems to put an emphasis on volume rather than quality doesn't it? Maybe things have changed, but life as an assistant prof who wants to do something interesting can be pretty hard, especially as you try and build up a group - Deepak Singh

Well you could look at the life of an asst prof as proving he can do the required/sensible/tradtional stuff - if it's good enough, he gets tenure and then pretty much do any random thing, whether it works, is useful etc or not - Rajarshi Guha

Also,m if tenure were done away with and profs were on fixed term contracts, would it be expected that their salaries increase? - Rajarshi Guha

I see the tenure system as a way for the society to get two things out of each scientist: 1) some good, safe, incremental science (in order to get tenure) and 2) some novel, daring, risky, potentially revolutionary science (after gaining the protection of tenure). Both types of science are needed and the system tries to make sure both types are done (but no system is perfect, of course). - Bora Zivkovic

Tenure provides two things, financial security and ability to publish in well-read journals. The bigger issue is with the latter - you are _allowed_ to have brilliant ideas published only if you're tenured, or have a strong support from tenured professor. If you want to hear that you're an idiot (literally) from an editor send a brilliant paper to our favourite prestigous journal as a grad student (real, first hand story - or stories, as I know two such cases). - Pawel Szczesny

This reminds me of something a while back on FF: The PhD used to be a necessary and sufficient credential needed to get tenure, and once upon a time most people with PhD's actually were more or less guaranteed faculty positions: http://friendfeed.com/e... - Michael Kuhn

In the economic world, all you need to do is open up a new market and you have a successful start-up. Basic research doesn't have this immediate economic return, so there needs to be another measure to reward performance. As Pawel pointed out, you largely need backing by big-shots to get something into CNS. There is no real unbiased "marketplace of ideas" that would give rewards to people without the right credential... - Michael Kuhn

@Bora: So in effect you're not in a position to do "daring" and "risky" work until you're old enough to no longer feel inclined to do so... - Eric Jain

No, as someone above noted - you can do that if you have a support of your PI: http://scienceblogs.com/drugmon... or if you are in a particular field it gets easier. I noted it's not perfect, meaning both that you can continue the bandwagon after tenure and that it is possible to make breakthroughs before - but both of those are against the system which favors the other way round. - Bora Zivkovic