Lemme understand. So because FE doesn't have top 5s, and/or because these junior hires won't all find a tenured job in Germany, LMU should stop being ambitious and forego hiring good people on the job market?
German Market
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A guy so not bothered by his ego that he can hire people who are more successful in the top 5 world than he his. Just imagine how terrible academia would be with more of his type.
The guy without top 5 pub at the place which only wanted to hire people with top 5? Ridiculous.
FE makes a pretty smart department strategy at LMU. Both senior and junior hires were top notch in the last few years. Think of this macro guy from Paris.
Also it seems less likely that a good junior will go back to the market to be at Midwest university after living a few years in Munich.
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You did not get it...
He got a job he would had never gotten without ...
A guy so not bothered by his ego that he can hire people who are more successful in the top 5 world than he his. Just imagine how terrible academia would be with more of his type.
The guy without top 5 pub at the place which only wanted to hire people with top 5? Ridiculous.
FE makes a pretty smart department strategy at LMU. Both senior and junior hires were top notch in the last few years. Think of this macro guy from Paris.
Also it seems less likely that a good junior will go back to the market to be at Midwest university after living a few years in Munich.
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And from the outside: the juniors in Munich were recently quite successful in getting W3s, so I am also not sure if this is really a constraint.
My university would love to hire FE - over and above any behavioral econ guy who got his top5 because all referees were german (or swiss)
Lemme understand. So because FE doesn't have top 5s, and/or because these junior hires won't all find a tenured job in Germany, LMU should stop being ambitious and forego hiring good people on the job market?
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Lemme understand. So because FE doesn't have top 5s, and/or because these junior hires won't all find a tenured job in Germany, LMU should stop being ambitious and forego hiring good people on the job market?
I don’t think anyone said this. It’s just not a department building strategy. And juniors going there need to be aware of the real deal. That’s it. FE is doing a fantastic job within his constraints.
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Lemme understand. So because FE doesn't have top 5s, and/or because these junior hires won't all find a tenured job in Germany, LMU should stop being ambitious and forego hiring good people on the job market?
I don’t think anyone said this. It’s just not a department building strategy. And juniors going there need to be aware of the real deal. That’s it. FE is doing a fantastic job within his constraints.
The German academic system is so terribly outdated.
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FE's impact is much, much higher doing what he does than hunting for a marginal Top 5. He's the Makelele (or Deschamps if you're my age) of German academia. I've seen him in action and the institution-building he does is out of this world. If control was left to KS/MS LMU would be in steep decline because for all their brains they cannot imagine a department 15 years from now.
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Where is the strategy? Hiring everyone you can get with a top 5 because failing at home? This is not a strategy...
FE's impact is much, much higher doing what he does than hunting for a marginal Top 5. He's the Makelele (or Deschamps if you're my age) of German academia. I've seen him in action and the institution-building he does is out of this world. If control was left to KS/MS LMU would be in steep decline because for all their brains they cannot imagine a department 15 years from now.
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Where is the strategy? Hiring everyone you can get with a top 5 because failing at home? This is not a strategy...
Hiring CS, FW, DC (okay, not FE's hire, but still) plus FE, JW and the ifo crowd makes for a good applied micro group with overlaps and common interests. Could have hired applied theorists to replace like for like (CS replaces MS, FW replacd DM) or hired some washed-up W3 from a smaller German uni. Going for people likely to reach their peak while at LMU is good strategy IMO (could be core for some future ExIni proposal).
What would your grand strategy have been? You're running LMU econ and can hire four chairs plus two W2s plus a bunch of juniors. Genuinely curious!
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Where is the strategy? Hiring everyone you can get with a top 5 because failing at home? This is not a strategy...
Hiring CS, FW, DC (okay, not FE's hire, but still) plus FE, JW and the ifo crowd makes for a good applied micro group with overlaps and common interests. Could have hired applied theorists to replace like for like (CS replaces MS, FW replacd DM) or hired some washed-up W3 from a smaller German uni. Going for people likely to reach their peak while at LMU is good strategy IMO (could be core for some future ExIni proposal).
What would your grand strategy have been? You're running LMU econ and can hire four chairs plus two W2s plus a bunch of juniors. Genuinely curious!Replace almost all of them with tenure track positions. Tenure trackers are much more productive and if not, they are gone after 3/6y. After that make teaching load contingent on publication output. Et voila,two decades later you'll finally have a competitive faculty.
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Where is the strategy? Hiring everyone you can get with a top 5 because failing at home? This is not a strategy...
Hiring CS, FW, DC (okay, not FE's hire, but still) plus FE, JW and the ifo crowd makes for a good applied micro group with overlaps and common interests. Could have hired applied theorists to replace like for like (CS replaces MS, FW replacd DM) or hired some washed-up W3 from a smaller German uni. Going for people likely to reach their peak while at LMU is good strategy IMO (could be core for some future ExIni proposal).
What would your grand strategy have been? You're running LMU econ and can hire four chairs plus two W2s plus a bunch of juniors. Genuinely curious!Replace almost all of them with tenure track positions. Tenure trackers are much more productive and if not, they are gone after 3/6y. After that make teaching load contingent on publication output. Et voila,two decades later you'll finally have a competitive faculty.
Yeah, if you have no idea of the constraints of the German system, you can dream up a "strategy" like this.
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Where is the strategy? Hiring everyone you can get with a top 5 because failing at home? This is not a strategy...
Hiring CS, FW, DC (okay, not FE's hire, but still) plus FE, JW and the ifo crowd makes for a good applied micro group with overlaps and common interests. Could have hired applied theorists to replace like for like (CS replaces MS, FW replacd DM) or hired some washed-up W3 from a smaller German uni. Going for people likely to reach their peak while at LMU is good strategy IMO (could be core for some future ExIni proposal).
What would your grand strategy have been? You're running LMU econ and can hire four chairs plus two W2s plus a bunch of juniors. Genuinely curious!Replace almost all of them with tenure track positions. Tenure trackers are much more productive and if not, they are gone after 3/6y. After that make teaching load contingent on publication output. Et voila,two decades later you'll finally have a competitive faculty.
Why would a "conmpetitive faculty" be a good thing?
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I am starting to believe that junior professorships aren't that bad. It is a long postdoc. There is enough time to publish well and then find an alternative job. Whats the problem?
To be fair, LMU is very transparent about the fact that their W1s are Post-Docs, unlike other departments playing the same strategy, like Mannheim. Junior professorships are a really bad concept, but that is not LMUs fault.
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I am starting to believe that junior professorships aren't that bad. It is a long postdoc. There is enough time to publish well and then find an alternative job. Whats the problem?
To be fair, LMU is very transparent about the fact that their W1s are Post-Docs, unlike other departments playing the same strategy, like Mannheim. Junior professorships are a really bad concept, but that is not LMUs fault.
First its not purely research but also teaching.
Noone will hire you anymore because you have potential. You should be on the peak coming out of the postdoc.
You will not move up unless you publish insanely good.So I guess the two recent Stanford hires have a chance if they continue and have contacts to their senior coauthors from before and hire.
Too often I have seen that the postdocs manage 3 secondary fields and not more. Then it gets very very hard. And I do not even think its their fault. They have not enough support and maybe are a bit unlucky. With alack of network its hard. Publishing is hard! And you need more than time to get a top 5 without a star coauthor...
Without pubs it will be hard to move after the postdoc.Other argument is money and family. You miss importanttime if you would need a corporate of government career. You want to start a family and need security
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I am starting to believe that junior professorships aren't that bad. It is a long postdoc. There is enough time to publish well and then find an alternative job. Whats the problem?
many problems
- widespread lack of the w2 level in germany. you have to apply for w3 positions and transition from ap to full prof, bypassing the associate/reader level. yes, there are some, but w3 is much more common and very often your only shot.
- with this comes the problem that you are competing against other full profs that want to move or just get an offer to get a raise (because an offer from another uni is nearly the only way to get a raise as a full prof). maybe you're the best junior on the market, but some big shot senior credibly signals he wants to move- bad luck for you, retry next time, where next time might be in 25 years.
- significant teaching load, especially after the midterm evaluation. 6 SWS is not nothing, even with a generous uni it means you'll have to teach 3-4 courses per academic year.
- w3 application procedures take ages. one reason is that you are competing with other full profs. say a uni liked you and put you on list number 3. number 1 is not really willing to go- great news! but this is not the us junior market, with exploding offers of a week or two. number 1 will use the offer to negotiate with his uni and will take several months to decline. then the same game starts with number 2, until finally, if all goes well, you get the offer. even if you're lucky enough to be on number 1, the usual bureaucracy still means that the list will need to be approved by several uni authorities (who aren't working during the semester holidays, because no rush, right?) and by the ministry. 1 year is quite normal, 2 years is not crazy, 3 is not unheard of. so if you want to get an offer by the end of your six year contract, you better have a good package by the end of your 5th or better yet 4th year.
- okay, so you were unlucky and didn't find anything by the end of the 6th year. no biggie, you could get another w1 or another postdoc somewhere, right? no, because the effed-up german uni system also has the Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz- you can be at most roughly 6 years on a temporary contract after your phd. two w1s in a row? impossible. a w1 followed by a normal postdoc? impossible. the best you can hope for is a postdoc position paid for by third-party funds. so better get your dfg anträge ready in year 4 and 5- which of course takes time away from what you are actually supposed to do, which is research.