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Promotion and Tenure, some probabilities

Empirically, Marginal tenure cases lead to marginal careers, or disappointing ones. Probability is above 95%, maybe 98%. They take  much  longer than other cases to be promoted to full, if they are so promoted at all. Rarely does a tenure turndown then have a distinguished scholarly career. Surely there is a stigma to being turned down, but that seems not to be be the issue. Perhaps 1-2% of turndowns have distinguished subsequent careers.  Slow progress from associate to full is only rarely accompanied with the production of a major work when they come up for promotion. Probability is 5% at most. In general, we make many more mistaken positive decisions than mistaken negative ones, the ratio being perhaps 10:1. The basic principle is that being a faculty member of a university that is on the rise is a rare opportunity. Mistaken appointments and promotions preclude our appointing more talented scholars. And there is a agglomeration effect, more exc...
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Seymour Cray was the premier supercomputer designer.  His firm was Cray Research, after he left CDC. John Rollwagen, his CEO,...      The real message was something I always told our people. Namely that we had exclusive access to Seymour's disruptive ability to create uniquely powerful computers from quite common elements. And that we, in turn, uniquely organized ourselves to build and sell as many of those machines as possible in competition with some of the largest companies on the planet.      We succeeded by embracing Seymour's disruptive talent and then singlemindedly organizing around it. I always reminded the Crayons that our success came from that total commitment to supercomputers and if there came a time when we became the disrupted rather than the disrupters, it would be time to move on with happy memories and great resumes.
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The Road To Hell, and The Weather Along the Way

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