Miscellaneous

That which does not fit elsehwere

Miscellaneous

We list here tidbits, advice, high-level observations, or trivia that, for whatever reason, we couldn’t find a place for elsewhere.

Statistics:

  • We recommend that you read the CRA Taulbee survey. It’s also tremendously useful as you progress through faculty life. About halfway through, it lists salary averages across a variety of department types.
  • The University of Michigan’s Computer Science and Engineering division publishes faculty search statistics in its annual DEI Reports. You can find them on the web. For example:

    [In Academic Year 2023-2024] CSE received 591 applications for faculty positions, of which 562 were for tenure-track positions and 29 were for teaching faculty positions. … We invited 38 of those 591 applicants (6%) to interview. … CSE extended job offers to 15 candidates.

  • And:

    [In Academic Year 2022-2023] CSE received 442 applications for faculty positions … We invited 44 of those 442 applicants (10%) to interview. … CSE extended job offers to 27 candidates.

  • The Michigan CSE DEI reports also contain demographic information (not reproduced here) and go back a few more years.
  • For a more historical perspective, in 2005 Purdue received 380 applicants for 3 job spots in CS and held 14 interviews. In programming languages alone they received 20 applicants and held 6-7 interviews for one spot. In 2005 Virginia received 457 applicants for 4 faculty positions.

Other Advice:

  • This is easily one of the top three pieces of job search advice Claire was given: Collude with other people in your field on the market, if you can. The departments are colluding; you should too. You can even share details about the offers, which keeps things in perspective. Also, it’s a really long/tiring process, so it’s nice to have someone to commiserate with. At first you may resist, mistakenly believing that you are in competition with these people and that it is weird. In our opinion, this is not the correct conclusion. Making friends at this stage can be quite good.
  • Many people will tell you that if all else fails, use rankings to break ties. Better ranked schools will have better grad students and will find it easier to get grant money. One problem with this is that different people remember the rankings differently. Whenever you ask someone for advice, ask for a relative ranking of your schools. You’ll be surprised at how many complete inversions you receive.
  • A personal recommendation or inside champion can be a great boost and can help in case of a tie. If you are trying to end up at school X and you know someone at Y who is friend with someone at X, having Y reach out and briefly mention you positively to X won’t hurt you.