Double down? Double or nothing? Or duplicity? Faculty job hunt edition

January 15, 2024 10:20 PM

This week I have to make a big choice - I could take a faculty job at a university away from my partner/family/friends; I could turn it down to continue with my applications in better locations, including one I have a campus visit for next month; or I could listen, against my better judgment, to the advice of my colleagues telling me I should say yes to the first place but keep pursuing the others. More details after the jump.

After years of long, long distance and postdoc-tenuousness, I'm on the job market. I'm in a relatively niche part of STEM, but one for which there are usually a dozen or so faculty jobs every year. I got the exciting news that I have a tenure-track faculty offer at University A, but I need to let them know if I'll be signing the offer by Friday morning.

In favor of doing so is that my postdoc is coming to an end, so I need a job of some sort, and the long distance with my partner would be easier there. I could potentially get another postdoc, but likely not anywhere close to my partner, nor to my parents, who are both pretty old and could use someone living close by to help them (I'm an only child). I'm also getting older myself, and am nervous about pursuing a tenure-track position for too many years, though I could probably do at least one or two more years of postdocs if need be.

Against this is that the job season for my field is really only just beginning - I already know I have a campus visit for another tenure-track position at University B, a much better-located place (e.g., my partner would move with me there) at the end of next month, although I'll be one of four candidates; I'm still in the running for five or six other similarly-better-located places (but of course, those could all evaporate!)

Then there are the surprising number of faculty friends telling me I can, nay should, sign the offer letter and then continue the application process at the other universities. This seems like a bad idea to me for a number of reasons - it's unethical (the reason for University A's early offer date is that they're trying to avoid being strung along by their first choice, like they were the last job cycle), it could get me in to trouble (if University A & B were in communication, they could both rescind my offers, or at least it would make life hard if I didn't get B and slunk back to A), and it would mess with my focus just when I need it to prepare to visit B.

I know that offering advice on choosing between the certainty of A and the potential of B (or C, or D...) might be too tricky given all of the little details, but if folks at least had opinions on the third option, that would be great - I'm inclined to go with my gut on this, and to not try to hold on to A while pursuing B, but I also worry I'm not being pragmatic or hard-nosed enough, or am misintepreting the "norms" of academia. Any thoughts welcome - thank you for reading!

posted by anonymous to Education (21 answers total)

Is it ethical? Not super ethical. Do people do it? Yes. Do I know people who have done this? Yes? Is your reason for doing it (trying to keep your family together) a good one? I think so. Do many people think that what school A is doing (trying to lock in an early hire) is also unethical? Yes.

If you sign with University A, continue courting B, and A finds out, they can't really rescind your offer after you have already accepted -- they will probably think you are a jerk, but if you end up there and are a good colleague, probably eventually it will be water under the bridge.

I know that fields / subfields are small, but you should think through what the actual odds are of people finding out that you are pursuing job B after signing with job A. If Search Committee Chairs in both places went to the same PhD program and are buds, that's probably not great for you in terms of keeping it on the DL. But I wouldn't assume that this will come out. Searches are supposed to be confidential, and while not everyone abides by that, at least some people will, some of the time, maybe even a lot of the time.

My sympathies will always lie with an individual and their family situation and quality of life, rather than an institution and their needs. Yes, it might suck for people in that department if (worst case scenario) they lose that line, but none of them are going to be looking at potentially living apart from their significant other as a result of your decision.

Hope this is helpful!
posted by virve at 10:57 PM on January 15 [10 favorites]

Honestly, I would take job A. The faculty job hunt is completely miserable and capricious and you have absolutely no guarantee of another job offer.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:07 AM on January 16 [10 favorites]

Recognize that if you take Job A, continue to interview with Job B, and then accept a later offer from Job B, you could very well be screwing over someone who is in your exact situation, trying to do the same thing you're trying to do, and for whom your Job A was their Job B.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 4:17 AM on January 16 [1 favorite]

I faced a similar dilemma once: offer in hand but a preferred position scheduled to interview a month out. I signed the offer and withdrew from the other search. In my situation, the later interview was quite late though — unreasonably so in my opinion — which helped with my decision.

I too had colleagues advising me to lie to the first institution. Well, I may not be in your field but if you consider me a colleague then let me be a countervailing voice: don’t lie. Not for any practical considerations but just because it’s wrong. Do not do that which you would have others not do unto you.
posted by dbx at 4:18 AM on January 16 [2 favorites]

I know a professor who tells the story if having been in this position decades ago. She said she went to her advisor, a very enninent senior scholar who had held appointments in multiple top 10 departments, and he said "you can do this ONCE on your career."

So there you go. Take job A and just be sure not to do it again. If you get job B and back out then the person for whom Job A was their Job B will get an offer later.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 4:43 AM on January 16 [6 favorites]

You cannot drop A for a 25% shot at job B. No matter what. So, you will sign for A.

This isn't your last chance at the job market, people can and do interview after taking a job. You might too. It's a different scenario then.

The unique thing here is the timing, and how it interacts with many other people. Not only other candidates, but that if A can't get their #2 or #3 for the wide variety of reasons that negotiations fail (and you could end up turning down B, too) ... the ultimate failure of A's search is really on you. And if you take up an interview slot at B, someone else didn't get an interview there.

As said above, you can do this (interview at B), once, but you will pay some price ranging from living for years with pissed colleagues at A, to being left with nothing. You can also go all in on your pair of 5s and turn down A. But all of your options outside of just taking A carry enough risk that, well, you better be really hot stuff.

I am risk averse and stuck with A. I'm mostly happy.

Feel free to message me if you'd like, I have a good deal of experience on most sides of this, and I'm in stem.
posted by Dashy at 5:37 AM on January 16 [6 favorites]

If you get job B and back out then the person for whom Job A was their Job B will get an offer later.

This is not always true in academia. We've lost multiple faculty lines this way in my department over the past 15 years. And no one ever forgets the people who accepted and then later rescind.
posted by twelve cent archie at 5:53 AM on January 16 [16 favorites]

Would you really be happy at A if partner didn't move there? How would partner feel if you took A, turning many years of LDR into mostly likely many more years?
Why would partner move to B or C but not A? Lots of relationship issues here that to me are just as important as anything else.

Further questions: are the "good" locations just good bc of partner and family? Are they also metropolises with much higher cost of living? Are you happy to get functionally paid a lot less to be in a 'good' location? Why haven't you talked about alignment of departmental research interests? Getting the sense that people are only interested bc it's a 'good' location is a turnoff for hiring committees.

Yes, if you accept A and rescind, it will get out far and wide, and people will remember that. Are you comfortable being "oh that's prof X, they finked on A"?

Sorry, it's a tough call, just throwing out questions to consider. I am more of a "work to live" kind of person, ymmv.
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:02 AM on January 16

Have you already tried asking for more time?

I think early exploding offers aren’t really ok either. This university is trying to play on the tenuousness of academia to get a better candidate than they can recruit if they were in season.
posted by nat at 6:05 AM on January 16 [17 favorites]

I've been on the other side of this in various dimensions, and I agree that accepting and then rescinding an offer is a fairly bad look. If it gets out that you have "accepted" an offer while continuing with B, from B's perspective that's also a fairly bad look (not quite as bad, and from direct experience at this scenario people are more split on this case, probably similar to the advice you're getting).

However, I will say that (assuming your academic job cycles are like mine, sounds like they are), an exploding offer in mid-January is also a really bad look. It would actually make me worry about the decision-making in the department somewhat, and even potentially treatment of junior faculty -- I'd definitely ask around. I'm guessing they're frustrated after some rounds of non-success, but this just is not a great solution to that. It's exploitative of job candidates, and also imo not all that likely to have better success on net. You should definitely negotiate hard with this, and try to force their hand to extend the time for the campus visit -- at least get some improvements to the offer out of it. You should also be aware that they may perceive this as a gamble for a star candidate and negotiate / act accordingly.

It is likely also be worth letting the place with the campus visit know explicitly to see if they can move you up? This forces your hand wrt them knowing about the situation, but they'd quite possibly hear anyways...
posted by advil at 6:36 AM on January 16 [13 favorites]

That artificially early deadline is a crap move by A. Tell them that you need more time, that they should want a candidate who knows for sure it's a good fit. If they recruit you in a coercive way, into a program where you will be a big fish in a small pond, you will just get recruited away in 3 years and they know this. Push for more time, hard. Then, also let your other places know that you already have a competing offer and see. They probably can't accelerate their process too much, but you will get a vibe check (eg "great, thanks for letting us know' vs 'please wait for us, let me talk to my dean, we will move as fast as we can, etc) that might help you decide what to do.
posted by Ausamor at 7:04 AM on January 16 [17 favorites]

Ask A for more time, but roll that ask into the larger negotiation for everything you'd need to be successful (I'm not sure what startup packages look like in your STEM niche, but if there are ways to negotiate greater amounts of flexible time that you could use for travel, you could prioritize those).

There are some complicated ways of combining jobs that work in academia but not elsewhere. For example, you could potentially negotiate a job offer from B that lets you defer your start for one year and spend that year at A (awkward, but potentially better for A than an officially failed search, depending on the details of their institutional politics). People do also move from one tenurable position to another; as a mid-career academic, I've seen my friends and colleagues do this far more often than I once assumed was the norm. This means taking the seemingly safe A option isn't necessarily forever.
posted by yarntheory at 10:05 AM on January 16 [2 favorites]

My opinion as an Internet stranger who's chaired many searches at a small liberal arts university ...

Please do not take the job at A and then pursue B. I agree that the deadline for A is very early; I'm sure that this is because they've been burned in the past by people using them as a way to negotiate better offers at B and C and D, or have been outcompeted by B and C for preferred candidates.

If A is a relatively small school, a failed search can be really damaging for a department; it might mean that they're not able to staff some classes that are needed, or that the position is permanently cut (empty lines are an easy way for deans to deal with budget shortfalls).

Another way to think about that is that the folks at A want people who want to be at A and are excited about A. So are you excited about A? Do you think it's a good fit for you? Could you imagine spending many years there? If you're in a niche field, it may not be easy to find a new position at someplace you like better that satisfies your other constraints down the road.

If you're not so excited about A, then let them know this and pursue B wholeheartedly.

I agree that academia is a small world, that people will find out, and that it could potentially reflect poorly on you to accept an offer and then back out. Especially since you're in a niche area, this is probably not the last time you'll encounter these folks professionally.
posted by chbrooks at 10:23 AM on January 16 [5 favorites]

Since you're in a small field, I think there's a good chance folks will find out what you are up to, and not just at place A. The folks at place B might hear you've accepted at A and wonder why you haven't withdrawn. I can still remember being at place B in grad school and hearing my supervisor comment on the fact that they got an application from someone they knew had recently accepted a position at place A. It seemed sketchy.

I once applied to A and B and knew there was going to be a dream position opening at C soon. I got the first offer from A and was able to turn it down because I had an offer from B. But I never did apply to the dream C position because I had already accepted B. I'm not sure I regret, that either. There was no guarantee I'd get C. I'm no longer at B, but I'm now at E, and it's been a great job in ways C never would have been. And the person who did get the job at C is a friend who is still there, more than a decade later, and it's been a great fit for her.

I think, if you want a tenure track position, you have to accept A. And I think you should do that, if only because, in the long run, it'll be easier to find another TT (or tenured) position elsewhere if you already have. This involves dropping out of B.

But, you don't have to decide immediately. You can decide first to accept A. Then, just sit on that for a bit and think about B. You have some time since the interview is at the end of February. It might be that accepting A gives you a bit of peace and space to think through this all more clearly. You've been in postdoc instability for a while, so I say take a bit to just not do anything except respond positively to A.
posted by bluedaisy at 12:15 PM on January 16 [1 favorite]

I feel the need to push back the idea that A's deadline is coercive crap and a bad looking danger sign.

First, no job offer ever is open infinitely. I'm not sure where the expectation comes from that is should be open until you decide; this is a two-way negotiation, not an admissions offer.

Second, these were the terms of the search that you voluntarily joined. The deadline is not a last-minute decision on the department or Dean, it's not a coercion tactic.

Departments get at best one search a year to hire someone. We really, really want to accomplish that goal. Searches are hella expensive in terms of faculty time and effort, and department funds; failed searches really suck. We are asking you to be professional enough to not waste all of that time and money. This is part of being a good department citizen and colleague.

Thinking of the whole thing as arranging a prom date isn't a bad analogy.
posted by Dashy at 12:27 PM on January 16 [7 favorites]

I want to weigh in again in light of the other feedback you have gotten and emphasize several points for you to consider.

1. While there is no expectation that any job would be open indefinitely, in many fields it *is* considered an unethical practice to "lock in" candidates early, to the point of some professional organizations issuing statements to that effect. Job cycles in North American academia follow a more or less standardized calendar, where often first rounds of interviews are tethered to big national conferences, and a university trying to lock down a candidate by December when the majority of campus visits are happening in March, is widely frowned upon -- maybe not universally but widely -- and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

2. You are getting a lot of advice from people who are appealing to your ethics and duties towards other fellow humans, but who themselves (based on the information in their answers) are nevertheless representing the institutional perspective of a university. I am also an academic, I have chaired and sat on multiple search committees, and I would be annoyed if someone backed out, but I would also understand it. Why? Because the university is not an individual, and in a capitalist system of labor I don't think you are obligated to treat it with the same ethics as you would another individual. It may seem blurry because the people on the search committee *are* also individuals, nice ones, in your field, your peers, but they are representing an institution which cares about its own bottom line. Would it be unfortunate if you backing out made a department lose their line for the year? Yes. But would it be your fault? No. It would be the fault of the provost / upper administration of that university who would yank that line away. I don't think you should consider it to be your ethical duty to be held hostage to neoliberal austerity measures plaguing many campuses, which appear personalized but are, ultimately, structural issues.

There are nuances here, of course -- if you have a friend on the search committee who advocated and vouched for you, you do have individual ethical obligations to that person with whom you have a preexisting relationship. But aside from that? I don't think it's in your interest to confuse ethical obligations that individuals have to other individuals with ethical obligations to an institution that could fire you at will -- even if the institutional nature of who you are considering your duty to is camouflaged by the lovely (hopefully) human people on the search committee who are the proxies for the institution in this context.

3. I have also heard the advice that you can "do it once." It is a common bit of wisdom around this topic. It is probably a good heuristic to adopt, on the safer side of "risky", but how true it is depends on how much of an academic big shot you end up being. People who are stars in my field jerk universities around, and everyone is still chasing after them. Now, the odds of you (or anyone) being a star are low, but I just wanted to give some nuance to that dictum.

4. Finally, people who are telling you that you should just be honest with School A (which is likely stacking the deck for itself in terms of the timeline), and if you would not be happy there, you should just cut them loose and pursue job B with a clear heart, are either not in academia themselves, or are most likely speaking from a privileged position of tenure, and a disconnect from the precarity that someone in your position often experiences. It would be lovely if we all just followed our hearts, and one of the big myths of academia is that it's an environment that encourages and rewards that, but that's just not a feasible way to be for most people.

Whatever you decide, you have this stranger's support. Choose what is best for you and for your family. Feel free to me-mail me if you want to talk this through further.
posted by virve at 3:50 PM on January 16 [9 favorites]

In my experience in STEM, there is no convention of "too early", no such thing as conference interviews, and interviews dates are not judged as "unethical". In North American academic STEM, it's a rolling process with interviews as early as October and as late as May, and no judgements or shade given.

Since the poster noted they are in STEM, I think we can back off of finding the institution at fault for their timeline.
posted by Dashy at 4:58 PM on January 16 [2 favorites]

In favor of doing so is that my postdoc is coming to an end, so I need a job of some sort, and the long distance with my partner would be easier there. I could potentially get another postdoc, but likely not anywhere close to my partner, nor to my parents, who are both pretty old and could use someone living close by to help them

University B, a much better-located place (e.g., my partner would move with me there) at the end of next month, although I'll be one of four candidates; I'm still in the running for five or six other similarly-better-located places (but of course, those could all evaporate!)

I'm getting the impression that your partner would be interested in moving to any of these places except University A? So it's relatively flexible where they would live but for some reason University A is located in a place that they would simply never want to move to?

There are some universities in locations where people end up being very very unhappy with the some physical or social aspects of the area (I know of some examples, but I'd rather not name them). Consider if this is one reason why A is trying to lock in hiring early. Make sure you aren't overlooking something that would make you unhappy there. Why is this job open, did the previous person leave for a step up somewhere else or where they taking any job they could, and why has University A had trouble filling it in the past?
posted by yohko at 5:49 PM on January 16 [1 favorite]

I am in physics. Very early exploding offers are indeed judged in my field, although yes the season can be stretched out. I am at a large state school, not at a small liberal arts school, however, and yes those markets do differ.

Regardless, I believe institutions with early exploding offers (our poster said most on campus interviews are later) are making a questionable and possibly unethical choice. (Exactly how much so depends on many details we don’t have).
posted by nat at 9:55 PM on January 16

At this point (four weeks later) you've already made your decision. I do hope that you've accepted the offer from School A, and that you're continuing to pursue the job at School B.

A bit of context: I'm the person who was hired at School A in February because the original candidate that accepted School A's offer in December then took the job at School B in January. It worked out pretty well for me (and for the original candidate, from what I've heard).

I get really frustrated when I read comments like this one, above:

If A is a relatively small school, a failed search can be really damaging for a department; it might mean that they're not able to staff some classes that are needed, or that the position is permanently cut (empty lines are an easy way for deans to deal with budget shortfalls).

This could happen, sure, but this is not your fault and not your concern. Don't let other people try to make you feel guilty about this! Yes, it could happen, but it's not like other people at school A are going to lose their jobs just because you don't show up. Rather, that would be a heavy indictment of the dysfunction at School A that the dean would be so quick to withdraw funding for an open position. You are not responsible for some other school's bad budget or incompetent administration. These things happen from time to time: a candidate gets hit by a bus, or loses their visa, or gets divorced, or just accepts a different job. A school that can't handle that by, I dunno, just hiring an adjunct for a year is not a school you'd want to work at.

A bit of reality: Schools have indeed taken back job offers from candidates: UIUC, Nazarene. And yes, that includes a signed contract. Stephen Salaida (the guy who lost his job offer at UIUC) ended up driving a school bus for a few years. I don't see UIUC shedding too many tears about that. So if schools can go back on a contract, why can't the candidate? What is the school going to do, waste time suing you? For what? There are dozens of equally-attractive candidates out there who would be happy to pounce on the now-open position at School A. Ask me how I know. Never mind, I already told you in the second paragraph.

Do what's best for you, the candidate. Because the school will always do what's best for them. It's capitalism, baby.
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 8:08 AM on February 11

(after the edit window closed: I looked it up and actually Salaida pocketed $600,000 from UIUC in a settlement. So, that takes away some of the sting from my argument, but I think my main point still holds.)
posted by fuzzy.little.sock at 8:17 AM on February 11