A story about luck and awkward timing
Near the end of my fourth year of grad school, my advisor asked me what I was thinking about the job market.
“I don’t know, really.”
I only had a vague notion of how the job market worked. I knew I had to book my hotel room early.
“Can you be ready by November?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe it’s better to wait another year.”
“There can be problems,” he said. “It will be crowded.”
I should have known what he meant. It was my fourth year.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Let’s wait.”
“Your call.”
A year passed. I had learned more about how the market worked. The first part followed a rigid schedule. Applications went out in the fall. Initial interviews were held over a few days in January, usually in hotel rooms at the annual meetings. Departments then invited a few candidates to fly out to campus. After that, it was a free for all. Offers came one at a time, whenever a school was ready. Each one had its own deadline.
There were many theorists on the market that year. Most universities would only interview a few of us.
I applied broadly. I ruled out nothing. I applied for positions in fields that were barely related, in places I knew next to nothing about.
After Thanksgiving, employers started arranging screening interviews. I ended up with three academic interviews: University of Miami, a smaller state school, and a liberal arts college. Also, five with consulting firms.
I talked with the placement coordinator. He was reassuring.
“You might feel like your market is kind of thin, but do your best. In the long run, most people end up where they belong.”
The preparations began. Other candidates were furiously poring over every word of their research explanations. Practicing their delivery. Planning for interruptions. Learning to control the room. One guy had a giant decision tree with questions and responses.
I knew I could never do this. In college, some of my friends studied acting. I saw how much practice and training it took for them to make their lines sound natural. If I tried to give a memorized answer, I would sound like a robot.
So I talked about my paper as much as possible. I tried to find the beats and leave the words alone.
January came. The meetings were in San Francisco. The fucking hills were brutal.
My first consulting interview went well. The second, not so much.
I walked into the room. They greeted me and asked about my paper. I talked for five minutes. They didn’t ask any questions.
“Let us tell you a little bit about what we do.”
In academic interviews, “let us tell you a little bit about us” usually means “this interview is over.” I was confused for a moment. It wasn’t over. Not at all.
They pulled out a flip chart. They wrote an equation.
“Imagine you are consulting on a case involving price fixing. The prosecution regressed price on quantity. Then they added a dummy for the period when the firms were supposedly colluding. The dummy was positive and significant. What would you say to this?”
I had never been particularly good with data, and I hadn’t thought much about regressions since my first year. Even I could see there was a problem. I just couldn’t find the words to explain it.
After some floundering, I got to “that coefficient is picking up a bunch of other stuff besides collusion.”
I did not get invited for a flyout.
At the airport, I ran into Ben. He was a labor economist. He had interviewed with the same company and been asked the same question.
They showed him the regression.
“Is this really what you do?”
They told him it came from a real case.
“This is picking up a bunch of meaningless fluctuations in supply and demand. If this is what you do, I’m not interested.”
He stood up and left.
They called him every day for the next week, trying to get him to come for a flyout.
My other interviews were better. All three academic departments invited me to visit. So did some of the other consulting firms.
My first visit was Miami. On the way to the airport, I got a flat tire right at the airport entrance. I pulled over. I grabbed my bag and ran. I made the flight.
Miami was amazing. I loved it.
When I returned, I went to airport security and told them what had happened.
“Oh, that was you?”
The officer told me where I could find my car. The tire had been fixed. I wish I knew who fixed it.
My next visit was the state school.
I flew in the night before and walked around the small downtown. It was charming. A large company had been based there, and its executives had built magnificent homes. They were now within reach.
The next morning, a faculty member picked me up at the hotel and took me to breakfast. When I got out of the car, there was a mountain of snow in the parking lot.
“Did it snow recently?”
“No. That’s been there since October.”
The people were kind. The pay was decent. At dinner, the fish was excellent. Another classmate was from the area. He also had a flyout there. He told me the summers were gorgeous.
I tried to imagine myself working there. Who would I talk to? What would I teach? Would I have what I needed?
One professor told me he had planned to stay for two years.
He had been there twenty.
He meant to say that he was happy.
My next flyout was at a consulting firm.
The people who took me to breakfast were lovely. I gave my presentation. It felt like the hundredth time.
The conference room had half a table in it. At the end of the table was a large screen showing the other half of the table in another office. If you sat in the right place, it looked like everyone was sitting together. It was kind of cool, in a profoundly weird way.
Afterward, they told me my next meeting would be with someone in the other office.
The guy sat directly in front of the camera. His face filled the entire wall, like Darth Vader on the viewscreen.
“I don’t care how smart you are,” Vader said. “If you’re talking to me, you’re smart enough. I only care if you can follow three rules.”
He told me a story about the O.J. Simpson trial. The prosecution’s DNA expert said the results narrowed the pool to one person in 400 million. The defense’s expert said it was one in 40 million.
So what?
Vader told me that Johnnie Cochran showed the jury the DNA report. It looked like a long barcode.
“The prosecution’s expert says he can read this thing, but he doesn’t even know the difference between 400 and 40. Do you know the difference between 400 and 40? I do.”
Rule 1: no mistakes of any kind, ever.
Then he told me about an academic economist who had served as an expert witness. A team had gone through everything the economist had written, looking for anything that might contradict his testimony.
A paper had been missed. The person assigned to it had “decided to take his girlfriend out for dinner for her birthday,” Vader said with contempt.
Opposing counsel found it. The economist could not explain it. The case was lost. According to Vader, the firm closed.
Rule 2: the job comes first.
I had heard enough. But there was still more.
Rule 3: enjoy the misery.
If I’d been more like Ben, I would have had the afternoon free.
When I got home, I canceled the other consulting flyouts.
I still had the liberal arts college. I went into the visit not knowing what to expect. A professor at my university had gone there for undergrad. He told me he had enjoyed it and that I should give it a shot.
He had undersold it. When they show academia in movies, it’s always tweed jackets, old buildings, small classes, and a professor standing on his desk. My undergrad was not like that. My doctorate was not like that. This place jumped right off the screen.
When I was an undergrad, the students I passed on campus were usually telling stories or making plans. Here, I overheard an argument about Kant.
I loved everything about it.
The flyouts were over. Now came the real pain.
About a week later, I got the first piece of news. The state school had made an offer to my classmate from the area. That was okay. He would probably turn it down, and while he was deciding, I might hear from the other schools.
Ten days later, my classmate told me he had turned it down. That afternoon, the state school called me.
They were offering me a perfectly good life. I wasn’t sure it was the life I wanted.
I contacted Miami and the liberal arts college to tell them I had an offer. Miami told me it had already made an offer to someone else, but I was still on the list. The liberal arts college was meeting in three days.
Three days later, the chair got in touch. The vote had been close, but they had chosen someone else. The candidate had accepted immediately.
I still had another week before I had to answer the state school. A few days later, Miami told me its search was closed.
With nothing to wait for, I accepted the state school’s offer.
My committee took me out for drinks.
I felt like I had given something up, but I couldn’t quite name what it was.
A week passed. I began making plans.
Then I got an email from Miami. Was I still available?
My advisor was on a plane, so I went to see the placement coordinator.
“This doesn’t happen often, but it does happen,” he said. “Ultimately, it’s your life. Most people will understand.”
That night, I called my advisor.
“Curt, Miami wants to know if I’m still available.”
“Are you?”
“I already accepted the other offer.”
“Are you nuts?”
“Not completely.”
The next morning, I told Miami I was still available. When I backed out, the state school wasn’t thrilled, but it was gracious.
I worked at Miami for thirteen years.