#1 ingredient for a successful job hunt: Job Market Objective Function.

Without your own objective function, it’s scarily easy to accidentally adopt someone else’s goals. Clearly, maximizing someone else’s goals means you’re unlikely to reach your true optimal outcome. But time and again people are stumped when I ask what their JM Objective Fxn is.

I know. Defining a JM Objective Fxn is hard! Articulating and weighting your values and priorities requires a level of introspection rarely demanded in an econ PhD.

Despite huge advents in IT, it took the pandemic to unlink office work and the office. Why were workers so tied to the office? How does the office impact on-the-job training & output?

🧵 on work w/ @emma_k_h and Mandy Pallais
Presented at NBER SI Mon @ 9AM We examine the impact of proximity among software engineers at a Fortune 500 co.

Before the pandemic, some teams were in the same building & others were split across buildings. Distributed teams held daily meetings online.

We use a diff-in-diff compare the two team types

Thoughts specifically for Remote flyouts. Third of 3 threads on flyouts. If you are given the option between in person and remote, ceteris paribus, in person is probably better.

(Obviously in the current environment, ceteris is not paribis, but I can’t speak to your specific situation)

A thread on In-Person flyouts. A complement to the main thread on flyouts. Maximize the number of days you can be in the same location. Try to schedule two flyouts in the same city without going back home in between if you can.

Folks sleep poorly your first night in a new environment.
scientificamerican.com/article/why-we…

A handful of thoughts on flyouts for job market candidates.
One of three 🧵s – threads 2 and 3 have tips specific to in-person flyouts and remote flyouts

#EconTwitter #EconJobMarket #AcademicTwitter #AcademicChatter You have two goals in a flyout:

Primarily, you are still angling for an offer and therefore should mostly focus on making a good impression.

Yet you also need to gather enough information so that you know your own preferences.

Here is a list of questions I received most often during (first round) interviews, per request. Hope the list helps this year’s JMCs prep
#EconTwitter #EconJobMarket
🧵 Questions about the JMP:

clarifications? What’s the significance/contribution? What are the shortcomings? How would you enhance it & (implicitly) what is stopping you from doing so? What is your main policy implication?

Emily Dickinson -- five poems for researchers.
Born today in 1830.
A short 🧵 E Dickinson on growth mindset/imposter syndrome
We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies—
The Heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the Cubits warp
For fear to be a King—

Here’s a data download for first round interviews. Wisdom I received and things I learned along the way when I was on the JM last year. Please feel free to add your 2c! (I’ll post my notes on flyouts soon)
long 🧵 1/x
#EconTwitter #EconJobMarket Your goal is to convince them that you are smart, competent, & kind, that you have an interesting pipeline of work, that you would be a great colleague, and that you will come if they offer you a job. (Insight from @lkatz42)
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