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W2 Positions in Germany after Postdocs elsewhere
I am currently a research fellow in Europe and am possibly interested in permanent positions in Germany. I can find resources about how one climbs through the ranks in Germany from W1 to W2 or from Habilitation to W2. I know that German academia is quite competitive, but they do make senior hires from outside of Germany.
My question is:
Does Germany require a Habilitation or W1 before hiring someone for a W2 position if they are coming from outside of Germany? If so, is this rare? What's the standard trajectory in German academe for someone that has done postdocs elsewhere?

Does Germany require a Habilitation or W1 before hiring someone for a W2 position if they are coming from outside of Germany?

Not generally, and often not even for people from "within" Germany. The strict Habilitation requirement is in the decline, also and and particularly in the best universities in Germany.
What is required though is a "habilitation-like" career stage / qualification. That is, there should not be any doubt that you would be able to receive habilitation easily if you applied for it with your current CV. This is generally no problem for candidates that already hold a position comparable to a W2 professorship (say, an associate professor in the US or a Senior Lecturer in the UK), but if you are currently a postdoc it is important that you underline your independence in research and teaching, your standing in your community, as well as your ability to acquire grants and external funding (i.e., the criteria among which habilitation is usually decided).
Another factor may be academic age - in many cases academically older candidates will find it easier to communicate that they are in a career stage comparable to W2 professor than excellent younger ones. I have the impression that in Germany many commissions either do not, or fail to, properly normalize qualifications based on academic age; that is, they will often prefer more modestly qualified senior candidates over very promising younger ones.
Finally, another challenge may be language. You may still find a requirement to be able to teach in German in many job postings for positions in Germany.

If so, is this rare? What's the standard trajectory in German academe for someone that has done postdocs elsewhere?

I think the German trajectory for most people from within and the outside is like that:
PhD student -> postdoc (sometimes for many, many years) -> [optionally] W1 / junior professorship -> either W2 or "bad" W3 professorship, depending on experience -> W3
In most cases, none of the steps after PhD student -> postdoc happens automatically or based on a tenure clock. The usual way to e.g., get one's W2 position upgraded to W3 is by getting a competitive offer for a W3 position at another university. Also note that traditionally many academics in Germany never held a W1 position, but rather did extensive postdocs and/or one or more "Vetretungsprofessuren" (akin to a visiting professor).

is this rare?

(I am assuming the question is whether it is rare that a postdoc from the outside gets hired at a W2 position)
It's not rare, but it is also not insanely common. While full professors do commonly get hired from the outside (especially at the top institutions), my impression is that most are already in a professor-like position before making the move. This naturally also means that most outside hires seem to be on W3 rather than W2 level. As always, when one is trying to break in from the outside, you are in a slightly disadvantageous position in comparison to somebody who is already "in the system".


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What counts as an outcome of a grant?
When one goes from one grant to another, there are a few papers that are in the pipeline during the process. I have one such paper that was in submission when I switched grants. Submitted on the first grant, and then revised and resubmitted on the second and with additional changes on the second. This paper was then accepted. I acknowledged both grants in the final transcript as work was done to the paper on both grants.
The second grant agency asks for updates of research outcomes and consequences during the grant in a very black and white way of listing publications that are a product of the research. Is this paper considered a research outcome to the second grant?
This is in mathematics, if that helps, and there was some math to be done to fix the referee's complaint(s).

I'd regard the paper as an outcome of every grant that's acknowledged in the paper.

The rule of thumb that I generally use is that if any portion of a work has been supported by a particular grant, then it counts as part of the outcomes of that grant.
Typically, in reporting on outcomes, one is asked not just for names of papers, but also for some sort of narrative of the work, in which it is simple to state what work was done, much as you just did.  If for some odd reason the funding agency only wants you to list papers and nothing else, then I would think that it is incumbent upon them to understand that they may not be the sole source of support for some of the items listed.

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Total Grant Amount or Amount from Government on CV
There are several questions on here that talk about adding dollar amounts of grants onto CV's. The consensus has been that it is a good idea.
I just won a national fellowship from the government to fund me. The funding amount is X units of currency. One of the contingencies is that, if successful, the university throws in X/5 and then the UK government funds 4X/5.  I am not sure if I should put X or 4X/5.
The offer letter states X, so it makes sense to put that number on there; however, the publicly available amount that the government posts on their website is the 4X/5 total. I am fearful that if I put X then people will fact-check and see the 4X/5 amount and think that I'm exaggerating. Which is the appropriate number to put on a CV?
Thank you for your time!

In the US, this kind of arrangement is called "cost sharing." Under current rules federal agencies are no longer allowed to require cost sharing and institutions cannot propose cost sharing, although this was sometimes required in the past.
The way to describe this in a CV would normally be to give the amount of the award as one number, plus the amount of cost share as a second number.
e.g.
B. Borchers.  Searching for Tribbles in the Oort Cloud.  Extra Terrestrial Biology Funding Agency, 2015-2017.  $100,000 award plus $20,000 in institutional cost sharing.

In the end, the total amount is what you got for your work, where it came from is less relevant.

See the OP's question:  the amount listed on the government website is 4x/5.  My formulation above is consistent with that and also explains the total amount of funding.  If the OP simply listed "x", then anyone checking this against the database would find a discrepancy.

Similar issues occur when "supplementary funds" are awarded on top of the original grant award.

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Where to start for a Topics Class
I am teaching my first non-examinable graduate course this Winter term. This course is for students ranging from Masters' students to PhD students in Pure Mathematics and is a course for students to see a topic that is a bit more specialised than the typical qualifier type course.
Since it is a bit more specialised, I am having a bit of an issue figuring out where to start. I can start with a bit of background at the risk of boring some of the more advanced PhD students working in my field, or I can tell the students that are not as adept where to find that material to catch up. I am leaning more towards the latter so that I can have more students taking the course, but the course is only 16 one-hour lectures and I want to get to some interesting material that can help someone starting to work in this field. I am also concerned I might be being overzealous in what I can accomplish in this time and might speed right through details that would be useful. (My imposter syndrome is acting up and making me feel like a lot of this stuff is trivial when maybe it's not!)
The question is this: How do you in a topics course balance giving general theory and also the more specific information that is relevant to the current research trend? I'm afraid if I spend too much time on general theory, I may end up not touching on what research is being done today. Would this be bad just spending the last lecture or two in a topics class just punting the question "What's happening nowadays in this field?"
Thanks in advance!

While I do not consider this question off-topic here, you may get better, and more specialised answers on [matheducators.se].

It is never a mistake to start with the basics.

@JeffE, (about "pure math", e.g.), on one hand, I agree completely, on another, I disagree strongly. :)  That is, in much contemporary fancy-pure-math, there're "generalizations" posing as basics, and there're critical foundation basics... and the problem is that many contemporary sources do not distinguish these, and also it's often very hard for novices to distinguish. So in the last 15-20 years I've had the alleged epiphany that systematically building up to [something] will usually fail completely, while back-filling has a fair chance of success. But... words have subjective meanings...

Just do a whirlwind tour of the required basics, give an extensive list of pointers for self-study, and see how it goes. Revise your approach if you see too many blank stares or basic questions, perhaps even with voluntary extra "fill in the basics" classes. But do keep a finger on the pulse of he course.

One concept/approach, which is what I try to keep in mind in addressing a heterogenous audience in a not-required more-advanced course, is exactly to not try to be "systematic", much less "complete". As noted in the question, it would be easy to use all the available time for "general theory", without ever getting around to the points of interest that motivated the course in the first place. So, instead of "laying a systematic foundation...", I try to get to interesting phenomena as directly as possible, and then back-fill "general theory" as relevant. For that matter, "general theory" is more widely available in textbooks and on-line notes than are interesting examples (since the latter tend to be written in "research papers" aiming at more-expert audiences), so students can more easily do further back-fill themselves if desired.
For that matter, some "general theory" is somehow over-hyped as a big deal, when, in fact, the introductory parts of it are really very elementary. For example, in an introduction to modular/automorphic forms (my interest...), one could position the thing as having prerequisites of "Lie theory", "algebraic number theory", "representation theory", and/or "algebraic geometry". It is certainly true that all these things are relevant and useful, but (I claim) it is not the case that one must have "systematically" studied all these things prior... For example, "Lie theory" at the entry level can be simply a study of behavior of two-by-two real and complex matrices. "Algebraic number theory" at a basic level is just about integers, or perhaps Gaussian integers, and so on. "Representation theory" (infinite-dimensional unitaries, etc.) relevant to automorphic forms will not even be found in "basic" representation theory books (which tend to do finite-dimensional and more combinatorial things), but can be approached in a down-to-earth way (for real rank-one groups) as Bargmann and Wigner did, by looking at asymptotics of solutions of second-order ordinary differential equations. (Indeed, the later work of HarishChandra and Casselman-Milicic might be construed as adapting those classical asymptotic techniques via Deligne's PDE version of the old ODE asymptotic results, as in the appendix to the C-M paper about it.)
In particular, to my perception, far too often students think that they have some moral-professional obligation to be "completely expert-prepared" in the alleged background material before starting the next stage... which is (to my perception) substantially misguided, since that way one has no inkling of what the use of the "background" might be. Trying to short-circuit this impulse a bit by directly drawing attention and explicating the applications is a good anti-dote.
And, to repeat, one has no obligation to "prove everything in class"... That's a recipe for not getting anywhere.

You do need to balance, and this balance will depend on several factors, primarily (i) your goals for the course, (ii) student needs,  (iii) student backgrounds, and (iv) subject material.  Of course (i) should take into account (ii) and (iii), and you can get a better sense of (ii) and (iii) by talking to other faculty and students beforehand.
Some advanced courses go through and prove everything or almost everything in detail assuming certain prerequisites and just get as far as they can, whereas others are more "seminar style" and just talk about ideas with little details.  Most are probably somewhere in between.  All these types of course can be useful but they meet different needs of students.
My main suggestion is to figure out, as concretely as possible, (i) and (ii).  Then you can try to prioritize what are the most important versus least important things for the course, and how you can get there given (iii), i.e., how much theory/detail you need to/can skip.
One thing I try to do is set formal, concrete prerequisites (which I try to make as minimal as possible, but if someone wants to take the course without the prereqs, I tell them to read so-and-so before the course starts).  Then I type up "appendices" or "surveys" to summarize additional preliminary material you need in the course.  (Typically I won't type up proofs, but will include some examples and try to give them intuition, and include references for complete details.  Usually I will lecture on most of this material as well.  Depending on the course, this might come at the beginning, middle, end, or be spread out in various supplementary modules.)  This way, the students who haven't learned this material already can still logically follow the course, taking these additional materials for granted.
(If you're stupid like me, you can also try to type up notes for the whole course and make them more complete than your lectures, but this take a lot of time.)

"If you're stupid like me..." Yes, I am.


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Unexpected Extra Travel Costs and Grants
When traveling, there are many things that can possibly happen or go wrong that would require extra money to fix.  While these things may not be directly related to the research travel one is doing, these expenses would not pop up if you weren't traveling.
For example, if one gets stuck in the airport on the way back to one's home institution, you may need to get an extra night at a hotel before you go home.
The question is the following: When is it appropriate to claim such an expense on one's grant?
There are clearly varying levels of such events. One is something out of your control like weather pushing your flight back a day. Some are completely in your control and you messed up, e.g.,  you miss your flight and need to pay a fee to get on a later flight. Others are due to scheduling conflicts and new plans arising, e.g., another talking engagement shows up and one needs to pay the flight change fee in order to make sure one can present at both conferences.
Are all/some of these scenarios appropriate for claiming against a grant or asking reimbursement for?

"if one gets stuck in the airport" - that sounds like something the airline has to fix/pay if it's their fault.

It would appear to to me that the level of appropriateness heavily depends on the rules of the grant and/or the university. They are sometimes very restrictive and would not allow you to claim expenses for any flight rebooking, for example.

@O.R.Mapper if you're not covered by the EU regulations, the airline's only obligation may be to either re-book you on another flight at no extra cost, or refund the fare. As I understand things, unless they're departing from an airport in the EU, American carriers have no legal obligation at all to give delayed passengers compensation.

Travel insurance may also cover these expenses.

@Moriarty, that is correct; the duty owed to the passenger is encompassed in the contract that both parties agreed to at time of booking. It would be off topic to discuss here, but generally the airlines outside the EU don't pay for things that weren't their fault.

These things happen, and as long as the expenses are reasonable, they should be covered by any reasonable funding body. It is a good idea to make a phone call to see whether you are permitted to spend the money, or at least to find out what budget limitations you have.
For instance, the other day my plane was diverted to a different airport. The only way I could make the PhD defence on time was using a taxi. So I took the 80 km trip and paid the 230 euro and fully expect that I'll get this money back.
If I had have purchased a used car to get me to the defence and a bottle of whisky for pain and suffering, I wouldn't expect to get that money back.

I think most people know what is reasonable, but I've seen a few expense reports that... there are no words.

@Mr.Mascaro The question is... did those few expense reports get by with some, or any of it? Some people place down everything they did, even if they don't really expect most of it to pass - because there tends to be a couple borderline cases that then get by since they don't seem as... crazy.

@DoubleDouble, I wasn't making any comment about that.  Just that a few people don't know what 'reasonable' means.

In general, it is always reasonable to ask for unexpected expenses to be covered. Unlike the other answers, however, in my experience, getting reimbursed for unexpected expenses almost never happens if you go over budget. For travel on large grants the PI can often shift money around to cover unexpected expenses, if he/she wants, but that money has to come from somewhere. For small grants (e.g., $1000 travel grant) or internally funded travel, there is usually a budget and there just is not any extra money to shift. When visiting another university to give a seminar, they take on the responsibility, to an extent. Sometimes they give the visitor an explicit budget and other times they deal with over spends.
I would suggest prior to spending any money, but especially money that you do not have, that you contact the "funder" to confirm. Without prior confirmation, I would assume that I will not get reimbursed for unexpected expenses.

I guess the main difference between my answer and yours is that I am not used to having a budget for a specific travel. Around here, there is (substantial) budget per chair for the entire year (or, for projects, for three years), and whether any individual travel gets a bit more expensive than expected isn't really grounds for much discussion.

With few exceptions, I consider all travel done as part of my university appointment (be it project meetings, formal academic visits, conferences, etc.) as regular business trips. That is, going to that project meeting isn't my personal choice, but something I have to do as part of my job.
This means that I expect not only to get fully refunded for all expected costs of the travel, but that my employer also takes over the risk of unexpected costs. This includes cancellation or rescheduling costs, as long as the reason for cancellation is another business appointment or any other reason that is outside of my control (but not if I cancel for personal reasons - I have in the past been refunded after cancelling for personal reasons, but I saw this as a nice gesture by the grant holder more than something I would have expected). These expectations are also clearly covered by the travel guidelines of my current university (the same was true at the place where I did my PhD).
If additional costs come up due to a screw-up from your side, things get a little bit messy. In theory, my university would not be required to pay for any travel that you booked in error. In practice, my university has a tendency to cover even major screw-ups (such as booking a wrong flight on a ticket that cannot be changed), as long as these circumstances are rare, clearly unintentional and of no profit to you. They would probably be very suspicious if you, for instance, ended up in Hawaii for an additional week due to your "mistake".

Where does the extra money come from? My department might give me £1000 to go to a conference, but just like a grant, it is my responsibility to stay under budget.

"my university has a tendency to cover even major screw-ups" - this shows quite well how differently universities/departments handle this kind of things. My department is very generous, but the travel expenses office is not, so if e.g. we fail to buy a ~50€ train ticket with the ~10% business discount, we will still only get back the ~90% discounted fare money.

@xLeitix if I overspend on my grant the university takes it out of my pay check. Potentially, I could fight them and get the money back, but I would not count on it. They would probably claim it was not essential travel and therefore I assumed the risk.

@StrongBad Interesting. I am pretty sure that would not fly in Switzerland.

@O.R.Mapper I don't think the train ticket is a counterexample. Administration may cover additional unexpected expenses without discussion, but still count beans in even small expenses they see as violating some regulations.

Everyone recognizes that your business trips are, well, business and not for leisure. Consequently, everything that can go wrong is part of what you do for work and should be reimbursed (and typically will). For example, I have missed the plane from Houston to my home town more often than I care to count (either because my inbound flight was late, or because the connecting flight had been cancelled altogether because of weather). In such cases, I rent a car for a day to get me home. Nobody has ever asked me to justify this: everyone understands that it would be unreasonable to hang out at the airport for the night to take the next flight in the morning. This is simply the cost of doing business.

How lucky. Last week I slept the night on the floor Copenhagen airport (in a suit). I didn't even consider driving 7  hours overnight to be home in time for breakfast.

@DaveClarke That is absurd. Were there no hotel rooms available?

@Calchas: That's what the airline person said as they handed me a blanket and pillows. The whole of Copenhagen was full.

@DaveClarke: No hotel rooms in what radius? I was stranded once in Beijing, and Air China's reaction was, as well, to state that there were "no hotel rooms available ... near the airport", so they drove us to a hotel more than an hour away from the airport.

@O.R.Mapper: It was probably a money saving lie. The replacement flight was booked for 6 hours later, so driving too far would have been pointless.

Yea, 6 hours later is a tough call. I might have taken the blanket too in that case.

In the universities that I have worked, the university carried an insurance policy that covers business travel. Exact coverage details vary. Depending on the details of the insurance policy, you might have to declare the trip in advance. You might also have to contact the insurer when you incur/about incur the expenses. I suggest to check with the relevant authorities in your university.
If your university does not have such a policy, it might be a good idea to buy it when you buy your travel, especially if you go to places where you do not ordinarily have medical coverage (e.g. a foreign country). Such an expense is normally reimbursable (but you might have to go through the university's preferred insurer; check!).

Indeed. It is an employer's legal duty in many countries to provide adequate travel insurance; and although it need not cover delays and incidentals, actually the policies are often considerably more generous for delays and cancellations than are offered to the general public. It's worth having a quick read of your institution's policy.

@Calchas Legal duty? Never heard of it. Which countries, which laws? I thought it is just cheaper to negotiate insurance as an institution rather than to pay individually in each case.

@Calchas Very interesting! Also, the original poster is in the UK, so this partly answer the specific question at hand.

For the reimbursement of business travel cost, it usually won't matter whether the cost was expected or not. You had certain costs, and when you hand in your travel cost account, you will be reimbursed or not depending on regulations that should have been defined in advance.
Before going on travel, you will usually get a business trip admission from your employer that defines to what extent travel costs are covered. Usually, this definition will refer to some local regulations, that (at least in my case) try to define very specifically what cost can be covered. Sometimes, an upper limit for reimbursement may have been set, and then you're bound by that, whether the cost was unexpected or not.
If you don't get reimbursement from your employer, you may have a travel grant or stipend, which usually define an upper limit on the cost that is being covered. Again, for that limit it generally doesn't matter whether any cost was expected or not.
In case you're going over any predefined budget due to unexpected circumstances out of your control, it may be worth negotiating to have that reimbursed as well. However, I wouldn't expect that to work, unless there's other funds to reallocate from, and usually you wouldn't have legal entitlement to that.

Not only with respect to travel, emergencies happen and money needs to go from category A to category B in your account.
For most situations, Universities won't just set up an account for sponsored research for X dollars and say "go spend it on your research".  Money will be apportioned by categories as were specified in your application -- A dollars for salaries, B for bennies, C for travel, D for capital equipment, E for supplies, and so on.
Because the government can audit whenever they feel like it, most systems are set up to meet the regulatory requirements of the big government agencies, and they will audit on their own every now and again to make sure they're in compliance.
Now, most agencies will have strict rules about how much money can change categories before you're supposed to give them a ring and ask for permission.  My experience is that a $200 hotel bill will generally not exceed those limits.


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How much travel is too much travel?
I am a first-year postdoc and I am currently structuring my summer plans for travel/conferences/etc.
May already includes a 2 week international trip of a one-week workshop and two seminar talks. June includes 2 one-week conferences domestically. July includes a 2 week international jumbo conference. August includes at least a one-week international research visit. If I did all the conferences pencilled into my calendar, I would be gone for 3 weeks in September.
To top it all off, there's a few more invites that just occurred for a week long summer school in June and a colloquium invitation in August. Both international.
I have been told that "you do not say no until tenure," but this seems too much to handle. At some point I have to sit down and do research, keep up with collaborations, and recover from travel. To be fair, I love travel, I am single, and I do not have a child or pet, so I have no obligations for being home; however, I am fearful of burning out. I am in mathematics, so there's no need for a lab and could potentially do work on the road but I am much more efficient when with my collaborators at home or at their home institution (which is not where these things are).
So the chain of questions here:

At what point does one have too much travel? Should I just pack my bags and try to learn how to research on the road?
When can one say no?
Do people care about what conferences you have been to and if they are on the CV or just about speaking? Is there a point where more invited talks hits a point of diminishing returns?

Not all travel is created equal, of course. Perhaps answers should quantify things a bit -- there are big differences between a short, occasional commute to a nearby institute, spending a few days or a week somewhere that's an hour or two away by air, and taking a medium or long-haul flight.

"Don't say no until tenure" sounds like horrible advice. I personally think the only way to get tenure and stay sane at the same time is being really good at saying no to the right things.

I agree with @xLeitix - until you get tenure, you say 'no' to all service commitments that don't directly lead to publishables for tenure. If you can't say no directly, you use the euphemism: "my Chair/mentor has told me that I cannot do ________ as I need to focus on my ________."

This would be too much travel for me

It sounds like if you are getting this many invitations already, you're probably going to be a strong candidate for a tenure-track search.  In fact, if you have to tell people you can't accept at this time because you have too much travelling, those people will realize you're already in high demand, if they haven't already.

Are you worried about burning out because you still need to get your work done in-between travel or because the travel and conferences wear you out?

@Lilienthal: The travel makes me unable to work for one day before while getting ready and a few days after while getting my body back in check. I also lose any routine I had. This impacts my health and fitness, which I value.

Different people set their thresholds differently, but it all comes down to balance and cost/benefit analysis.
I don't buy into the "don't say no until tenure" argument, because a) until tenure is a pretty big chunk of your life, especially when you add in postdoc, and b) the patterns and expectations you establish before tenure will likely remain with you afterwards.  You need to make a decision which is sustainable for you as your career is now and reassess every couple of years to make sure it is still working.
Myself, I travel 1-2 times per month.  Some academics I know travel nearly once a week; others travel only once or twice a year.  In my observation, this does not really correlate with career stage, but more with desire for public recognition vs. the tradeoffs the person is comfortable with in their life.
So, how to make that judgement for yourself?
Personally, I find Latour's model of science as "credibility investment" a useful analysis tool.  Under this model, you can view scientific life as manipulation of three currencies:

Credibility is the main and most unusual currency of academia, which is generated by your publications, your position and appointments, your visibility in the community, service, etc, and which is invested in order to obtain funding.
Results are the data, theorems, etc. produced by your work, which are the raw material required for generation of credibility, and which generally requires money to produce.
Funding is money or other forms of support, which can be obtained through investment of credibility and is itself invested in order to produce results.

Success as an academic requires management of the flow of these three quantities: your relative levels in any may rise and fall with time, but if you go broke in any of the three areas, your career is in deep trouble.  They are hard to quantify, but with self-reflection and comparison to peers you can often have a sense of whether you are "doing well" or "doing poorly" in each area.
Bringing it back to travel, then: most travel can be viewed as part of obtaining credibility (e.g., conferences, invited talks) or obtaining funding (e.g., visits to program managers).  Their cost, as you have identified, is primarily opportunity to produce results and to write your results up in papers (yes, they cost money too, but your time is usually more valuable).  For each individual conference, you can ask how much this conference is likely to serve those goals, relative to the time that you will lose as a result.  If you become good at working on the road (I love airplanes as internet-free time), then the effective cost may decrease, changing your relative weightings, but the principles remain the same.

I'm an assistant professor in math with experience on hiring committees.
I certainly wouldn't adopt the mindset "don't say no until tenure", but in my experience (with the research mathematics job market) getting a tenure-track job that you're happy with is the more significant hurdle. (In my observation it is relatively unusual for math professors to be denied tenure, outside the top 10 or so schools. Although, of course it does happen.) Accordingly I do think that now is a good time to travel extensively, if you can stomach it -- you will not have to keep it up for eight years!
People will look at your CV for evidence that you've been to plenty of conferences and spoke at many of them, and the flashier (i.e. international) the better. But there are indeed diminishing returns; in this regard, you're already travelling extensively and you've probably passed the threshold where people will care much.
What's more important is the chance to make a positive impression on individual people. Various people in the audience might be in a position to collaborate with you, write letters of recommendation for you, share research ideas with you, tell their colleagues "I just listened to a fantastic talk...", and/or push their departments to try to hire you.
So, how much you travel depends on your own situation and goals. For example, if you've recently proved a big theorem but don't have any exciting followup projects in mind, I would recommend you take the opportunity to speak about your work anywhere and everywhere you can. If you're not sure who will be writing your rec letters in two years, then ditto. If you're already locked into a promising research program, and you just need time to sit and work on it, this might indicate accepting fewer invitations.

If you don't learn how to say "no" as a postdoc, are you sure you can learn that after tenure?
But I think it is true that you now need to get to know people around the world - which naturally involves a lot of travel and meetings. Once you now what is going on, things calm down a bit. You'll then also know which conferences and workshops are of primary interest for you and which you don't need to attend. Or which ones you want to attend only every 2nd time.
If I had a schedule like the one you describe, I would summarize it as "nothing will happen before October besides those conferences": the few weeks in between are easily eaten up by all that little stuff that accumulates at home while you are away and all the colleagues and students that were waiting for you to come back in order to ...
Right now, I travel a lot (2 conferences last and this month, 1 workshop last month). (But it will be less for the rest of the year.)
I try to put things together: group several meetings into one tour,  one or 2 days of holidays around conferences so I can stop with friends/family. I'll probably also declare the way back from the conference in summer holidays and do it as a bike tour.
And by now I have pretty clear ideas which conferences I do not want to attend (one in fall that I would have liked, but considered one too many, and two where I told my supervisor that the trade off between attending and costs in time and money doesn't look good enough - but I just know this because I have been there before).

I find that I cannot work as well in a train or plane as at my desk. (Not to speak of the lab). But I also find that I get other types work done in the hotel: maybe a bit of debugging, or sorting literature, writing paper draft/overhauling a manuscript. Of course also the first draft of the ideas that are triggered by the conference/meeting. Or the report for the funding agency.

I'm going to approach the question from a different point of view.
Currently I´m working as a researcher in a private company. When applying for a position on this company, one of the things that they show is the expected amount of travel, as a % of the working days in a year. The usual travel load is ~10%, which is about 1 full month of travel out of the year. Some heavy traveler may do ~25%, which is about a full week out of each month, but usually only managers are expected to do that much traveling.
If you feel that traveling too much is affecting negatively your goals, you can set a personal limit on how much you travel each year, and then negotiate with your colleagues the attendance to events. Also, as other comments says, learning how to get the most out of your time in a trip is definitely a very valuable skill.


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Academic affiliation on papers written while between jobs
There have been many questions in the past about choosing an affiliation to write on your papers. This one has a nuance that is a bit different from having two jobs.
I am currently between two jobs (PhD student and postdoc) and currently not academically affiliated to either. I am currently writing a paper and I am trying to figure out if I put my PhD affiliation or my postdoc affiliation.
The reason for the PhD affiliation is because a lot of the work was done there.
The reason for the postdoc affiliation is because then anyone could contact me for correspondence with respect to the paper.
I feel there must be a hard and fast rule to this, so I was hoping someone could enlighten me.
Thanks!

A naive question: would it be possible to list both affiliations? I've seen that happen - it seems to depend on the journal's format.

I would be okay with that answer! Just how would you format it?

That would depend on the journal. Many use superscripts, e.g., here - the last author has three different affiliations. I'd recommend just putting both affiliations in your manuscript and letting the typesetter at the journal worry about it. If multiple affiliations are a problem, you will be told and can always delete the Ph.D. one (and acknowledge it as per @just-learning's suggestion).

BTW: in that example I just linked to, the situation was exactly yours: most of the work done at institutions a and e, manuscript submitted, revised and published at institution f.

A number of major physics journal allow authors to be listed with both an affiliation (where you were when you did the work that resulted in the paper) and a "present address".

It should be possible to list both affiliations.  While I have not worried about this myself, I do remember going to a seminar at UPenn in the summer between my PhD and my postdoc.  My introduction included both affiliations.  I was a little surprised (and pleased) by that and kept an ear out for it afterwards: it is a reasonably common thing to do.
Why do you list affiliations at all?  Here are some reasons.
1) It gives readers a chance to contact you.
2) Some employers require or request that you mention them.  If they are providing you with financial support, this seems reasonable.  (Especially if you signed a contract saying you will!)
3) You give yourself a veneer of legitimacy/prestige that can (unfortunately) help your submission get taken more seriously.  Often by doing this you telegraph to insiders who your famous thesis advisor is, which could (unfortunately) get you more alacrity and respect in the processing of your paper.
To address these: I think 1) is almost obsolete.  If you are an untenured academic, you should have a webpage.  Then anyone who reads one of your papers types "T....K.... math" into google, and presto, they can contact you.  By the way, if you are transitioning from one temporary job to another, then neither affiliation is going to be very useful in the long term.  I have papers which tell readers that they can reach me at "Montreal" and "MSRI": the latter might have been true for a month or two, but no longer.
2) is serious of course, but if you are between affiliations you are probably not being financially supported by either one.  It may be though that you are just putting the finishing touches on work that you did at the first institution.  That's a good reason to list the first institution.  The fact that it doesn't make much sense to list an institution that you are no longer affiliated with instead of an institution that you are currently affiliated with is then a good reason to try to list the second institution as well.
3) Well, what's more prestigious than any one academic institution?  The answer seems obvious...

Let me briefly respond to something written by @adipro:

If you put your postdoc affiliation, it would give the wrong impression that the paper is a product of your postdoc, and your postdoc affiliation, rather than your PhD affiliation, wrongly gets the credit.

The OP is a mathematician, and math papers are not products of their institutions.  Listing an institutional affiliation means exactly that: you have (or had, during part of the period when the work was done or the paper was written) an affiliation with that institution.  (It doesn't even necessarily mean that you had financial support from them, although that is usually the case.) None of the institutions at which I was a postdoc can or do claim any ownership or credit for any of the papers I wrote while I was there.  They get to record for all time that they had the good judgment to hire someone who went on to a tenure-track job, which one of them does.

I think choosing which affiliation to put because of (3) is something to be discouraged. And 'wrongly gets the credit' is related to this.

Of course no institutions can claim ownership or credit for any papers we wrote. But the sad fact is that people look at the affiliation and it influences their judgement.

I've always thought of affiliations as an offer of thanks/credit to the institutions, as a benefit to the institutions, rather than a mark of tribal membership, as a benefit to the authors.

@JeffE: Have you ever worked with an unaffiliated researcher?  I wrote papers with several recently, and they explained to me that lack of institutional affiliation can cause problems in the processing of their work.  There is a certain amount of tribalism in contemporary academia.  I don't endorse it, but since it is there it seems best to acknowledge it.

I also don't feel that listing an institutional affiliation is giving that institution thanks or credit, per se.  When this information appears in articles it is usually followed by or part of the mailing address, not in the acknowledgments section or in a footnote acknowledging grant support.  Also journals ask you for this information while they ask for your other contact information.  They don't ask whether or how thankful you are or what kind of position you have with the institution you list (even whether it is paid at all): nor should they, in my opinion.

Now that I think of it, it is actually a good question why many journals require authors to list institutional affiliations at all.  I realize that I have drawn my own conclusions about why they do this, and I do know that it creates some anxiety for unaffiliated researchers.

@adipro: One thing that I wish academics would do more often is: when there is a chance that someone might get the wrong idea, just give everyone the right idea by providing more information.  If you feel like someone might draw the wrong conclusion about where the work was done, spell it out in the paper itself.

@PeteL.Clark, exactly.

Have you ever worked with an unaffiliated researcher? — A couple of times, yes.

I suggest using the postdoc affiliation (precisely for the reason you mention and also because you will probably still be there while the paper will be reviewed) and thanking for support the university where you did your Ph.D. in the acknowledgments.

I would say that the affiliation should be the place where you did most of the work that leads to the paper. When I read a paper, I immediately assume that the work presented in the paper was carried out when the author was affiliated with the affiliation listed there. In your case, it would be your PhD affiliation. If you put your postdoc affiliation, it would give the wrong impression that the paper is a product of your postdoc, and your postdoc affiliation, rather than your PhD affiliation, wrongly gets the credit.
Getting a paper published takes time. By the time it gets accepted, you might have started your postdoc. Then you should also include your postdoc affiliation for correspondence purposes.

See, for example, this guide to authors from Nature Communications, where it says,

The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. If an author has subsequently moved, the current address may also be stated.

Also see this guide for authors from an Elsevier journal, which seems to be the standard across Elsevier journals, where it says,

If an author has moved since the work described in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a 'Present address' (or 'Permanent address') may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name. The address at which the author actually did the work must be retained as the main, affiliation address.

Good inclusion of the publishers guidelines.


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Proceedings-level paper but no proceedings invitation
I'm in mathematics.
There's a specific example in a framework my collaborator and I outlined that many people ask me about. It did not fit into previous papers due to space considerations for journals. I feel that writing a note that explains this example in our point of view would be useful for the community.  This example would have a few minor results along the way but mostly it would be a detailed example of our previous work. For that reason, I think it makes most sense in a proceedings; however, I have no proceedings invitations at this point in time.
Should I just sit on the paper or is there another venue or method to deal with this type of issue? Should I put it on the arxiv until a proceedings volume comes along?

Arxiv won't hurt? What do you think?

If the material is of enough interest that many people are asking you about it, then you could try for a journal and not "just" for conference proceedings. But this may depend on the expectations and standards within your particular area of math(s).

I'd be surprised if you couldn't get it published in an actual journal. I've seen Manuscripta Mathematica used for papers that sound like they are at the same level as what you describe. Or you could look at Milan Journal of Mathematics.

@DanPetersen do you know a non-Springer journal that is similar?

I am surprised to learn that proceedings in maths are by invitation only. Is that correct?

First off, "a note [explaining] our point of view" sounds like a perfect use of arXiv, or of a technical report service if your institution offers one.
There's no delay and no formal procedure necessary, and if it turns out to indeed be useful to the community, then it's readily citable.  Furthermore, there's certainly no shame in putting "side" results out in these more informal format, particularly in a community such as mathematics that is generally used to sharing pre-publication materials.
In parallel, if you think it rises to the level where peer review is appropriate, I see no reason to avoid submitting it to an appropriate community journal---no need to wait for an invitation to a particular venue.
In short: if it's worth reading, it's worth making available, and the scientific community can surely decide if it's finding it useful or not.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Balancing (Re)building Foundations and Research
I'm a third year postdoc in mathematics.
I have been reasonably productive; however, I'm starting to feel some of my foundations in my subject slipping (especially since I specialized in my field fairly early into my PhD). The techniques I use in my research relate to a certain type of object, so the general knowledge in my field has slowly becoming lost. My work mixes a lot of fields, so I also have the enjoyment of knowing many fields shallowly instead of one specialization extremely deeply. I am now realizing that it would be useful to go back and learn some of the foundations in my field much more deeply as well as the foundations in related fields.
This realization is daunting, considering how much time I spent before in graduate school to get some understanding. I want to keep my research at about the same pace and then also do this.
Have others had this experience?
If so, what kind of plan led them to have a firmer understanding of their field?

Seems relevant: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/continually-aim-just-beyond-your-current-range/

And this https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/learn-and-relearn-your-field/

This feeling is pretty normal at that stage. (I also guess that the feeling that one should know foundations better does never really vanish for many people.) To keep up your pace, but still broaden your foundations I suggest that you

choose some books you'd like to go through and reserve some time every week to work on it,
embrace the fact, that you will be able to pick up new stuff in your field more quickly than during graduate studies,
be aware that you'll pick up more and more foundations "on the fly" while doing research.


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Viewing MathJobs Applications as Living Documents?
I am in the process of applying for tenure-track positions. I have been told that getting your file submitted early is useful, so I am eager to apply.
I have a final draft of my application materials, but I am potentially still getting feedback from mentors. Is it appropriate to start to submit applications now, with the potential of editing these documents mildly as time progresses and I get feedback? Also, most of my recommenders have not uploaded their letters, so I am curious if I should wait for a certain number to finish.

You can edit documents after submission, but there's no guarantee that the search committee will see your edits.  Some people might start reading them as soon as you submit, even if it's before the application deadline.  Or some others might download or print out the applications for later reading.  But in either case they might not check back later to see if there have been updates.  MathJobs doesn't automatically notify the committee when you make an update, and even if did you can't expect the committee to reread your application every time you make a change.
So it is best to wait until you are satisfied that the documents are in a "final" form.  If you do find a serious error or need to add something, you can, but it's possible that the committee will still work with the original erroneous / incomplete version.
You don't need to wait to submit your application until all letters are in.  Most search committees would probably just wait to read your application until the letters have been uploaded.  Or, if their process is to read the application separately from the letters, then they could start reading the application right away and then read the letters after they come in.


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Grading term papers and reports written by non-native speakers
I'm teaching an advanced undergraduate computer science course that requires a 5-7 page term paper worth about 20% of the student's grade.
The class has several international students, and some of them do not have a strong command of the English language. Clearly, these students are at a disadvantage when it comes to this assignment.
To complicate matters, the course is part of the university's "integrated writing" curriculum, so, according to university policy, the quality of the writing must be evaluated as part of the grading process.
I'm trying to devise a fair scheme where non-native English speakers are not graded as stringently as native English speakers, yet not have the grading be so lenient for non-natives that it becomes unfair in the other direction.
I've already decided that some criteria can be graded on equal footing (such as overall paper organization, and the quality of the overall research), while others (such as word selection and sentence structure) can be looked at on more of a two-tier scale.
I'm wondering if anyone here as dealt with this dilemma before and, if so, how they might have approached this problem.

If your university has something called an "integrated writing curriculum", it would make sense to me if there were some kind of guidelines for this situation. You can't be the only instructor with international students. Have you talked about this with whoever is responsible for the integrated writing curriculum?

Having faced this in the UK I've found that although some international students do struggle with English part way through a first degree, many are actually better at writing formal English than the natives.  They've been taught in a formal way without the colloquialisms that many native speakers use unthinkingly even in academic writing.  Their writing may be a touch less fluent, with more repetitive use of words and shorter sentences, but that's not necessarily (i) a bad thing, or (ii) something that would be marked down, as it's not erroneous.

In an "integrated writing curriculum" the students should be taught about writing while they're taught subject matter. Can they submit early drafts which you or a colleague in language arts can use to do that?

Am I the only one who's wondering why on Earth you'd a) have a term paper in a computer science course; and b) grade on quality of English rather than content?  That said, I too have noticed that many non-natives write better English than their native counterparts.

If a paper has lesser correct use of English, said paper should be graded lower than those with flawless spelling and grammar. What you want to avoid is a hypothetical scenario where two students hand in identical works, but student A gets a higher grade than student B.

@jamesqf - (a) Not every computer science course is about data structures, programming, or flipping bits. There are electives on development methodologies, software testing, society & ethics, history of computing, etc.; sometimes a good way for students to learn about the subtopics in such courses is by doing some research. Still, this question could apply to any department. (b) I'm not grading primarily on quality of English, but I'm not supposed to let poor English slide, either. (c) As for who writes better, I've seen plenty of papers that go in both directions from both groups of students.

Does your university not have a Writing Center, where students can have their assignments proofread by a native speaker for free?  (Or maybe International Student Services has something.)

As a non-native English speaker who teaches mathematics in an English-speaking university in Canada, I have little sympathy for the English struggles of international students. In my experience, most of the students who have big struggles with the language are those who bought the TOEFL result instead of learning. The students who are really committed come a year earlier to take English full-time, and they don't have major issues when they start their specific studies.
Now, to address your specific question, in 13 years teaching here I never had reason (nor interest) to take marks off because of grammar. I will reduce the grade when I read nonsense, but that happens with Canadian-born students too.

Just to be clear, like you, I'm not interested in legalistically nickel-and-diming students for occasional grammatical gaffes or here-and-there typos. On the other hand, though, there can be a tipping point – some students will turn in works that read more like unpolished rough drafts hastily-written the night before, to an extent where the paper can be difficult to read and digest. In such cases, I feel it's my duty to highlight the shoddiness of the work and grade it accordingly. My dilemma happens when I sense the main reason for the problems is English proficiency, not sloppy indifference.

I understand and I agree. The point I tried to make is that I think that English proficiency is the students' problem and not yours. I think that unconsciously I go a little easier on international students and their English, but not much. In the end, no one forced those students to attend an English-speaking university.

@MartinArgerami: I agree to some extent, and I expect international students in my place to be able to use the local language at a reasonable level. However, I feel it would be unreasonable to hold them to the same standards as native speakers when it comes to writing texts. Just pointing out it's "the students' problem" essentially is like punishing those students for going the hard way, rather than taking the lazy route of studying in their native language like all the indigenous students.

@O.R.Mapper: you focus on the "punishing" side. But those international students will receive  the same degree as the local ones. If grammar proficiency is something that plays a role in the program, I don't see a reason to treat them differently; if it doesn't matter, then there is no issue. The same way that coming from a worse education background should not earn a student free marks.

@MartinArgerami: Granted, it depends on what is actually being measured. At my place, we put a lot of weight on proper writing natural language documents in CS, but what we are actually looking for is diligence and accuracy in writing. With that in mind, we are aware that a native speaker can be expected to show a better command of the local language than a non-native speaker. If it is indeed absolute language skills being measured, I agree that it is up to students to achieve native speaker level.

"I never had reason (nor interest) to take marks off because of grammar." Well, guess what? The asker does have the reason to take marks off because of grammar: specifically, they are being asked to grade assignments taking quality of writing into account. The question isn't asking whether anyone else has needed to do this: it's asking how to do it.

@DavidRicherby: in that case, what they should do is straighten their admission process, because they are admitting students who are not ready for their program.

Saying that the shouldn't have admitted those students still doesn't answer the question of what to do with the students they did admit.

Grade everyone the same on things like word choice and sentence structure, but make that portion of the grade a small part of the overall grade for the paper.  (If you are in the United States, you will find students who are the product of U.S. high schools with limited vocabulary and no idea of sentence structure.)
Edit: If you don't grade everyone on the same scale, you will inevitably get complaints.  I'd argue that what is important (for learning) to students in your class is the formative feedback on their writing, not the specific number of points.  If the dean complains, 'splain that you teach computer science.
{Time passes} As Damian has said in the comments, you will need a grading rubric that assigns relatively low points to word choice and sentence structure, more points to overall organization, still more points to quality of research, etc.  Then you'll need to show how the overall grade was computed, using the rubric.  To repeat myself, the formative comments you make, particularly on word choice, sentence structure, etc. will be more important to learning than the actual points.

That might be an option, yes, but I guess it conflicts with the goal of explicitly assessing language issues ("integrated writing" curriculum).

@damian, it might, but on the other hand if a breakdown of the overall mark is given you give the required assessed feedback (your writing is C-grade) while reducing the disadvantage for the non-native speakers.

true, good point!

I completely agree that formative feedback is most important. After all, the end goal is to help teach students to write proficiently, and that won't happen in a vacuum. If a poorly-written paper has little more than a letter or numeric grade, the student has lost a chance to improve as a result of the assignment. That said, when a paper is rife with misconjugated verbs, my gut tells me to go easier on my students from Bangladesh and Taiwan than my students from Connecticut and Illinois. I can't help but wonder, though: when does a sliding scale like that become "unfair"?

@J.R. If word-choice and formation are worth, say, 5% of the assignment, that's the most a student can lose.  The student for whom English is a second, and very strange, language can still make a solid A on the paper.  If the student from Bangladesh loses all five points and the student from Illinois loses only two, and your grading was consistent, neither student can say, "unfair."
This might need a pretty detailed rubric, something like: 1-2 word choice or use errors, -1 point; 3-5, -2 points; 6-10, -3 points, 11-15, -4 points, more than 16, -5 points.

@BobBrown Anyone who makes multiple spelling or grammatical errors, be they a native student or not, doesn't deserve an A on an 'integrated writing' assignment (or any assignment, really).  This sort of coddling is the reason STEM schools produce so many terrible writers.

@sapi Write your comment in flawless Mandarin and I'll agree with you.
In any case, we aren't talking about an integrated writing assignment, we're talking about a computer science assignment in a university with an integrated writing curriculum.  (I do agree concerning spelling errors.  Today's WP software is so good at catching spelling errors that, in most cases, such an error is caused by ignoring the hint from the software.)

@BobBrown - Except for those (sometimes common) errors that won't get those red or green squiggly lines – there know wear two bee founded.  :^)

@J.R.  I know. {sigh.}  I'd count those as wrong words, not spelling errors, though.  Or maybe write, "Look this up.  You've been double-crossed by your spell checker."

I teach at a Dutch university, where undergraduate teaching is in Dutch, gradudate teaching in English. We thus deal with grading non-natives on a daily basis and have a general policy of being more lenient when it concerns non-natives. For example, in our thesis guidelines, it is explicitly stated that a thesis has to be faultless, but it specifies that for non-natives, it should be near-faultless. In practice, this translates to allowing a higher number of spelling and grammar mistakes, and, as in you suggest in your question as well, is independent from structure and organization of the text.

There's no such thing as "faultless" writing on the scale of a thesis.

In addition to what others have already said, it may be worth differentiating between "writing" and "composition". My best guess is that your university's writing courses are actually mostly geared toward "composition" -- i.e., towards producing documents with a coherent structure, introduction, conclusions, etc, and that have a consistent narrative that develops ideas and arguments. This is independent of word choice, size of vocabulary, correctness of grammar, etc (or at least largely independent as long as the poor command of language does not affect the ability to understand the text).
You may therefore want to develop a rubrik that weighs composition more heavily than word choices, grammar, or spelling.