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[combustionh]

Which matters more: where do you did your PhD or where you did your post doc? This is in reference to applying for tenure track professor positions in engineering.

[greyscale]

The conventional wisdom in my field, biology, seems to be:

1. What really matters is what you did.

2. "Who you did it with" might be slightly more relevant for the postdoc; "where you did it" might be slightly more relevant for grad school.

But like everything else, your mileage may vary.

[totoro]

Doing a post-doc at a prestigious place can certainly upgrade a PhD from a lesser known school in my field (econ) and get you a better TT job than probably you would have gotten otherwise. But really getting published in decent journals is an even better signal if you are coming from a weak PhD program. Don't know about engineering.

[lurkingfear]

The conventional wisdom in my field, biology, seems to be:

1. What really matters is what you did.

2. "Who you did it with" might be slightly more relevant for the postdoc; "where you did it" might be slightly more relevant for grad school.

I agree. If you are applying to top schools for TT jobs, both your grad school and post-doc school will be very important. But if you are asking this question I assume you are coming from a lower ranked PhD school, and are looking to upgrade with an excellent post-doc school. In this case, it can matter a whole lot, but mostly to the extent that a better school usually means a better advisor and better pubs. Of course that's not always the case.

[combustionh]

But if you are asking this question I assume you are coming from a lower ranked PhD school, and are looking to upgrade with an excellent post-doc school.

I am actually at the top school for my field/subfield. I want to know if it matters where I do my postdoc now. Can I go somewhere that isnt prestigous because I believe in the research they are pursuing there?

[lurkingfear]

It matters more what you get out of the post-doc. If you are at, say, Harvard, and went to UW for a post-doc, because there is some uber-famous person you want to work with, that's fine (so long as it helps you get some high-profile pubs). If you are at Harvard and go to Podunk State for a post-doc, it will look odd, unless there just happens to be a very high-profile scholar there, who everyone in your field will know.

[polly_mer]

Can I go somewhere that isnt prestigous because I believe in the research they are pursuing there?

Yes.  However, you better be presenting, publishing, and patenting at the non-prestigious place as well as networking.

However, Lurkingfear is right that some very high-profile people are in some low-profile places.  Usually, though, how those people continue to be high-profile is publishing and presenting. 

A hiring committee may not know Big Name in the sub-sub-sub field to be impressed, but I doubt any but the biggest snobs would hold any kind of productive post-doc against you.  However, be sure to sell it in your cover letter to search committee as this fabulous opportunity you took to work in the area of whatever, which you will now bring to their school as expert you with several publications to back up your claims of expertise.

The primary benefits of a prestigious post-doc are networking and access to generally better resources.  Be sure to ramp up your networking via conferences and visits to past or potential collaborators if you take a non-prestigious post-doc as well as publishing.

In summary:

Publish and/or patent while keeping up a reasonable presentation profile at conferences and no one will care where you did the research.

Don't publish or patent and that fancy degree from a top-tier program will be ignored by everyone.