4/16/2021 0 Comments 2020 Scholar's Digest VlogHey, Hope you are well. It has been a year since the shelter-in-place order. Things continue to change silently and rapidly around us. Check out our “2020 Vlog” for stories from fellows. Stay safe and carry on. Vlog edited and prepared by Leven. AUTHOR
Leven
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I’ve been told that jobs in companies in the private sector have excellent institutional organization. Most employees know to whom they report to and to whom their boss reports to ("skip boss" is the colloquialism). They know the people they are in charge of leading and they are aware of whether their colleagues report to them. This organizational structure is a pipe dream in academia. As a postdoc, you have a boss, the lead investigator in the lab, but every other position is neither reporting to you nor are you reporting to anyone else. This is true even in the case of a project where you are taking the lead. As for your PI’s boss, often convoluted departmental affiliations make it hard to know without asking your PI directly (awkward!). I have many years of experience working in basic science where we ask fundamental questions using a mammalian model. These experiments take time to plan and to execute and the best outcomes are usually achieved when two or three lab members pool their expertise to work on a project. Postdocs, techs and grad students have to perform an intricate, highly choreographed performance without clarity on who is in charge. Sometimes the answer to the question of who is in charge can be easy. If one team member has already worked on optimization or has previous experience with a technique, that person can tacitly assume leadership, but that can be fraught if two equally seasoned veterans are on the same team. My advice to anyone who can relate is to establish a clear line of communication from the beginning. Push this topic, as well as conversations about authorship, before you start any work. For example, a postdoc from my lab and I were co-authors on a paper. We discussed co-first authorship as well as whose name comes first. We both wanted it to be “mylastname et. al.” and we needed to agree what work would lead to getting the credit (getting to be first first author). I prefer to talk to my collaborators in the absence of my PI to make sure the atmosphere is completely uncharged and to avoid any misunderstandings. This may seem like a strange initiative, but I assure you, it has numerous benefits in the long run. Clear communication is also really beneficial in the case of shared lab jobs. Having open discussions about who does lab jobs and when, again, in the absence of your PI, can help to organise these jobs such that there are no resentments and no one feels like they are doing more than their share in the lab. Collaborating with the members of your own lab is a cake walk compared to entering collaborations with other labs (from other institutions). Here, hierarchies are established partially by seniority, partially by renown, and sometimes by how big of an ego one has. Speaking up when you are not sure about where you stand can be difficult, and I am sure we have lost time and effort because the people with the best ideas are afraid to speak up (I am a person of color, an immigrant and a woman, I assure you this has happened). Personally, I try to get a sense of hierarchy by the size of grants. In a multi-lab collaboration, the lab with the most money is going to dominate. Whether a person from the lab with the money will step up to lead is a matter of luck. As a postdoc, there is always a tightrope to walk between taking initiative and respecting all the members of the team within such collaborations. I have found myself in a situation where I was given the responsibility for all the logistics (planning meetings, making online tools available, etc) and as the most junior member of the collaboration, I thought that it was natural that a part of the gopher work fell on my shoulders, but on the other hand, this was an added burden on top of my already loaded schedule. This kind of work isn’t recognized as “real” work, but it needs to be done, and there is a tendency to assume the female members of the team will do it. As society has historically conditioned women to be both likable and exude capability, women will often volunteer for this work or will feel obligated to do it rather than ask for it to be assigned to someone else. For women postdocs, there is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" dilemma. If you take all the responsibility for the admin work, there is no recognition for this labor, and if you don’t do it, the scientific work suffers in the process. In conclusion, postdocs often carry the burden of middle management. We have just enough responsibility that we can be blamed when things go wrong, but often not enough power to call the shots. Whenever it is in my power, I actively maintain open dialogs, both with my PI and other collaborators that rank me, as well as junior graduate students and techs over whom I hold some sway. That, and an honest attempt not to be the person with the biggest ego is the secret to success at being a postdoc collaborator. |