Ramblemuse Touch Points

In current times, forwarding a science career is a much about business as it is about knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs). This statement is not about the business of the institution or company you work for at any given time, but about treating your career as an individual, entrepreneurial business. You need both a business plan and the ability to make hard-nosed decisions about your career/business. Two key questions are: “Is there high potential for carving out a post-postDoc career in a scientific domain?” and “Does a position you are considering substantially further that career or simply postpone a portage to a new knowledge area?”

The first question, aimed at avoiding spending years working toward a career that has dismal employment projects beyond postdoctoral positions, is well-motivated by the NY Times article by Jennifer Lee on the Postdoc Trail: Long and Filled With Pitfalls. The second question is more about periodic reevaluations of the growth or decline of funding and the likelihood of winning the competition for limited resources in specific research areas.

Does a potential work position further your abilities or lead to becoming “eddied out” of the current of research flow? Evaluating compensation for the latter sort of project, requires including the eventual costs of retraining yourself and rebuilding your marketability when the project ends. This is particularly true if there is limited marketability and limited employers for the expertise you would develop and use in such a project. The compensation (or tail-end insurance) you require to work in an area should increase as the general marketability of skills and expertise goes down. Your evaluation needs to included the downtime and costs of rebuilding a career to the same level of professional standing should the project terminate. In short, market comparisons of total compensation need to include comparisons of expertise marketability.

In their book Consulting for Dummies, Bob Nelson and Peter Economy warn about the volatility of today’s job market. The paragraph is flagged in the book by an icon for a bomb with a lit fuse; the symbol used for something that can “blow up in your face” if you don’t pay attention.

The days of having a job for life are long gone. Today’s economy is one of rapid change and movement. As companies continue to search for ways to cut costs, they increasingly turn to hiring temporary workers or contracting work out to consultants. Having a job today is no guarantee of having one tomorrow. When you work for a company — no matter how large — you can be laid off at any time, for almost any reason, with little or no notice. If you’re lucky, you get a severance package of some sort — maybe a few weeks’ or a few months’ pay. If you’re not so lucky, your last day is just that, and you’re on your own.

In his 1995 book JobShift, William Bridges cautions that, “All jobs in today’s economy are temporary.” I’ve a penciled notation in my copy of the book that, in an NPR interview, Bridges expanded this to, “100 percent of today’s jobs are temporary, it’s just that 75% of us are still in denial.” Bridges then defines the concept of employment (not job) security.

Employment security is going through one of those fundamental redefinitions that marks a societal turning point. Now security resides in the person rather than the position, and to a cluster of qualities that have nothing to do with the organization’s policies or practices. From now on, you will have a harder and harder time finding security in a job. In the future, your security will depend on your developing three characteristics as a worker and as a person.

Employability — Your security will come first and foremost from being an attractive prospect for employers, and that attractiveness involves having the abilities and attitudes that an employer needs at the moment. Ironically, the employer’s need is likely to be created by the very changes that destroyed traditional job security.

Vendor-mindedness — Being a traditional, loyal employee is no longer an asset. It has, in fact, turned into a liability. So stop thinking like an employee and start thinking like an external vendor who has been hired to accomplish a specific task.

Resiliency — Organizations today operate in such a turbulent environment that no arrangement serves them for very long. What you will need (both for the organization’s sake and for your own) is the ability to bend and not break, to let go readily of the outdated and learn the new, to bounce back quickly from disappointment, to live with high levels of uncertainty, and to find your security from within rather than from outside.

College and university classes provide a conceptual foundation, but skills and expertise come from doing rather than listening. It’s estimated that expertise in an area requires about 10,000 hours — hours spent involved in tackling real-world research. Getting in that 10,000 hours and then applying them implies stability of funding in a focused area. Getting the hours in efficiently, means being able to apply yourself without continual distractions. Advice on price setting for consultants indicates that it’s realistic to expect about 200 active “business” days per year. If you’re putting in about 10 hours per day, that’s about 2000 hours per year, or five years to expertise. That provides at least a rough estimate of the meaning of “stable funding”.

Reevaluate how your current situation matches your longer term goals every 3-5 years. Compare your current situation to what’s available elsewhere. This is business—your business—treat it seriously. Rather than seeing yourself as a scientist at some institution, see yourself as a scientist at large in the world floating on a sea of institutional possibilities. Float to the high ground. If the sea of possibilities in a particularly area starts to dry up, find another sea with long-term potential and portage quickly into it. There’s a substantial advantage to being an early entrant into a new and growing area of research. In business, this is currently referred to as the “blue ocean strategy”.

In evaluating retirement plans, look toward maximizing immediate offerings. What an institution offers to long-term, post-decadal employees is likely irrelevant in a short-term world. If an institution has a tier, consider your entry-point, particularly as you mature in your career, to be negotiable. This tier will effect benefits such as length of vacation and corporate defined contributions to 401(k) retirement plans. Weigh the deal you can negotiate in defined contributions as part of the entire business package you’re being offered. The 14-20 June issue of The Economist, has some valuable observations on retirement plans in the article Falling Short.

If you’re a student considering entry to an area, do your homework on the expectable job future. Look at postdoc forums and sites such as PhDs.org. Practice negotiating for your needs, using techniques such as the Noel Smith-Wenkle Salary Negotiation Method. Most of all, think of yourself as an independent business and have plans for career development and career risk management.