Roles of a junior researcher

In order to understand the difficulty of management in academia, we need to look at the different (and contradictory) roles into which junior researchers are placed. These conflicting roles are probably the reason that bad management in academia is so pervasive.

This description is designed to cover people in the range from research assistant to PhD student to postdocs.

Student

A student is someone studying to improve their knowledge, often with their knowledge being evaluated and leading to some sort of recognition. While not technically true, the joke that postdocs are “super-students but don’t end up with a degree” is a bit too realistic for comfort.

A student can’t leave early without having wasted time by not earning their degree. This is a rather precarious position when the student is entirely dependent on one person, and we’ll come back to this later.

Advantages: it places the emphasis on self-learning and self-exploration. A student can really choose their own path. In theory, it produces a credential that will assist in the student’s future career - in addition to useful knowledge and skills, of course.

Disadvantages: we can sometimes leave people alone too much to do their own thing, without providing needed advice and direction when it would be in their own interest. Being a student also implies some sort of evaluation/scoring, and that a student needs to be allowed to fail, otherwise their credentials eventually won’t mean anything. Since we often don’t like giving negative feedback to people, so this part can often be lost so that they both don’t get a negative score (to improve later) and don’t fully succeed.

Employee

An employee works for an employer, and the employer dictates the work, behavior, tools, working time, and so on. “Employee vs independent contractor” is a major point of debate in the current gig economy, so one can find plenty of information on this topic online [1]. Often times, researchers have far more freedom than an employee would, sometimes only rarely working with others in the group on projects, deciding their own tools, and of course working far more hours than HR thinks you should. (We discuss this more in the next section on independent contractors.)

[1]

For example US Internal Revenue Service guidelines on employee vs independent contractor: https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc762

Whatever the case, “employee status” provides the most protection for labor and is often used as (a part of) the academic hiring model, even if someone is a student at the same time.

Sometimes researchers might not actually be employees (in the HR sense), for example if they have an external grant or are unfunded. In some cases this can cause problems for them because of missing labor protections or not being “in the system” like others. You should be aware of this situation and be proactive about any problems that may come up.

Advantages: provides a strong, well-defined relationship and good worker protections. Implies that the researcher works for the organization, thus the organization should help them be as productive as possible out of their own self-interest.

Disadvantages: This model is actually not accurate in many cases, where the emphasis is on academic freedom and developing one’s own research program (see next section). HR, not understanding the true relationship, may provide a lot of advice that isn’t very relevant to this reality while thinking they are doing what is needed - leaving a vacuum if there is no other outside support. Employment contract and study periods may be un-synced. The aspect of student evaluation may be under-emphasized. Problems may be passed to HR, when really it should be handled in an academic sense. Labor legislation tries to impose a structure which just doesn’t match reality, leading to ignoring (at best) or actively fighting against other actually important rules at worse.

In short, HR (actually “employee relations” in a university)can’t provided everything needed for your group’s support needs.

Independent contractor

An independent contractor decides their own projects, tools, working methods, and schedule - within a goal defined by the party contracting them. This sounds a lot like most researchers that I know of. Especially the concept of bringing your own tools (techniques you know) and methods (how you approach a problem), which you are likely to have brought from previous jobs and will keep using in future ones is quite like a freelancer. An academic often has the freedom to decline projects they don’t like. This (and the “entrepreneur” case below) are especially relevant when the researcher provides their own funding.

TODO: Employee vs independent contractor table

Advantages: We accept the amount of freedom and independence researchers have, and by accepting that, we can better tune our management to their (and our) needs. We realize that we suggest, not tell, most of the time. Researchers build up skills and tools over time and can easily move around, sharing knowledge. The independent contractor model acknowledges mobility.

Disadvantages: If this model was the actual legal relationship, it would be like running one’s own small business which is not a very stable occupation and a very hard life (actually… academics have a pretty hard life due to instability. That’s the point, isn’t it?). It is harder to run a research group creating long-term results when everyone can do their own thing, or if they do focus on a project you want, they might use some incompatible tool which no one else later can use (un-reproducible research). It is very easy to let someone keep doing something unproductive for a very long time, since after all, you can’t tell them what to do (and you just hire someone else next time). Especially when someone provides their own funding, it can be difficult to provide hard-to-hear negative feedback.

Entrepreneur

Some researchers aim to become group leaders themselves, too. In order to do this, you have to practically come up with an idea and sell it to others in your field, and then sell it to funding agencies. This is a very, very different skill than what is traditionally considered part of scientific education. It is a very different skill than being an employee. You could say that most of academic is built around this selling.

Advantages: For many people, this level of self-direction (while still having the protections of an employee) is very appealing. It gives the freedom everyone wants. It makes it very clear that to succeed, you need to sell your ideas to others. Competition gives the best ideas.

Disadvantages: There is very little training or support for this. The people who can best advance in this system aren’t necessarily the best scientifically, but the best salespeople. The tricks of the trade are often learned passively or inherited through ones advisor, or not at all. We could debate conflicts of interest in a university supporting entrepreneurs creating their own work to take elsewhere. Competition holds everyone back.

Early-career worker

Let’s not forget that, in addition to all of the above, young researchers are essentially brand new people in working life, even if their title is student. In any normal company, there is a transition period between learning theoretical knowledge during studies and being a productive employee. This is a quite hands-on, practical, and mentorship-based kind of activity. Academic researchers often miss this type of period and end up having to learn to be self-sufficient by themselves even if this is what we hope the young period provides (since as we’ll discuss later, the mentorship often isn’t as great as it should be).

If this aspect isn’t properly considered, a researcher may end up years later without being ready to take any non-academic job at a level consistent with their experience - since they aren’t prepared for any other working life.