🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1994Jul27.170404.9792@news.yale.edu>, shulei@minerva.cis.yale.edu (Shulei Zhao) writes:
> 	I recently witnessed a devastating fight between a postdoc and his
> mentor on issues regarding the postdoc's intention to apply for his own
> grant and authorship of a couple of papers.  It was a no-win situation for
> both of them. Things like this are not uncommon.  I hope that postdocs and
> people who hire postdocs share their experiences and give suggestions on
> how we can better handle these problems caused by conflicting interests. 

The short answer is to treat each other with respect.  If both people respect
the other's opinion and negociate fairly, almost anything can be resolved.

One problem is that the main interest of the postdoc is to make a big 
splash in a relatively short time so that (s)he can get a job.  A faculty
member is usually interested in a longer time frame and this requires doing
a lot of relatively uninteresting background work before getting to the
exciting stuff.  For example, would you rather do a quick, cute experiment
that got into _Nature_ but didn't lead anywhere, or a something that will
not be publishable now but will lead to six _Cell_ publications ten years 
later?  I expect that your answer to this question would reveal your
employment status.

A second problem is that the mentor has gone to a lot of effort to gain
control of his lab, and giving up any of that to a postdoc is difficult
for some.  It is hard for most of us to admit that we are getting older
and losing relevance, that the techniques that we learned in grad school
are obsolete, and perhaps that the postdoc that we just hired is smarter
than we are.  On the other hand, it is also hard for many of us to admit
that experiments that were done *ten* years ago might have any relevance,
that techniques that predate our birth might occassionaly be useful,
and that the old guy who just hired us might be smarter than we are, even
though he doesn't know what PCR is.

Ask yourself some questions before you set up a postdoc.  Do you like to
work with people who are aggressive (backstabbers) or laid back (lazy)?
Do you like working alone or as part of a team?  Do you like lots of
personal interaction with your mentor or do you like to be left alone?
Do you prefer to be told what to work on or think it all up yourself?
There are no right answers, but if you are a laid back team player and
you go to a lab full of aggressive loners, you will be *most* unhappy.

Finally, talk to your prospective mentor before you commit.  Ask him 
what his policy is on publications, grants, etc.  (Look at his publication
record to see if he is telling the truth if he says that he doesn't 
insist on his name on all papers coming from his lab.)  If you have a side
project in mind, ask him about it.  "We will consider that after you
have been here awhile" means no.

Finally, remember that there are faculty members that are so bad that no
postdoc could ever be happy in their lab, and postdocs that are so bad
that no faculty member would ever be happy having them in their lab.  You
can always bail out.

Andrew Cockburn