Not your lab, not your monkeys

First drafted: 2024 April 23
Last updated: 2024 May 02

You are being lied to.

A major issue with early academic stages I've only recently realized is one of belonging, caring, and expectations.

As an undergrad in engineering, beyond the many technical aspects I had to learn, a choir of dogmas concerning what is expected of me and my classmates after graduation was persistently lectured. "Companies want team players. People who care not just about the work they do, but about the institutions they work for" was commonplace in many career advising talks and seminars.

The aspects of caring beyond your job, belonging to the team, and expecting to last and grow with and within your company were ingrained in the brains of many, as it was in mine. Apparently, that's how you "win."

But not in academia. You won't.

While the work-as-if-the-company-was-mine approach might work well in the corporate world (it may not either), I believe it to be destined to frustration, anger, loneliness, and a ton of wasted hours in the academic research world.

In the early stages of your academic career you ought to be selfish and strategic. That's at least how you avoid losing.

The lab you work for isn't yours. The institution you work for isn't yours either. These are there for you to squeeze as much value as you can from them.

As an early career researcher (research intern, PhD student, or postdoc), you should care about YOU above all. You should care about the research problems you face, the science you get to do, whether the questions you address are compelling enough and worthy of your time and effort, whether the challenges you face are making you want to work nonstop, whether the work you do induces in you a profound sense of enthusiasm, joy, obsession, and pride (I may talk about strategy in a different post). The rest is just noise.

In academia, apart from a few exceptions, labs and universities are counting on you leaving after your PhD or your postdoc in pursuit of academic mobility and further training. Moving is great and often one of the major sources of inspiration and new collaborations. But the fact that you will be eventually asked to leave (or graduate), in my experience, is often overlooked (many times subconsciously and, in the worst cases, deliberately; both equally bad) by many professors and head of departments in pursuit of their own agendas and often at the cost of the wellbeing and future career prospects of the many PhDs and postdocs under them. Many labs' day-to-day activities are supported by the (extra) work done by early-career researchers with temporary contracts. This isn't right. Not of the professors for asking. Not of us for agreeing by default to partake in these activities.

It is fair to say that I write this with a mild feeling of resentment from the many hours I have invested over the years as an early career researcher working away from my research and on "my" lab's own administrative challenges, often misguided by the eagerness of my superiors about raising funds, building and maintaining equipment, supporting outreach, onboarding new members, representing at events, and feeding irrelevant networking. All in the name of making "my" lab and my lab mates better, and my professor proud. All while my time in these institutions I was helping make better quickly expired. I didn't know better. But let me say it one more time: the lab you work for isn't yours. At least until your name is on the door.

While this may not be your experience, it has certainly been mine. The teamplayer strategy didn't work for me. And I bet it won't work for some of you either.

D.R-M

Note: These opinions are my own. They are also highly dynamic and their second time derivative, albeit decreasing with age, is large. Experience provides me with new insights that drift former convictions. By the time you read this, assume my opinion on the subject has most likely changed.