What it takes to become a PI: on something undefinable

Drugmonkey has an interesting post up in which he discusses a piece with 8 points of career advice by someone who didn't make it onto the tenure track (note that I do not see this as "failure", but since this is a career that the author really wanted they ultimately did, literally, "fail" to get it).

Drugmonkey summarizes the piece as one piece of advice: "publish". I drew a different conclusion from the 8 pieces of advice altogether. I do agree that publishing is important (how could I not), but in this particular case what I take from the piece as an overarching summary is "take charge". That may sound odd, because so much of what happens to us during our career feels like chance/luck/serendipity. And it is. But let me try to explain...

Now I don't know the author of the piece, but even from the small bits of information disclosed throughout the column, I recognize his 'type' as I have seen others like him - good scientists, dedicated scientists, but not necessarily "PI material". That may sound harsh and indeed, it is, but after being a PI myself for a while now and after reading so many proposals from aspiring junior scientists, there is something that  will ultimately rise up from every application and piece of writing that I see like smoke from a camp fire. And this is either a collection of tiny little steps (neither a deal breaker in and by themself), a pattern, if you will, that cumulatively show evidence of someone who is taking charge or someone who has drifted a long. Now, both may have worked equally as hard, which is what makes it so unfair and so intangible. And precisely because it IS the sum of all their efforts, I think you cannot pinpoint "getting a tenure track position" or "getting tenure" to one specific criterium. You can, however, summarize it as one overarching behavior: take charge. And this is not something that you can "pull off" by working hard as a postdoc for a few years. It is not a line on your CV. It is not even counted in number and quality of publications. It is something that has to penetrate every fibre of your being for the entire length of your career.

Now, the person who wrote the Nature career column with advice sounds like a good experimentalist and a meticulous bench scientist with a great love for science to boot (anyone who does that many postdocs must really love science). With 19 publications (and 5 as first author) they come across as a good collaborator. As someone answering the questions in front of them, they certainly sound like an asset for any lab. But those are the makings of a staff scientist - a position that is, alas, too non existent in current academia (but that's a different topic entirely). All of these things are, however, not enough to make it as a PI - where you need to take charge and do your own research and planning for what comes next. You cannot sit back and be too passive. The author themselves write it in one of the first paragraphs: they were complacent. I don't think they were complacent on purpose. I don't think this is even easily recognizable in specific events or incidences, where you might pull someone aside and say: "I noticed you were really complacent/not taking charge when you did X". Which is why this overall pattern of behavior can continue even in the presence of other output indicators that might signal "on the road to success" (note again that I am only calling this "success" because this is what it would have been in the eyes of the author of the column. More power to you if you recognize that there are plenty of places outside of academia where you can grow and thrive, be successful and do good for the planet because I think there are plenty of such places and we need more PhDs in those positions to ensure a better tomorrow for all life on earth). But perhaps especially because other indicators will signal that things are going well (there is another publication, another conference presentation, the PI is happy/has nothing to complain about because their work gets done), this can be a total blind spot for the person in question.

Note that I am not saying that you shouldn't collaborate or think about the interests of others: I've always been the person discussing other people's projects and helping them wherever I could. Talking and doing science with your lab mates/colleagues is part of the fun of the job. You don't have to be an egocentric asshole who is only furthering their own career (I wouldn't want those people in my own lab even if they brought me Nature papers by the dozen) - but you also shouldn't let your own scientific output suffer or come second. You have to look out for number one and if I have learned one thing as I am getting older it is that nobody will ever care about your success and development as much as you do. Even if they try.

So, there you have it: You need to be pro-active.

Come up with your own research questions - even if there is no need. Indeed, as Drugmonkey mentions: maybe the most important reason to pursue my own lab was when I ultimately realized I had so many questions that I wanted to answer, that it was simply inevitable. Even a permanent job as a staff scientist would not have brought me the fulfillment that I get from being a PI because I could never run that many projects in parallel and dive so deep into the topics that really interest me. (I never thought about it that way, but that is a really big part of why I became a PI: I didn't so much want to DO science as I have questions and an insatiable curiosity about my research fields - thanks Drugmonkey, for that insight).
Make a name for yourself (and this will happen automatically if you have your own ideas/opinions/output that you spread at conferences, it doesn't require really artificial "networking" just for networking's sake - I used to hate networking because I am an introvert with room to grow in the social interactions department, until I realized that 'networking' occurs when you start discussing things you really care about with others. So you can have an in-depth, on topic discussion and network at the same time. It is win-win!).
Find out how to move forward EVEN when you think your PIs are looking out for your career and best interests (one could argue that the author's PhD and postdoc supervisors were in fact not having his best career interest's in mind if nobody ever told him that 12 years as a postdoc with limited first author publications was pushing it).

I want to stress that I don't have a fixed idea of what a PI should be like - nor there I think there should be a narrow definition for this (I certainly don't fit the typical mold of a dominant leader whom everyone respects and is impressed with at first sight). But there is one thing that I know I do have (even though it may not always show on the outside): deep down inside I am confident and autonomous about the path ahead of me - even if I don't know where that path is taking me, I am prepared for the next step. What it means is that I take charge of my science and my own development - and I have done so since the first time I set foot into a lab. That holds for the experiments (where you do have to continuously doubt your results because you can never be too critical of your own science - but it shouldn't result in paralysis!), the background reading (about my scientific topic, about my personal development, about opportunities/challenges/academia), the presentation and dissemination of my results (and that includes the writing up and publishing of everything you do - Drugmonkey is right here, of course).

I have done all of the above for as long as I can remember. That doesn't mean I always know what I am doing. For my entire life, I have been doubting myself a large part of the time. I suspect that a lot of the typical alpha males just push forward on their science oblivious to a lot of other aspects of the job/their personality and I am sometimes jealous of them. But I am quite certain that all of those tiny little steps where I actively took charge have ultimately combined to make me "PI material".

1 opmerking:

  1. Wow, that Nature article is really something. I have definitely met people like the writer and these folks seem to go around unaware what it is that is keeping them away from success, whereas no one around them is surprised by it all but won't say what they really think. It's the personality; at this point, the essay writer probably reeks of frustration and desperation. The most successful people are charismatic, charming snake-oil salespeople. This guy seems to be clueless about how academia works, what the rule of grants and publishing are, and doesn't seem to have what I'd call a killer instinct (or others call gut) which is needed to lead and land anything. The insights from different PIs in the Nature essay are all valid and I recognize them from my own experiences, but their importance is something that a successful PI picks up naturally along the way to becoming one, not something they need to be spoonfed after two decades as a postdoc. His numbers (23 years as a postdoc, 19 papers, etc.) are not impressive. I wish someone would tell him it's likely game over and it's been over for quite a while (at least in the US). He likely won't become a PI and should probably better focus on other opportunities.

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