The title of the post relates to a debate going on over at the Science Careers Blog.

The editor there was responding to an article by Dr. Isis that was responding to an article by Vijee Venkatraman titled: “Time to Hire a Housekeeper?”

The debate boils down to this: Vijee and Jim are saying that the idea of hiring a housekeeper is a great way to leverage your time and focus on the important things. The advice in the original article is particularly focused on female scientists.

This got the bees abuzzin’ – Dr. Isis and others are offended that the advice is particularly targeted at women. Their point: why is this advice specific to women?

It is not: anyone who wants to be really successful at a science career needs to learn how to leverage time – regardless of the particular anatomical bits one was born with.

One of the commenters over on the Science Careers blog went so far as to imply that we should all be doing housework, because to hire someone with a different skin color or of a different gender is somehow demeaning and discriminatory.

Pffft.

It is a simple equation. How much has society invested in the training of a scientist? Many years and over a hundred thousand dollars. This resulted in a skillset that few people have. Not just anyone can develop cures for cancer, or develop the next generation of fusion reactor, or etc.

But just about anyone can clean a house.

And in fact, there are a ton of people without jobs at the moment.

I don’t understand why some people are so weird about the idea of hiring help – as if it were just another thumbing-of-noses at others of lesser economic status. It seems like a win-win to me – use your specialized skills to maximal benefit, and give someone else a job so they can feed their kids.

In any case,the original article did made a mistake in targeting this specifically at women. While I don’t agree with Dr. Isis that this is another sign of bias against women, it does smack a bit much of a stereotype.

I can see why they did it. A lot of women are raised to feel that it is our responsibility to “maintain the household.” This breeds a sort of “internal pressure” to take care of household responsibilities that men often aren’t raised with.

Hence, I think it is easier for men to give up that responsibility by hiring someone to help. For some women, I think a bit of guilt comes with doing that.

And that guilt might just be a sufficient activation barrier that the hiring-of-help doesn’t happen.

I believe that was the reason that the Science Careers article by Vijaysree focused on women.

Perhaps that was a tactical mistake. But the central message is correct for any scientist.

Learn to leverage your time, and focus on what you’re good at, while preserving your precious free time for the things you enjoy.

In her video, “The Risk of Starting a Career in Science,” Zella Zanolli talks about the frustrations of sacrificing everything for her science career, then struggling to find a good science position. This is sadly a common story. Does it mean you should give up on having a science career? As usual, Morgan provides a unique perspective on the question… watch the video to find out, and post your comments on the blog.

Morgan explores her own experience with fear and the impact it had on her life, then talks about the importance of banishing it to do truly great work.

Today I had a conversation with someone who is now working for free at a major academic center.

Yes, that’s right. This person is no longer being paid a salary – but is still working.

The center that this person is working at brings in a few hundred million per year in grant money – on top of hundreds of millions in patient care revenues, etc.

But, because the person hasn’t received a grant for a while, the university has shut off the salary.

“Sorry, no grants, no paycheck.”

“Oh, you need to eat? Food? Maybe you can eat agar left over from the latest experiment while you wait for three months to see if you’re graced by the roll of the NIH grant dice.”

“By the way, we still expect you to teach that course next fall for all the med students, but we don’t have any money for your salary to do that – you’ll have to milk the NIH for that.”

This is taking things too far.

I’m calling a spade a spade – and this is the worst kind.

Universities seem to have gotten this notion that this is a “business” and that all their scientists are “businesspeople”. This is especially true in academic medicine.

But I’ve got news for the administrators who think they are being so smart by running things “like a business:”

Yes, in a business, salary can go to zero if you’re not “productive” enough. No difference here.

But, in a business, salary can go to millions or billions if you’re extremely productive.
BIG difference here. In a business, there’s huge upside potential. In an academic job?
Not so much, these days.

Basically, what the university is doing to this person (and many are doing to many people) is saying: you’re taking all the risk on the downside, but you get none of the upside potential.

You get no grants, you get no salary.
You get millions of dollars in grants, and you get no extra salary*.

It’s not the way to motivate people, folks. At least not the really smart and really capable people. They will see right through the ruse (why do you think I own two businesses? I don’t want to miss out on the upside potential of my own particular skills and talents).

I’m happy to take on the risk of my salary going to zero – as long as the university is happy to pay me at least 30% of the total grant revenue I bring in each year. (ummmm errrr maybe I shouldn’t be giving them any ideas about “businessifying” academia even more)

It is saddening to me that the academy has gotten to this point. I understand that everyone has big budget pressures to deal with. I try to be sympathetic about that. But the question that admins should be asking themselves are, “what are the long-term ramifications of my budget cutting decisions?”

The long term ramifications of putting people in a situation where there is only downside but no upside is low morale, and a flight of talent.

When the talent flees, the revenue will drop.
When the revenue drops, more budgets get cut.

And things go into a death spiral.

That’s not the way to run a business, folks. Most businesses who go into that kind of death spiral die (or get bailed out by the government).

Universities: treat your scientists (and all your people) well! You should be treating them like kings and queens, not like peons. These are the people that make your university great – and bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in grants.

Universities administrators that “get this” will be leading successful institutions into the future.