Another group needs some help from someone with my skillset. Since I'm the only one with my skillset here my boss loaned me away. I HATE being told what to do. Especially from someone not in my immediate group.
I hire pretty intelligent people, all masters degrees or PhDs with lot of experience. If I surround myself with great people, we'll achieve greatness. In the group I'm being lent out to, they're mostly people with BSs that have been working here for five years or so. They don't know much about the biological system, however, they know a decent amount about the very specialized areas they work in. One thing that irks me about them though is the way they do 'science'. Their experiments are missing controls, data is processed in the most simplistic manner possible, and laws of physics and physiology are regularly ignored. This makes the level of work really freaking simple and boring to me. They are also stubborn. They hate that I'm here and helping their group. The fact that they're all a bunch of older white dudes and I'm...not...messed with the dynamic, too. They're clueless, and my input will save them a year of R&D work. But they hate that an 'outsider' has infiltrated their group, even though it's very obvious that I don't want to be here. In my group, we play like a team and depend on each other, but groups within a company are often rivals rather than collaborators. Even when we work on the same things and could benefit from each others' experience.
This whole loan experience reminded me of why I want to make the academic transition. I want to be surrounded by smart, passionate individuals. And if they're not geniuses with PhDs, they at least appear to want my help. They want to collaborate. Groups regularly collaborate from different and similar backgrounds. They realize there is strength in numbers and truly value intelligence.
Maybe internal competition isn’t a big deal, but I hate egos, and I hate being passed around like someone owns me.
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