Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Admissions Committee

While I have yet to start at my new school I've been flying out every once in a while to get involved with my soon-to-be school.  My most recent trip was for an admissions committee.  I'm trying to get an insiders perspective o the incoming class to see who I can recruit.  I had no idea how much schools are trying to expand diversity.  It seemed that every candidate had a 'diversity' category the school is trying to satisfy.  I'm okay with making some concessions for a candidate with weaker credentials because they're in a unique demographic, but their cultural backgrounds seemed to matter more than anything else.  Crazy.

I feel very strongly about diversity.  People come from backgrounds that aren't conducive to going to the best schools and having the best GPAs, and in the STEMs we have more problems than people.  Bringing in some diversity allows us to bring in more atypical students.  I am just so freaking surprised how much it matters.  I was able to get two students through the admissions process that no one else wanted: one male, one female....both white.  But I'll be the only faculty member with my specific specialty, and these two's research interest are right in line with mine.  So I'm hoping to get them into my lab.  I've already reached out to them.

The other faculty members were a little upset with me since there's only so much RA/TA money to go around and they would rather spend it on key demographics.  The girl falls in to this; the guy doesn't.  It was a surprisingly heated meeting.  And I don't think they expected me to speak up as much as I did, so I'm certain that combined with some of my comments really rubbed people the wrong way.  When I come in I'm thinking of bringing some doughnuts, bourbon, and weed.  Might loosen some of these people up.

I had this same issue when I first started in industry: people really not caring about my opinion.  It took some harsh comments and alpha-dog tactics to get people to respect me and my opinion.  I'm certain I'm going to have to repeat this process, and I'm not really looking forward to that.  I'm still trying to determine whether to be the really nice person (as I usually approach most problems with), or the hardass (as I approach the most caustic of situations with).  To be honest, I have more fun being the hardass.

As an aside, I'm been watching The Americans.  I freaking love this show.  Unrelated point to the post, but I feel like me getting into academic is kind of like the KGB couple in America.  Trying to belong, but still in my industry mindset.

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Getting scooped in the same company

Like most corporations, we highly value innovation.  When I originally proposed my group idea to upper-management they weren’t interested until I mentioned that we could crank out a ton of patents without a lot of time-investment.  My group would be the grand creators.  They suddenly got on-board and it’s been a great decision because the four of us have been responsible for a plethora of live-saving products.  On top of that we get 10 patents to every 1 outside of the group.  The patents are cool because 1. I get a plaque, and 2. I get $4000 for every patent awarded.  Now, compensation in group goes like this: base salary, fringe (insurance, retirement matching, etc.), yearly bonus (~15% of base salary), independent awards (between $250 and $30000), patent bonuses (between $500 and $4000), miscellaneous bonuses (gym memberships, cell phone, etc.).  A lot of our yearly bonuses, independent awards, and patent bonuses rely on an internal competition.  If you separate yourself and rise above the others you get all the accolades and the $weet $weet cash money.  This breeds competition.

Because this breeds competition people steal ideas all the time.  Within our group the ideas are safe and we’re all on each other’s patents.  The group that takes the idea to a real working medical device gets the glory eventually but all the early glory heads to the people on the patents.  So each group keeps what they’re working on pretty secretive to keep other groups from getting ahold of it.  In grad school I remember doing the same thing.  But a little information would leak out or like minds would work on similar things and another group would publish.  In academics I kind of saw it as a good thing: it meant we were working on something important.  Though it also diminished the impact factor of our target journal.

In industry, my group has to present for the CEO or maybe a physician interested in our devices pretty frequently.  They, thinking it’s okay to share information within the same company (but not realizing the petty competition), share our device or idea.  Then the other group runs with it, submits an inferior patent, and they get it.  Lame. 

Our group recently got scooped by a group that we call “the nut sacks”…can’t remember how they got that name, but we do not have confidence in their abilities to create medical devices.  We traced the leak back to an intern I hired that leaked a small part of the product. The nut sacks aren’t even pursuing it as a device to prototype.  They’re just wanting to scoop us and patent-block.  Those of you thinking scooping doesn’t happen outside of the ivory tower: it’s here and in full force.  I thought for sure this wouldn't happen when leaving academia....you know.....common goals.  Time to just batten down the hatches.