Your academic career depends on your skills in "flattering people, schmoozing, being agreeable when you disagree, even when you are 100 percent certain that you are correct”.

Katalin Kariko, a Nobel Laureate, puts it well.

To succeed, you need the skills that have little to do with science:

- Sell yourself and your work
- Attract funding
- Be excellence in interpersonal interactions to get invited everywhere
- Know how to climb a political ladder
- Value a hierarchy

Why? Because of an immense competition.

By itself, competition is a driving force of progress.
But OVER-competition reshuffles the priorities.
It makes us focus on short-term goals.

It prioritizes attention seeking over science.

📍 In my view, an average professor today is:

40% salesperson, 40% fundraiser, 10% scientist and only 10% teacher/mentor.
+ 20% bureaucrat, + 20% hiring manager, +30% email responder

And yes - it’s 170% workload.

Most professors are often severely overworked.

Continued - see next post.

Join us:
@write_paper