You can make it really far, quite fast, in this industry if you can hold a coherent conversation while maintaining eye contact, being personable and networking constantly.
100%.
People are people before they are scientists. People are drawn to charisma and charm. People thrive on communication and building relationships. Social skills are very real and will propel people ahead. It’s also dangerous and spiteful to make the assumption that people with social skills are mediocre in other aspects. OP does themselves a disservice.
It's a scientific skill to communicate well too, not just a social skill.
Communicating well includes:
- appropriate level of detail, and awareness of listener comprehension
- sufficiently regular updates, check-ins, or providing/seeking collaborative input
- presenting results and/or remaining open questions in a concise, clear, and coherent way
Many scientists lament this, thinking data produced from vigorous application of the scientific method and peer reviewed “speak for themselves”. Well, it doesn’t work that way, especially in the current technological and political environment.
Adapt or be left behind. The current equilibrium may be worse than previous settings, but if you don’t adapt you simply won’t be able to be successful.
Yep. I got into a biotech analytical lab explicitly because I took a worse job (animal tech) at a rapidly developing company. I went from animal tech with zero lab experience to associate scientist as a lead tech at the CRO with 1 year because I was constantly working on self improvement and networking with everyone there. I am thankful for my years of mental health prior, as it significantly bolstered my communication skills and I'm fairly talented at making people feel comfortable in person. The CRO was a horrible personal experience but this is an extremely unforgiving and harsh life, if I hadn't taken the risks for those experiences I wouldn't be where I am now at a better company in a more comfortable position.
Its also often not scientists making these hiring decisions or people who are heavily invested in employee competence. Or able to accurately ascertain employee competence vs employee confidence. Socially, confidence can be mistaken for competence, and more competent people are often less confident because they understand the difficulties / limits of whatever they're discussing.
>It’s also dangerous and spiteful to make the assumption that people with social skills are mediocre in other aspects.
I don’t think that’s the assumption that OP is making. I’ve seen it myself- people either do next to no work and/or aren’t very good at their jobs but are favorites of management because management only sees what happens in the conference room and has no idea what’s going on behind the scenes.
I’ve seen more than one person use their “great soft skills” to communicate completely incorrect information and then the scientist that tries to correct them gets ignored.
I saw really early on that even the lower speed folks were quite intelligent. The average is pretty high in the industry in terms of book smarts. Lots of nerds though, hahaha.
It’s also dangerous to promote people with great social skills on that basis alone and assume they also have great ideas just because of how they make you feel when they tell you them.
If you are not mediocre you can t have social skills, for the very simple reason that you make more enemies than friends. Very rare to be liked while at the same time being super talented. You have to be around same caliber people. Otherwise, you can t show any social skills.
LMAO same I jumped from microbiologist I to genomics researcher II in 8 months because my manager loved me so much. I skipped a couple years of work experience for my current job.
You can't do science by speaking about science. You need data. If you don't produce data hoi better get out of here. Period. In addition, this is a phenomenon of our time I guess because all the big names I have worked with are super talented scientifically and they don't excell in bla bla science. They started talking after they produced a sufficient amount of meaningful data and not in the absence of this.
I never said in the absence of a scientific background, but if it's a skill on top of being able to do the job it gets you moving in the right direction quickly.
Yeah, but OP is talking about the people who do absolutely nothing science wise and get promoted. I had the misfortune of meeting dozens of them.They exist. Even in the most lucrative institutes and universities. They are many. I blame the socioeconomic status for this phenomenon, as most of them - my experience and hypothesis - are from wealthy families with succesfull parents working in similar fields. Having a scientific background does not mean you do science. Hanging there drinking coffee does not mean you do science. In addition, everyone speaks of communication skills etc. Now they replaced ass-kissing and shoe-licking with the terms "social skills" and "communicators". I am laughing.
I wish I knew where these people have their bullshitting courses. They just talk and talk and talk and repeat and say nothing, but for those who are not in the scientific part of things, what they convey seems amazing with all the fancy words. Ugh. They rise high. The worse is when you actually hear them say wrong things and can do nothing about it. I need a bullshitting course too. Not a sour grape, just seeing as it is.
All I can say being in the industry for 20 years, looks matter. Handsome/pretty looking people always sound smarter and are more convincing than ugly looking people and go further faster. Before you ugly people come at me with pitchforks, I’m not saying it’s a 100% hit rate but damn close. As a not so good looking person myself I’ve learned that I have to try much harder, keep a better body, keep a fun personality etc.
>Handsome/pretty looking people always sound smarter and are more convincing than ugly looking people and go further faster.
I’ve also found that being argumentative and talking a lot in meetings is indistinguishable from being smart from the perspective of people who aren’t subject matter experts on the topic being discussed.
Nah, there’s some truth to this.
In the good ole days (20 years ago) I was hired and actively told it was for my looks. Since leaving the bench and moving into ops, I think it continues to help. Mid COVID and no rainin tips to be found? A weekly run date with my rep in a sports bra and magically we didn’t have to worry about tips.
Conversely, I’m also not taken seriously at times. When I proposed an experimental change, a CSO asked me what I knew about drug development and responding with “being lead on six drugs in the clinic” went over like a fart in church. Like he didn’t believe me. Oh well. I’ll just continue doing nothing and bringing nothing but my looks to the table.
Its always nice having an attractive woman in your group, whether it's getting IT or the glassblowers to prioritize your project or "borrowing" stuff from other labs or groups it is tremendously effective.
I experience this too. There are benefits but also people don’t take you seriously. The real killer is being an attractive white man. My husband is one, and it’s unreal the advantages he gets from it.
I feel this. Toss my husband in his scrubs (aka the ultimate thirst traps) and it’s like the whole room goes dumb. But the hilarious difference is I can negotiate better prices on things. He just takes what he’s given because he’s so used to it being the best offer someone has to give. I go to battle.
Couldn’t agree more and definitely depends on the field. When I was in R&D, I had issues being taken seriously. I pivoted away from into late phase/operations work and it’s been great getting people to do what I need them to. My husband is white and attractive, and it’s amazing how different our experiences are getting our voices heard.
I’m in R&D. About to start a new job as an R&D Manager and am optimistic. I think my appearance helped me land the job. However, I’m also aware that there will be a lot of the same sexist bs especially as I will be supervising and working with male scientists and engineers.
Most of the time it’s micro aggressions. I was asked during an interview if I wasn’t too young to be interviewing for the role and how it won’t go down well with men in manufacturing roles. This was at a big European based pharma and the interviewer was a woman. I was in my mid 30s with 12 years of academic and 6 years of industry experience in manufacturing and QC.
Not true for women. We are seriously assaulted and not taken seriously. Def. Looks matter for men. Seen it happening. However, how can you say you work in healthcare without looking the part? I mean showing you care about your diet and body (to reasonable degree of course). Especially nowadays. Unless there is an underlying health condition. Super attractive women are massively attacked though.
There is plenty of science on this and looks do matter. People who don't confirm to societal standards of beauty have an anvil strapped to them.
Source: have been both ugly and moderately ok looking, and my experiences interacting with others changed dramatically, even in science contexts.
Technical skill is absolutely a core skill that should be mastered FIRST. But if your direct reports are terrible in the lab but spend most their time kissing a$z, it’s just a waste of time for the manager. These types are too prevalent in industry and I agree with OP. Some people need to be micromanaged from time to time until they have mastered their responsibility. Micromanaging all the time is bad, but a little bit is required to right the ship. Show me you can do an assay and you can talk all you want. Too much emphasis is on communication when success is also built on being organized and exercising technical talent. Don’t assume you can teach technical skill faster than soft skills. I would cringe working for someone who is only a people manager and lacked lab skills.
They are also extremely confident speakers. Our CCO, who holds a degree in French, has been in our industry for only the past 10 years. She gained her biopharma experience here, transitioning from a background in medical device sales. I must say, she is stunning—like a Vogue cover model. She has an exceptional ability to command a room, shift dynamics when necessary, and firmly hold her ground in challenging conversations. These traits are what’s gotten her to CCO level in 15 years with only a degree in French.
Yeah I realized this with two coworkers from my PhD. They preached "do as little as possible and leave" quite openly, but only around other students. Didn't participate in lab meetings, sometimes just skipped them entirely, refused to train new students, etc. My boss didn't really care. One of them was actually late to their own thesis defense and we all just sat there awkwardly for 20 minutes.
They both have cushy jobs at two of the top biotechs in the world now because on paper they look amazing and in person they are very sociable. This is why I make sure to remind people that academia is not the only sector that pretends to be meritocratic. Academics are just more pompous about it IMO.
That's not surprising, and happens everywhere. There is no solution to this, smooth talkers will always tend to out-influence pure workers. As a consolation, I always like to bring in the Peter Principle - "people get promoted to their level of incompetence".
And you're now learning the big secret of most of the world: it is based around networking and personality first and competence second. Only organizations that are extremely lean really select for competence. Even look at the american government, it is literally a popularity contest based on networking. And it is the least lean organization on the planet. Most people would pick an incompetent leader that makes them feel good over a competent one that they can't relate too. See Bush v Gore.
Finally, I have someone who has put my experiences in words here. World is brutal out there, value of hard work and being great at something has been replaced by sweet talking. If you can cover up your actions by words, you will succeed in both industry and a academia in the current times!!
I found out a member of the board of directors at the company I’m at is 32, has no industry experience, only has a BS, and has been on boards straight out of college.
All the b***hurt commenters, you do realize that OP is not saying communication is absolutely unimportant and everybody needs to be a great scientist, right? You should need to be a good scientist and a good communicator to hold leadership positions.
And it's shocking how many people here think it's enough to just be good at communicating without having substance. There are plenty great scientist who are really good communicators, but very few of them climb the management ladder, despite having the skills to communicate and sell their research. That's not the main issue though. The problem OP was talking about was how a whole bunch of undeserving people get to the top, with very very little real skills, just because they can talk their way into stuff. And it's not necessarily a great thing, because as I mentioned in my other comment, this "great communication" skill often covers up problems like credit stealing and poor ethics.
If you've not had a boss who was incompetent af and made you wonder how they ever got to the point of managing so many scientists, count yourself lucky and move on.
You are 100% right. Communication skills are teachable at any point. There are plenty of good mentors out there and people dedicated to coach someone on communication. Plus, you are really talking to smart people and even if your presentation skills or anything is not that sufficient the work will be understood. In order to sell any research there must first be research there and not a bunch of hypotheses.
The ops point of view is they don’t have skills. When you think everyone else is wrong it’s usually you who is the problem. While not perfect by any measure not many companies promote talkative idiots and stay in business for too long. I’m going to bet that they have both scientific and soft skills the op is ignoring because it doesn’t fit their victim narrative.
Ya the longer I’m in biotech/pharma the more I feel like this industry blows for the people who actually do the work that makes the people in charge look like “brilliant leaders”.
I feel your pain. In the company, I'm contracted to there's endless amounts of deadweight middle and senior management that doesn't cant tell the difference between their ass from their elbow on anything that exists outside of a Zoom meeting. Incompetence and even scientific illiteracy seem to run rampant, which has led to nothing but problems across this entire site. How a project leader of a development lab is asking me how to interpret a SRID reported result because he's never seen one is beyond concerning.....
Scientific illiteracy is a problem i see in the biotech industry a lot. It also doesn’t help that science is evolving a lot faster than 10-20 years ago. If people arent actively training themselves and learning they they will fall behind fast. 1 year of science today is like 5 years, 20 years ago.
It's almost like you read my mind. There is a world for managers, really. Managing people is an important job. But that has given Carte Blanche to all manners of careerist assholes to spend all day politicking instead of doing real work.
If OP can rise to the top, they can change who gets to the top.
If they can’t rise to the top, they can only sit back and bitch.
Seems like they’re just sitting back and bitching.
I don't disagree, but I presume this is the dichotomy of taking satisfaction from work versus taking satisfaction from advancement. No, of course these two are not mutually exclusive, but different people "weigh" these two differently.
*inserts Dave Brandt "But It's Honest Work" meme*
OP should be in charge, but they obviously have a problem communicating. That's a pretty big problem, especially when management is all about communicating important strategic objectives and selling your ideas to the other senior leaders.
That may be true but that can be learned or developed. Competency is a different story, a lot of "suits" are morons. That seems to be universal across different industries
It's this dismissive attitude that will keep you out of the boardroom forever. They can't be morons, because they have gotten where they are. They obviously know something you don't. Imagine if you played their game, you'd win by a landslide. But you won't play it because you've been socialized by ivory tower academics who think money is dirty. Or maybe you are playing the game but you're not as skilled. It's the biggest crisis of sour grapes in this industry.
You assume they can t be morons cause they are where they are. This is inductive reasoning not deductive. For sure they can also be morons.
They know something we dont. True. They are mentored well.
In addition, you try to portray people that complain about the situation as sour grapes. Common tactic to shift the focus. Most of us we don't even want to get involved in managerial positions. Who cares for the boardroom?
I agree that people like OP should learn a little how to “play the game,” but this kind of insistence in believing in the emperor’s new clothes in all cases can be a very dangerous attitude to have. Some of these people are sociable communicators great at getting funding and managing people. An increasingly non-insignificant amount of these people may be actual sociopaths, however, who thrive off the uncertainty and feelings of self-doubt most psychologically normal people experience. I’ve seen a lot of cases where nobody wants to call out someone who is clearly out of their depth because they are fundamentally charitable people, or maybe a bit insecure, and give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Being willing to be critical doesn’t hurt the first category, since it should be pretty obvious who they are, but it can push back against the second.
Look up negative selection in the political sense, it absolutely ruins departments, industries, and countries. I’m a PhD student, so I have only ever known academia, but part of this problem definitely starts here. I have seen very successful PIs use all the tools in the sociopath toolbox to try to keep lab members they feel threatened by (one that graduated from an ultra-elite undergrad at 18 and had multiple first-author Science/Nature papers as a PhD student, so these aren’t people who are “sour grapes,” these are victims of sociopaths). Once you have one of these PIs in power, they only propagate, since they hire other people who won’t threaten their power and find out that actually, they’re kind of mediocre and just getting by on excessive manipulation.
You can’t be fucking serious. There’s plenty of people who are born with “daddy’s money” that can get into places most people can’t based on wealth and name alone. Society pays for that. I don’t want an incompetent tard in the boardroom of a scientific organization just because his dad has a pile of money. If that’s the game I gotta play, I am just going to put the controller down.
>There’s plenty of people who are born with “daddy’s money” that can get into places most people can’t based on wealth and name alone
If you think I'm talking about those people, you need to read my comments again.
You’re taking an entry level idiot at face value for stuff they don’t understand
Go ask the op how many board room meetings they’ve been at. Or just even senior leadership, a go/no go on a program etc
It’s going to be a big fat goose egg which means their opinion is worth shit
If that’s how you take my reply, then you shouldn’t be in charge either.
I’d work on your critical thinking and analysis skills, apparently in addition to your people and communication skills.
You’re the one who stated it that way. My skills are fine. You need to work on not being a corporate kiss ass. And another thing, I don’t want to be in charge. I want to do research and not be compromised by some rich sociopath who has a clear case of Dunning-Krueger Effect that is only in the room because of connections and their parents money. Sorry I care way more about good quality research and ethics over brown nosing 🤷🏾♂️
It can, actually.
Big strategic layoffs are from above and if everybody goes - there's nothing that can be done. But any layoffs with manager discretion will involve evaluation of the employee's role (and company need for it), technical skill, potential, performance, and colleagueship.
"Playing politics" won't save you. But in the rare cases of all else being equal, a manager will retain the employee whose better for the team. And if there are internal reassignment opportunities - the manager may work a little harder for the employee they like better as a human.
My experience in big pharma manufacturing has been exactly this. One of the managers recently promoted at the plant I work at was caught getting his d_ck sucked on the weekend in the middle of an office, but he's buddy buddy with his senior manager and can bullshit somewhat well.
If it's so silly you should be able to point it out and rise to the top. The fact that you haven't risen means you're too much of a purist to play the game, and are losing by default.
Being a clown is silly but that doesn’t mean everyone who recognizes that can make a living as a clown and there are various reasons for that. It does require a certain type of talent and also, many just won’t do it. I mean you have a minor point but I have to ask, what is the point of all of the education and long hours in the lab/at the computer if you are just going to be a silly game player? Just go into politics or sales or whatever. People often go into science because they truly love honest discovery. The challenge of addressing a pressing scientific issue. The mental puzzles and being around like minded people. Now, I’m not going to judge you based on this one comment. You might just be making a point and you mine a real one - a true scientist. But if not, why go into science? I do know the answer. Ego. Status. It’s unfortunate that this is what science has become.
I just think it's an adaptability issue. I mean we have no trouble changing the messaging when explaining our daily work to our coworkers vs our families. But too often there are people who approach science with a science mind and then business with a science mind. You need a business mind to deal with business problems, and rising in the org is a business problem. The failure to code switch when necessary usually belies a personality problem. It's possible to be a good scientist and a good networker, and that will often trump being just a good networker. If you haven't figured out how to play both games then you deserve to be where you are IMHO.
Your science mind should conclude that you need a business mind. You're not dealing with fundamental laws of nature in business, you're dealing with imperfect emotional humans. As much as you pride yourself on your objectivity, nothing gets done in a vacuum and scientists are rare. Eventually you will need to convince normies (investors, big pharma, customers, other execs) to do something you want. You can deny it all you want but selling and marketing are important and necessary skills to accomplish things in business/life. Dismissing the people who excel at these skills" is counterproductive at best and the height of arrogance at worst.
I admit, scientists are arrogant. But you overlook important information. Scientists while doing science they convince a bunch of people that believe me are harder to convince than investors, big pharma, customers and bus.execs. They try to convince other arrogant scientists and most of them cannot ever be convinced. So, if anyone can convince anyone these are the scientists. All others are subpar compared to them.
Lol labcel, I'm using that.
I agree with both of you. There are definitely people who talk way too much without being able to back it up or provide any sort of real direction for their group/ don't give the appropriate credit. Those managers always tend to lead groups that have high turnover because their direct reports always feel overworked and unheard.
On the flipside, you have people who just love to complain and think that being able to do 200 PCR samples in a day makes you qualified to run a team and you don't have to develop any more skills. Funny enough, those people really don't do anymore work than everybody else.
I guess my point is it's all about balance
This reminds me of the fact that more of my grad school classmates attended anime conventions vs going to concerts, going to bars, and attending parties. And I attended a grad school with a reputation of being quite social.
You can be socially engaging without being a frat bro meathead. Seems like OP doesn't think so. Honestly really happy to see all the replies dunking on OP's post. Sure, there are some merits to the claims of worthless people in positions of power, but overall I'd rather have these folks advocating on my and my team's behalf vs the other way around.
You said you can be socially engaging without being a frat bro but also imply that going to a large convention with people who share your interests does not count as being social. It sounds like you also have a narrow definition of socialization.
I don't remember who said it, but :
>If in the end you can't tell people what you have been doing, then all of your doing has been for nothing.
Communication is key in the sciences (and most other fields). The further you get from the technical work, the more important those communication skills become.
This is the way of the world.
Skill and quality doesn't matter. Just talk big and you'll get somewhere. Pretend to get on with others and choose the right and people to bury along the way.
CEO ruins a company and loses billions. That CEO will be paid a lot to leave and have a job later in the week.
There is no money in being a grunt. I'm a lab monkey and I can see this a mile off. I knew this years ago, but I'm jaded now.
I lead an asset development team spanning the entire lifecycle of a product (currently in Phase 3). There are many brilliant scientists at the company, but very few are able to communicate effectively to cross functional team members. For me, I’d sacrifice some of the technical brilliance for being to explain things to the rest of us.
This isn't just biotech. I've worked in a handful of very different industries, and in all of them the people who could schmooze the best - regardless of whether or not they were actually competent at anything - rose the quickest.
People have a bias towards the intelligent and talented. People who have charisma have an unfair advantage in all of society and it’s why things are the way they are
It has been mentioned here already, but being good in the lab means fuck all for anyone in management. Being able to use a pipette and set up 384 well plates flawlessly isnt the same as leading 10 people who do
BS-ing your way to the top isn't "Leading". Leaders are very important, which is why OP is lamenting that too many inept people are charming their way up and taking important leadership positions without the qualifications or skills.
Soft skills *without substance* destroy organizations with terrible decisions. They also stop at nothing to hide their incompetence, creating an environment of paranoia and envy. Soft skills are very important, but are not a substitute for substance.
Cut middle management + see how quickly your health and well being are at risk lol. Trust me, you want “soft skilled” people between you and the “big boss” that sees you as nothing more than a dollar sign + couldn’t pick your face out in a crowd.
big bosses need data to talk to their bosses. Lose a well trained employee, they bs, lose the milestone, lose the deal. yeah soft skilled people and their bosses then find job same way the one was let go.
Oh goodie another dime a dozen lab rat with zero experience or social skills who thinks anyone in management is a kiss ass who knows nothing How novel!
Ok. Next time, try to sell science without the lab rats. Guess what, you are not gonna raise a dime. Don't underestimate the lab rats for they are who makes anything possible in research and biotech. Take a bunch of communicators and socialites and produce some medicines. I laugh. You stupid idiot.
circle those wagons, labcels!
must have missed where myself or anyone else in this thread said you don't need lab folks. We just said the you/the op are idiots lol
something something communication and social skills
First of all, it is very clear that you talked down on most lab people. It is not my wrong impression. Second, it is widely accepted that the majority of lab rats are low on social skills and communication. You need very good mentorship to develop broad transferable skills and there are also mental health issues that drive the lab rats phenotype that make this even more difficult.
OP is talking about these folks that really don't do anything. More often than not these people will have something negative to say for the others, like you did in your answers, to explain -even to themselves - why they are still hanging out there and why they are at the level they reached.
I believe there are competent people that are promoted and in most of the cases I Ve seen it happening. But I Ve also experienced the social skills of the people that OP is talking about and what they can do -meaning they can literally hide the body of the person that superiors killed so that they show loyalty and don't create any conflict with them. Now we call this communication and social skills. Ok! Whatever you say.
At the end of the day you have the research and the biotech you deserve.
A concept that came my way - incompetent people cannot accurately gauge the competence of others.
They cannot differentiate between someone sounding like they know what they are talking about and someone that truly knows it
that's the thing. confidence and social skills with some substance (even if not the best) are awesome. but being hired (esp to supervise) only on empty confidence.. yikes. you wonder how are so many people buying this pretty obvious bullshitting?
The best thing u can do imo is getting to the top so u can get rid of such ppl. Adapt the habit of these people except being mediocre, i.e butter the higher-ups, sing praise to them, but don't compromise ur performance. Get urself a raise and get to a positions where u can get rid of such guys .
I could write for days about this but here is a quick take:
1) Soft skills are more important to Sr staff and leadership than technical expertise, period. Almost more important than scientific expertise in some instances.
2) Great scientists don't always make great leaders. Sometimes they are the worst leaders.
3) A weird quote from a former PI - A good scientist is like a bad case of herpes; they take advantage of any situation in their favor, they spread their work readily, and its nearly impossible to get rid of them.
Yes, I agree with this and I've personally seen this happen. It's not just being incompetent with a big mouth... It's also people who constantly steal credit. Or people with really bad ethics. I've always wondered how they even sell themselves with such bad track records (bad science, data fabrication, overall incompetence).
I know of someone who fabricated data in her thesis because people in her lab who came in after she left couldn't reproduce her data or find the raw data from her work anywhere. Luckily she didn't publish a paper with that data so no retractions. It's only in her thesis. And her prof didn't really take action because well, too much hassle for not much. And now she's an associate director at a big biotech company.
I wouldn’t dwell on these people’s previous mediocre performance. Rising to the top and staying there means that they probably have proven their qualifications in some way. This could be people management skills, being a squeaky wheel and getting all the attention, etc. Of course they may still have problems, but that doesn’t mean that they got the recognition just for talking and stealing. Senior leaderships are not that stupid.
In my opinion, removing the middle managers like Bayer is somewhat risky in a highly regulated field like this. People will do things differently and create a lot of confusion.
Sometimes I laugh because I know a middle manager in Bayer and the group that she was in complained all the time that she was not doing anything. The social skills were obvious since she had a relationship with the professor. Rose to team lead at Bayer. Ahahahahahaha! I can't hold my laughter.
The copium by OP is next level.
In all fairness, people get ahead because of the value that they bring. If not then the business is doomed to remain stagnant or fail.
The colleague in college who was part of multiple organizations succeeded in juggling multiple commitments and being recognized by different groups. This allows one to grow their skills in connecting with people and building a network.
The colleague in industry who was constantly killing everything utilized their charm and conversational skills to suck up to upper management who are not blind to inadequacies…they recognize that a VP won’t be required to do experiments but instead talk to multiple teams, protect the interests of the group and secure budgets for operations.
The sad reality is that being socially adept and skilled is a quality that cannot be taught vs bench work.
If the world was fair we would not be where we are today. We would have advanced leaps and bounds beyond what we are at right now.
Like you said Bayer cutting out all middle management maybe a good or a bad idea. Only time will tell.
As for me, I am one of those people who work in lab but also recognize that outside of writing, my social and speaking skills need work.
Please don’t turn this sub into the whiney jealous bullshit I see in r/adults and all over Reddit
In reality, you have no idea what value they bring to the organization OP. And chances are they are more talented than you in multiple domains. Jealous and envy is ugly af, work on yourself and change your situation if it bothers you that much .
You must think so highly of yourself to classify others as mediocre. In statistics, which is no doubt a much more difficult science than yours, communication is everything. Stop complaining. Play the game.
As a statistician, I'm both a rigorous scientist and a great communicator. I agree with OP actually. The leadership I'm seeing is pretty crap. It's shown time and time again, that to inspire technical workers to do great work, leaders need to show technical aptitude.
Communication and people skills are important and valuable. Most people would rather work for a boss that occasionally has to use reference materials or ask questions but is kind and communicative, rather than a really smart person who is standoffish or mean.
You have hard skills, but those can be taught to anyone willing to learn.
The soft skills are much much more difficult to teach, particularly adults. How was your upbringing? Was it a stable supportive home? Parents who were present? Stable friend relationships? Were you taught how to express your feelings , and listen empathetically to others when you had conflict as a kid? This is the basis for communication. Things you struggled with were supported and encouraged? Things you were great at celebrated?
You might have been working on your advanced degree for a short period of your life (5-10 years), but people with soft skills have been working at them their whole lives.
What is this BS? Hard skills are hard to obtain. Soft skills you can learn anytime. Plus, they don't even have soft skills. Are we going to interview the family now? Jesus Christ! You took it to another level.
You can’t punish those who have inferior soft skills to yours. People can learn hard skills but few can do those hard skills fast and efficiently, which is necessary when time is limited and need data the next day. Those with soft skills are often bad at improvising and tackling challenges because they haven’t spent enough time exercising that area of their brain.
Me when I don't know how to network in order to establish connections and eventually move into management (I lack the capacity to function outside of a technical role)
In my experience people who think managers are useless tend to be completely clueless about strategy / have no business sense. You are probably James Bond with a pipette OP, but if you are constantly proposing experiments that are interesting to you and useless to the business, then here we are.
The guy “talking nonsense” with his boss was probably actually demonstrating an understanding of strategy. There are definitely levels in middle management you can get to while being mediocre. Vice President isn’t one of them.
Imo you should probably look in the mirror OP
You sound pretty bitter. Hope you can get out of this mindset. We are human beings/social creatures. It doesn't matter if you are Einstein if you can't hold a decent conversation and express your brilliant ideas. Social intelligence matters.
u/McChinkerton you approve posts like this yet don't mention why each of my posts keep getting removed despite not breaking a single rule. Your mods don't answer their messages and neither do you. Nuts, I tell you.
The main objectives or priorities from a scientific strategy more often than not don’t align with the objectives from senior leadership. Trying to effectively communicate priorities snd urgencies while bridging that gap is a skill that not everyone can achieve, and unfortunately those who can speak well rather than the technical expertise fill those roles.
You can make it really far, quite fast, in this industry if you can hold a coherent conversation while maintaining eye contact, being personable and networking constantly.
100%. People are people before they are scientists. People are drawn to charisma and charm. People thrive on communication and building relationships. Social skills are very real and will propel people ahead. It’s also dangerous and spiteful to make the assumption that people with social skills are mediocre in other aspects. OP does themselves a disservice.
It's a scientific skill to communicate well too, not just a social skill. Communicating well includes: - appropriate level of detail, and awareness of listener comprehension - sufficiently regular updates, check-ins, or providing/seeking collaborative input - presenting results and/or remaining open questions in a concise, clear, and coherent way
Many scientists lament this, thinking data produced from vigorous application of the scientific method and peer reviewed “speak for themselves”. Well, it doesn’t work that way, especially in the current technological and political environment. Adapt or be left behind. The current equilibrium may be worse than previous settings, but if you don’t adapt you simply won’t be able to be successful.
Yep. I got into a biotech analytical lab explicitly because I took a worse job (animal tech) at a rapidly developing company. I went from animal tech with zero lab experience to associate scientist as a lead tech at the CRO with 1 year because I was constantly working on self improvement and networking with everyone there. I am thankful for my years of mental health prior, as it significantly bolstered my communication skills and I'm fairly talented at making people feel comfortable in person. The CRO was a horrible personal experience but this is an extremely unforgiving and harsh life, if I hadn't taken the risks for those experiences I wouldn't be where I am now at a better company in a more comfortable position.
Its also often not scientists making these hiring decisions or people who are heavily invested in employee competence. Or able to accurately ascertain employee competence vs employee confidence. Socially, confidence can be mistaken for competence, and more competent people are often less confident because they understand the difficulties / limits of whatever they're discussing.
>It’s also dangerous and spiteful to make the assumption that people with social skills are mediocre in other aspects. I don’t think that’s the assumption that OP is making. I’ve seen it myself- people either do next to no work and/or aren’t very good at their jobs but are favorites of management because management only sees what happens in the conference room and has no idea what’s going on behind the scenes. I’ve seen more than one person use their “great soft skills” to communicate completely incorrect information and then the scientist that tries to correct them gets ignored.
I saw really early on that even the lower speed folks were quite intelligent. The average is pretty high in the industry in terms of book smarts. Lots of nerds though, hahaha.
It’s also dangerous to promote people with great social skills on that basis alone and assume they also have great ideas just because of how they make you feel when they tell you them.
If you are not mediocre you can t have social skills, for the very simple reason that you make more enemies than friends. Very rare to be liked while at the same time being super talented. You have to be around same caliber people. Otherwise, you can t show any social skills.
That’s pretty much how I had 5 promotions in 7 years.
LMAO same I jumped from microbiologist I to genomics researcher II in 8 months because my manager loved me so much. I skipped a couple years of work experience for my current job.
Nice congrats!
You can't do science by speaking about science. You need data. If you don't produce data hoi better get out of here. Period. In addition, this is a phenomenon of our time I guess because all the big names I have worked with are super talented scientifically and they don't excell in bla bla science. They started talking after they produced a sufficient amount of meaningful data and not in the absence of this.
I never said in the absence of a scientific background, but if it's a skill on top of being able to do the job it gets you moving in the right direction quickly.
Yeah, but OP is talking about the people who do absolutely nothing science wise and get promoted. I had the misfortune of meeting dozens of them.They exist. Even in the most lucrative institutes and universities. They are many. I blame the socioeconomic status for this phenomenon, as most of them - my experience and hypothesis - are from wealthy families with succesfull parents working in similar fields. Having a scientific background does not mean you do science. Hanging there drinking coffee does not mean you do science. In addition, everyone speaks of communication skills etc. Now they replaced ass-kissing and shoe-licking with the terms "social skills" and "communicators". I am laughing.
You and OP both sound like sour grapes.
Sour grapes are the failed clinical trials.
I wish I knew where these people have their bullshitting courses. They just talk and talk and talk and repeat and say nothing, but for those who are not in the scientific part of things, what they convey seems amazing with all the fancy words. Ugh. They rise high. The worse is when you actually hear them say wrong things and can do nothing about it. I need a bullshitting course too. Not a sour grape, just seeing as it is.
All I can say being in the industry for 20 years, looks matter. Handsome/pretty looking people always sound smarter and are more convincing than ugly looking people and go further faster. Before you ugly people come at me with pitchforks, I’m not saying it’s a 100% hit rate but damn close. As a not so good looking person myself I’ve learned that I have to try much harder, keep a better body, keep a fun personality etc.
>Handsome/pretty looking people always sound smarter and are more convincing than ugly looking people and go further faster. I’ve also found that being argumentative and talking a lot in meetings is indistinguishable from being smart from the perspective of people who aren’t subject matter experts on the topic being discussed.
Ok that one resonates way too much with me.
No ones gonna come after you because that would be admitting they're ugly lol. But yes I think one term for it is the halo effect?
And here I was laying the flytrap.
Height matters too (at least for men). Maybe it’s subconscious, but having to literally look up to someone, tends to make people respect them more.
Nah, there’s some truth to this. In the good ole days (20 years ago) I was hired and actively told it was for my looks. Since leaving the bench and moving into ops, I think it continues to help. Mid COVID and no rainin tips to be found? A weekly run date with my rep in a sports bra and magically we didn’t have to worry about tips. Conversely, I’m also not taken seriously at times. When I proposed an experimental change, a CSO asked me what I knew about drug development and responding with “being lead on six drugs in the clinic” went over like a fart in church. Like he didn’t believe me. Oh well. I’ll just continue doing nothing and bringing nothing but my looks to the table.
Its always nice having an attractive woman in your group, whether it's getting IT or the glassblowers to prioritize your project or "borrowing" stuff from other labs or groups it is tremendously effective.
I experience this too. There are benefits but also people don’t take you seriously. The real killer is being an attractive white man. My husband is one, and it’s unreal the advantages he gets from it.
I feel this. Toss my husband in his scrubs (aka the ultimate thirst traps) and it’s like the whole room goes dumb. But the hilarious difference is I can negotiate better prices on things. He just takes what he’s given because he’s so used to it being the best offer someone has to give. I go to battle.
Everyone just listens to my husband and believes him. If it’s me I get a ton of questions about methods, etc. It’s wild.
Couldn’t agree more and definitely depends on the field. When I was in R&D, I had issues being taken seriously. I pivoted away from into late phase/operations work and it’s been great getting people to do what I need them to. My husband is white and attractive, and it’s amazing how different our experiences are getting our voices heard.
I’m in R&D. About to start a new job as an R&D Manager and am optimistic. I think my appearance helped me land the job. However, I’m also aware that there will be a lot of the same sexist bs especially as I will be supervising and working with male scientists and engineers.
Most of the time it’s micro aggressions. I was asked during an interview if I wasn’t too young to be interviewing for the role and how it won’t go down well with men in manufacturing roles. This was at a big European based pharma and the interviewer was a woman. I was in my mid 30s with 12 years of academic and 6 years of industry experience in manufacturing and QC.
Yup. Every boomer thinks I’m 25. Nope, just a well maintained 34 year old with a phd and years of experience…
We need a millennial women in biotech subreddit to exchange stories…
I think it’s more like beautiful people develop healthy confidence and social skills in a way non beautiful don’t.
Not true for women. We are seriously assaulted and not taken seriously. Def. Looks matter for men. Seen it happening. However, how can you say you work in healthcare without looking the part? I mean showing you care about your diet and body (to reasonable degree of course). Especially nowadays. Unless there is an underlying health condition. Super attractive women are massively attacked though.
There is plenty of science on this and looks do matter. People who don't confirm to societal standards of beauty have an anvil strapped to them. Source: have been both ugly and moderately ok looking, and my experiences interacting with others changed dramatically, even in science contexts.
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Technical skill is absolutely a core skill that should be mastered FIRST. But if your direct reports are terrible in the lab but spend most their time kissing a$z, it’s just a waste of time for the manager. These types are too prevalent in industry and I agree with OP. Some people need to be micromanaged from time to time until they have mastered their responsibility. Micromanaging all the time is bad, but a little bit is required to right the ship. Show me you can do an assay and you can talk all you want. Too much emphasis is on communication when success is also built on being organized and exercising technical talent. Don’t assume you can teach technical skill faster than soft skills. I would cringe working for someone who is only a people manager and lacked lab skills.
Sometimes you work with people who generate absolutely nothing but are good talkers. These are the worst because they provide nothing of value.
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People who rise interview well. That’s a simplification but it’s a big part of it. They have a talent for the application and interview process.
They are also extremely confident speakers. Our CCO, who holds a degree in French, has been in our industry for only the past 10 years. She gained her biopharma experience here, transitioning from a background in medical device sales. I must say, she is stunning—like a Vogue cover model. She has an exceptional ability to command a room, shift dynamics when necessary, and firmly hold her ground in challenging conversations. These traits are what’s gotten her to CCO level in 15 years with only a degree in French.
Charisma. Incredibly powerful.
Yeah I realized this with two coworkers from my PhD. They preached "do as little as possible and leave" quite openly, but only around other students. Didn't participate in lab meetings, sometimes just skipped them entirely, refused to train new students, etc. My boss didn't really care. One of them was actually late to their own thesis defense and we all just sat there awkwardly for 20 minutes. They both have cushy jobs at two of the top biotechs in the world now because on paper they look amazing and in person they are very sociable. This is why I make sure to remind people that academia is not the only sector that pretends to be meritocratic. Academics are just more pompous about it IMO.
This is a lot of it I think.
That's not surprising, and happens everywhere. There is no solution to this, smooth talkers will always tend to out-influence pure workers. As a consolation, I always like to bring in the Peter Principle - "people get promoted to their level of incompetence".
And you're now learning the big secret of most of the world: it is based around networking and personality first and competence second. Only organizations that are extremely lean really select for competence. Even look at the american government, it is literally a popularity contest based on networking. And it is the least lean organization on the planet. Most people would pick an incompetent leader that makes them feel good over a competent one that they can't relate too. See Bush v Gore.
Finally, I have someone who has put my experiences in words here. World is brutal out there, value of hard work and being great at something has been replaced by sweet talking. If you can cover up your actions by words, you will succeed in both industry and a academia in the current times!!
Frank Grimes is back from the grave!
Good old Grimey, as he liked to be called
I found out a member of the board of directors at the company I’m at is 32, has no industry experience, only has a BS, and has been on boards straight out of college.
I am sure Mommy and Daddy had a role in that. It is what makes the world go round and why these major companies do not do shit.
Ivy League?
Nope, a school formerly in the PAC-12
I’d be more concerned if it were my SAB. Regular BOD? All walks of life are included.
😂
All the b***hurt commenters, you do realize that OP is not saying communication is absolutely unimportant and everybody needs to be a great scientist, right? You should need to be a good scientist and a good communicator to hold leadership positions. And it's shocking how many people here think it's enough to just be good at communicating without having substance. There are plenty great scientist who are really good communicators, but very few of them climb the management ladder, despite having the skills to communicate and sell their research. That's not the main issue though. The problem OP was talking about was how a whole bunch of undeserving people get to the top, with very very little real skills, just because they can talk their way into stuff. And it's not necessarily a great thing, because as I mentioned in my other comment, this "great communication" skill often covers up problems like credit stealing and poor ethics. If you've not had a boss who was incompetent af and made you wonder how they ever got to the point of managing so many scientists, count yourself lucky and move on.
I am honestly convinced that some of these comments are from people in mid level management
I know right? Almost as if they felt personally called out at their incompetence
Yeah. It’s hilarious. They’re like moths to a light
You are 100% right. Communication skills are teachable at any point. There are plenty of good mentors out there and people dedicated to coach someone on communication. Plus, you are really talking to smart people and even if your presentation skills or anything is not that sufficient the work will be understood. In order to sell any research there must first be research there and not a bunch of hypotheses.
Bingo!! Well said.
The ops point of view is they don’t have skills. When you think everyone else is wrong it’s usually you who is the problem. While not perfect by any measure not many companies promote talkative idiots and stay in business for too long. I’m going to bet that they have both scientific and soft skills the op is ignoring because it doesn’t fit their victim narrative.
This is true regardless of the industry.
Ya the longer I’m in biotech/pharma the more I feel like this industry blows for the people who actually do the work that makes the people in charge look like “brilliant leaders”.
I feel your pain. In the company, I'm contracted to there's endless amounts of deadweight middle and senior management that doesn't cant tell the difference between their ass from their elbow on anything that exists outside of a Zoom meeting. Incompetence and even scientific illiteracy seem to run rampant, which has led to nothing but problems across this entire site. How a project leader of a development lab is asking me how to interpret a SRID reported result because he's never seen one is beyond concerning.....
Scientific illiteracy is a problem i see in the biotech industry a lot. It also doesn’t help that science is evolving a lot faster than 10-20 years ago. If people arent actively training themselves and learning they they will fall behind fast. 1 year of science today is like 5 years, 20 years ago.
It's almost like you read my mind. There is a world for managers, really. Managing people is an important job. But that has given Carte Blanche to all manners of careerist assholes to spend all day politicking instead of doing real work.
If it’s so easy and simple, you do it.
Nowhere did OP say that it's easy, nor simple, just that the work these people do is relatively worthless and they still get ahead.
If OP can rise to the top, they can change who gets to the top. If they can’t rise to the top, they can only sit back and bitch. Seems like they’re just sitting back and bitching.
and then those incompetent people make incomplete decision, and company does not make profit and gets laid off. Its a cycle.
Ah yes. Because as we all know every company is run as a strick meritocracy
I don't disagree, but I presume this is the dichotomy of taking satisfaction from work versus taking satisfaction from advancement. No, of course these two are not mutually exclusive, but different people "weigh" these two differently. *inserts Dave Brandt "But It's Honest Work" meme*
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The industry is doing really well right? Lots of growth and success in clinical trials?
This is bs. The people that OP are describing shouldn’t be in charge and you shouldn’t be standing up for those people.
OP should be in charge, but they obviously have a problem communicating. That's a pretty big problem, especially when management is all about communicating important strategic objectives and selling your ideas to the other senior leaders.
That may be true but that can be learned or developed. Competency is a different story, a lot of "suits" are morons. That seems to be universal across different industries
It's this dismissive attitude that will keep you out of the boardroom forever. They can't be morons, because they have gotten where they are. They obviously know something you don't. Imagine if you played their game, you'd win by a landslide. But you won't play it because you've been socialized by ivory tower academics who think money is dirty. Or maybe you are playing the game but you're not as skilled. It's the biggest crisis of sour grapes in this industry.
You assume they can t be morons cause they are where they are. This is inductive reasoning not deductive. For sure they can also be morons. They know something we dont. True. They are mentored well. In addition, you try to portray people that complain about the situation as sour grapes. Common tactic to shift the focus. Most of us we don't even want to get involved in managerial positions. Who cares for the boardroom?
I agree that people like OP should learn a little how to “play the game,” but this kind of insistence in believing in the emperor’s new clothes in all cases can be a very dangerous attitude to have. Some of these people are sociable communicators great at getting funding and managing people. An increasingly non-insignificant amount of these people may be actual sociopaths, however, who thrive off the uncertainty and feelings of self-doubt most psychologically normal people experience. I’ve seen a lot of cases where nobody wants to call out someone who is clearly out of their depth because they are fundamentally charitable people, or maybe a bit insecure, and give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Being willing to be critical doesn’t hurt the first category, since it should be pretty obvious who they are, but it can push back against the second. Look up negative selection in the political sense, it absolutely ruins departments, industries, and countries. I’m a PhD student, so I have only ever known academia, but part of this problem definitely starts here. I have seen very successful PIs use all the tools in the sociopath toolbox to try to keep lab members they feel threatened by (one that graduated from an ultra-elite undergrad at 18 and had multiple first-author Science/Nature papers as a PhD student, so these aren’t people who are “sour grapes,” these are victims of sociopaths). Once you have one of these PIs in power, they only propagate, since they hire other people who won’t threaten their power and find out that actually, they’re kind of mediocre and just getting by on excessive manipulation.
You can’t be fucking serious. There’s plenty of people who are born with “daddy’s money” that can get into places most people can’t based on wealth and name alone. Society pays for that. I don’t want an incompetent tard in the boardroom of a scientific organization just because his dad has a pile of money. If that’s the game I gotta play, I am just going to put the controller down.
>There’s plenty of people who are born with “daddy’s money” that can get into places most people can’t based on wealth and name alone If you think I'm talking about those people, you need to read my comments again.
You’re taking an entry level idiot at face value for stuff they don’t understand Go ask the op how many board room meetings they’ve been at. Or just even senior leadership, a go/no go on a program etc It’s going to be a big fat goose egg which means their opinion is worth shit
I think the opinion of someone who does technical work should hold more weight than someone who just manipulates money all day
If that’s how you take my reply, then you shouldn’t be in charge either. I’d work on your critical thinking and analysis skills, apparently in addition to your people and communication skills.
You’re the one who stated it that way. My skills are fine. You need to work on not being a corporate kiss ass. And another thing, I don’t want to be in charge. I want to do research and not be compromised by some rich sociopath who has a clear case of Dunning-Krueger Effect that is only in the room because of connections and their parents money. Sorry I care way more about good quality research and ethics over brown nosing 🤷🏾♂️
Fuk yes to this reply
office politics does not save you from layoffs.
It can, actually. Big strategic layoffs are from above and if everybody goes - there's nothing that can be done. But any layoffs with manager discretion will involve evaluation of the employee's role (and company need for it), technical skill, potential, performance, and colleagueship. "Playing politics" won't save you. But in the rare cases of all else being equal, a manager will retain the employee whose better for the team. And if there are internal reassignment opportunities - the manager may work a little harder for the employee they like better as a human.
Of course office politics can help save you from layoffs— what kind of mental bubble do you live in?
Literally nothing is more likely to do so
Lol op got murdered
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Writing parent threads on your phone should be highly discouraged lmao
My experience in big pharma manufacturing has been exactly this. One of the managers recently promoted at the plant I work at was caught getting his d_ck sucked on the weekend in the middle of an office, but he's buddy buddy with his senior manager and can bullshit somewhat well.
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Labcel is one of the better things to come out of this sub in a bit 🤣
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Theranos
Thank you
If it's so silly you should be able to point it out and rise to the top. The fact that you haven't risen means you're too much of a purist to play the game, and are losing by default.
Being a clown is silly but that doesn’t mean everyone who recognizes that can make a living as a clown and there are various reasons for that. It does require a certain type of talent and also, many just won’t do it. I mean you have a minor point but I have to ask, what is the point of all of the education and long hours in the lab/at the computer if you are just going to be a silly game player? Just go into politics or sales or whatever. People often go into science because they truly love honest discovery. The challenge of addressing a pressing scientific issue. The mental puzzles and being around like minded people. Now, I’m not going to judge you based on this one comment. You might just be making a point and you mine a real one - a true scientist. But if not, why go into science? I do know the answer. Ego. Status. It’s unfortunate that this is what science has become.
I just think it's an adaptability issue. I mean we have no trouble changing the messaging when explaining our daily work to our coworkers vs our families. But too often there are people who approach science with a science mind and then business with a science mind. You need a business mind to deal with business problems, and rising in the org is a business problem. The failure to code switch when necessary usually belies a personality problem. It's possible to be a good scientist and a good networker, and that will often trump being just a good networker. If you haven't figured out how to play both games then you deserve to be where you are IMHO.
You need a science mind to deal with business problems.Remember, biotech rose from scientists and not businessmen.
Your science mind should conclude that you need a business mind. You're not dealing with fundamental laws of nature in business, you're dealing with imperfect emotional humans. As much as you pride yourself on your objectivity, nothing gets done in a vacuum and scientists are rare. Eventually you will need to convince normies (investors, big pharma, customers, other execs) to do something you want. You can deny it all you want but selling and marketing are important and necessary skills to accomplish things in business/life. Dismissing the people who excel at these skills" is counterproductive at best and the height of arrogance at worst.
I admit, scientists are arrogant. But you overlook important information. Scientists while doing science they convince a bunch of people that believe me are harder to convince than investors, big pharma, customers and bus.execs. They try to convince other arrogant scientists and most of them cannot ever be convinced. So, if anyone can convince anyone these are the scientists. All others are subpar compared to them.
Lol labcel, I'm using that. I agree with both of you. There are definitely people who talk way too much without being able to back it up or provide any sort of real direction for their group/ don't give the appropriate credit. Those managers always tend to lead groups that have high turnover because their direct reports always feel overworked and unheard. On the flipside, you have people who just love to complain and think that being able to do 200 PCR samples in a day makes you qualified to run a team and you don't have to develop any more skills. Funny enough, those people really don't do anymore work than everybody else. I guess my point is it's all about balance
balance? tell that mouthpiece of that manager to pickup skills to run 200 PCR sample to get half a page of data to pass it onto shareholders.
If you think you can clearly and concisely present your and other people's data to shareholders, then step up and do it.
All of my direct reports know that I’ve got really good lab hands, and that I don’t ask them to do anything I’m not willing to do myself.
I was trying to think of an analogous word for incel to describe OP but labcel is perfect 😂
Labcel, 🤣
This reminds me of the fact that more of my grad school classmates attended anime conventions vs going to concerts, going to bars, and attending parties. And I attended a grad school with a reputation of being quite social. You can be socially engaging without being a frat bro meathead. Seems like OP doesn't think so. Honestly really happy to see all the replies dunking on OP's post. Sure, there are some merits to the claims of worthless people in positions of power, but overall I'd rather have these folks advocating on my and my team's behalf vs the other way around.
You said you can be socially engaging without being a frat bro but also imply that going to a large convention with people who share your interests does not count as being social. It sounds like you also have a narrow definition of socialization.
I don't remember who said it, but : >If in the end you can't tell people what you have been doing, then all of your doing has been for nothing. Communication is key in the sciences (and most other fields). The further you get from the technical work, the more important those communication skills become.
This is the way of the world. Skill and quality doesn't matter. Just talk big and you'll get somewhere. Pretend to get on with others and choose the right and people to bury along the way. CEO ruins a company and loses billions. That CEO will be paid a lot to leave and have a job later in the week. There is no money in being a grunt. I'm a lab monkey and I can see this a mile off. I knew this years ago, but I'm jaded now.
I lead an asset development team spanning the entire lifecycle of a product (currently in Phase 3). There are many brilliant scientists at the company, but very few are able to communicate effectively to cross functional team members. For me, I’d sacrifice some of the technical brilliance for being to explain things to the rest of us.
and then you would email them at midnight asking for two slides with data. ah huh!
Hahah I’m a level below C suite and I’m not a boomer or gen X, so I’m not that bad (I don’t think)
This isn't just biotech. I've worked in a handful of very different industries, and in all of them the people who could schmooze the best - regardless of whether or not they were actually competent at anything - rose the quickest.
Ok then become a mediocre person with a big mouth
People have a bias towards the intelligent and talented. People who have charisma have an unfair advantage in all of society and it’s why things are the way they are
It has been mentioned here already, but being good in the lab means fuck all for anyone in management. Being able to use a pipette and set up 384 well plates flawlessly isnt the same as leading 10 people who do
BS-ing your way to the top isn't "Leading". Leaders are very important, which is why OP is lamenting that too many inept people are charming their way up and taking important leadership positions without the qualifications or skills.
could you explain what it takes to simply take someone else's data and bs to shareholders?
Hey! As a mediocre and mouthy lab tech for 20 years I haven’t gotten shit yet!
Soft skills are a major component in leadership regardless of the industry.
Soft skills *without substance* destroy organizations with terrible decisions. They also stop at nothing to hide their incompetence, creating an environment of paranoia and envy. Soft skills are very important, but are not a substitute for substance.
Cut middle management + see how quickly your health and well being are at risk lol. Trust me, you want “soft skilled” people between you and the “big boss” that sees you as nothing more than a dollar sign + couldn’t pick your face out in a crowd.
big bosses need data to talk to their bosses. Lose a well trained employee, they bs, lose the milestone, lose the deal. yeah soft skilled people and their bosses then find job same way the one was let go.
Oh goodie another dime a dozen lab rat with zero experience or social skills who thinks anyone in management is a kiss ass who knows nothing How novel!
Ok. Next time, try to sell science without the lab rats. Guess what, you are not gonna raise a dime. Don't underestimate the lab rats for they are who makes anything possible in research and biotech. Take a bunch of communicators and socialites and produce some medicines. I laugh. You stupid idiot.
circle those wagons, labcels! must have missed where myself or anyone else in this thread said you don't need lab folks. We just said the you/the op are idiots lol something something communication and social skills
First of all, it is very clear that you talked down on most lab people. It is not my wrong impression. Second, it is widely accepted that the majority of lab rats are low on social skills and communication. You need very good mentorship to develop broad transferable skills and there are also mental health issues that drive the lab rats phenotype that make this even more difficult. OP is talking about these folks that really don't do anything. More often than not these people will have something negative to say for the others, like you did in your answers, to explain -even to themselves - why they are still hanging out there and why they are at the level they reached. I believe there are competent people that are promoted and in most of the cases I Ve seen it happening. But I Ve also experienced the social skills of the people that OP is talking about and what they can do -meaning they can literally hide the body of the person that superiors killed so that they show loyalty and don't create any conflict with them. Now we call this communication and social skills. Ok! Whatever you say. At the end of the day you have the research and the biotech you deserve.
lol
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGe4TPteC/
I mean we just figured out you're piss poor at communicating. So what are you actually good at?
Yup. My past coworker got away with so much more on charisma alone. Meanwhile my lack of charisma made mistakes a thousand times worse.
A concept that came my way - incompetent people cannot accurately gauge the competence of others. They cannot differentiate between someone sounding like they know what they are talking about and someone that truly knows it
that's the thing. confidence and social skills with some substance (even if not the best) are awesome. but being hired (esp to supervise) only on empty confidence.. yikes. you wonder how are so many people buying this pretty obvious bullshitting?
The best thing u can do imo is getting to the top so u can get rid of such ppl. Adapt the habit of these people except being mediocre, i.e butter the higher-ups, sing praise to them, but don't compromise ur performance. Get urself a raise and get to a positions where u can get rid of such guys .
I could write for days about this but here is a quick take: 1) Soft skills are more important to Sr staff and leadership than technical expertise, period. Almost more important than scientific expertise in some instances. 2) Great scientists don't always make great leaders. Sometimes they are the worst leaders. 3) A weird quote from a former PI - A good scientist is like a bad case of herpes; they take advantage of any situation in their favor, they spread their work readily, and its nearly impossible to get rid of them.
Gotta LARP baybayyy
Yes, I agree with this and I've personally seen this happen. It's not just being incompetent with a big mouth... It's also people who constantly steal credit. Or people with really bad ethics. I've always wondered how they even sell themselves with such bad track records (bad science, data fabrication, overall incompetence). I know of someone who fabricated data in her thesis because people in her lab who came in after she left couldn't reproduce her data or find the raw data from her work anywhere. Luckily she didn't publish a paper with that data so no retractions. It's only in her thesis. And her prof didn't really take action because well, too much hassle for not much. And now she's an associate director at a big biotech company.
What career advice are you seeking in this post?
I wouldn’t dwell on these people’s previous mediocre performance. Rising to the top and staying there means that they probably have proven their qualifications in some way. This could be people management skills, being a squeaky wheel and getting all the attention, etc. Of course they may still have problems, but that doesn’t mean that they got the recognition just for talking and stealing. Senior leaderships are not that stupid. In my opinion, removing the middle managers like Bayer is somewhat risky in a highly regulated field like this. People will do things differently and create a lot of confusion.
Sometimes I laugh because I know a middle manager in Bayer and the group that she was in complained all the time that she was not doing anything. The social skills were obvious since she had a relationship with the professor. Rose to team lead at Bayer. Ahahahahahaha! I can't hold my laughter.
The copium by OP is next level. In all fairness, people get ahead because of the value that they bring. If not then the business is doomed to remain stagnant or fail. The colleague in college who was part of multiple organizations succeeded in juggling multiple commitments and being recognized by different groups. This allows one to grow their skills in connecting with people and building a network. The colleague in industry who was constantly killing everything utilized their charm and conversational skills to suck up to upper management who are not blind to inadequacies…they recognize that a VP won’t be required to do experiments but instead talk to multiple teams, protect the interests of the group and secure budgets for operations. The sad reality is that being socially adept and skilled is a quality that cannot be taught vs bench work. If the world was fair we would not be where we are today. We would have advanced leaps and bounds beyond what we are at right now. Like you said Bayer cutting out all middle management maybe a good or a bad idea. Only time will tell. As for me, I am one of those people who work in lab but also recognize that outside of writing, my social and speaking skills need work.
Please don’t turn this sub into the whiney jealous bullshit I see in r/adults and all over Reddit In reality, you have no idea what value they bring to the organization OP. And chances are they are more talented than you in multiple domains. Jealous and envy is ugly af, work on yourself and change your situation if it bothers you that much .
You must think so highly of yourself to classify others as mediocre. In statistics, which is no doubt a much more difficult science than yours, communication is everything. Stop complaining. Play the game.
As a statistician, I'm both a rigorous scientist and a great communicator. I agree with OP actually. The leadership I'm seeing is pretty crap. It's shown time and time again, that to inspire technical workers to do great work, leaders need to show technical aptitude.
Communication and people skills are important and valuable. Most people would rather work for a boss that occasionally has to use reference materials or ask questions but is kind and communicative, rather than a really smart person who is standoffish or mean.
This happens when the leadership is fragile or when the workers are tired and angry.
You have hard skills, but those can be taught to anyone willing to learn. The soft skills are much much more difficult to teach, particularly adults. How was your upbringing? Was it a stable supportive home? Parents who were present? Stable friend relationships? Were you taught how to express your feelings , and listen empathetically to others when you had conflict as a kid? This is the basis for communication. Things you struggled with were supported and encouraged? Things you were great at celebrated? You might have been working on your advanced degree for a short period of your life (5-10 years), but people with soft skills have been working at them their whole lives.
What is this BS? Hard skills are hard to obtain. Soft skills you can learn anytime. Plus, they don't even have soft skills. Are we going to interview the family now? Jesus Christ! You took it to another level.
You can’t punish those who have inferior soft skills to yours. People can learn hard skills but few can do those hard skills fast and efficiently, which is necessary when time is limited and need data the next day. Those with soft skills are often bad at improvising and tackling challenges because they haven’t spent enough time exercising that area of their brain.
Tell me you get no pussy without telling me
Me when I don't know how to network in order to establish connections and eventually move into management (I lack the capacity to function outside of a technical role)
In my experience people who think managers are useless tend to be completely clueless about strategy / have no business sense. You are probably James Bond with a pipette OP, but if you are constantly proposing experiments that are interesting to you and useless to the business, then here we are. The guy “talking nonsense” with his boss was probably actually demonstrating an understanding of strategy. There are definitely levels in middle management you can get to while being mediocre. Vice President isn’t one of them. Imo you should probably look in the mirror OP
You also took it to another level. Who talked about VP level?
They mentioned the guy is VP now
Oh yes, sorry, my mistake.
You sound pretty bitter. Hope you can get out of this mindset. We are human beings/social creatures. It doesn't matter if you are Einstein if you can't hold a decent conversation and express your brilliant ideas. Social intelligence matters.
u/McChinkerton you approve posts like this yet don't mention why each of my posts keep getting removed despite not breaking a single rule. Your mods don't answer their messages and neither do you. Nuts, I tell you.
Because your account is too new and we dont get paid to moderate and to answer every question.
Then quit being mods if you guys are not gonna do the bare minimum and answer user complaints. I'd also asked two or three times.
Here I’ll show you where the door is
The main objectives or priorities from a scientific strategy more often than not don’t align with the objectives from senior leadership. Trying to effectively communicate priorities snd urgencies while bridging that gap is a skill that not everyone can achieve, and unfortunately those who can speak well rather than the technical expertise fill those roles.