Outside of a "traditional" lab setting...I don't see a conversation about research on the "job" here.
I'm curious how some of you in a startup and non-startup handle employees doing research. I'll give a quick example and then propose a personal problem for those who want to skip my dribble. ;)
EXAMPLE: I've held various levels of IT positions at various companies. Great. At times, you need to do more than just read a quick article or blog post, you need to do some serious reading (and testing) if you are doing some major changes. At times, this reading was met with dirty looks or snide remarks from upper management, but I was lucky 90% of the time and my immediate boss would back me up. For clarification, I would also spend hours reading (and testing) at home.
I understand the thought of not paying someone in corporate to read, but at some point, I think it should be reasonable to allow employees to read on the job. How do you police it? That's a different conversation.
(unless you want to read personal dribble you can stop here)
Personal anecdote: in two different jobs I became the "go to" research person. In one instance, I stopped coding, but I kept writing algorithms. Nothing at all fancy. But my teammates loved it. One specific colleague and I worked together regularly to come up with faster and cleaner ways to do some complex business logic in our web applications. I'm not much of a sports person, but everyone else was...my nickname was "special teams" and they would call me in where there was a problem.
Sure, he could have done this on his own, but I worked better as a generalist, a problem solver. I do not like coding for work, I love doing it on the side. I was in heaven, so was he. Clients were happy.
The problem? There are not many jobs, at least that I can find, where I can say "Yeah, I don't want to code, I just want to be your 'special teams' guy." I mention this to say, be careful where research takes you. I might suggest that you let it improve your skills or go full-research route. Sitting in limbo between the two isn't pretty.
I'm curious how some of you in a startup and non-startup handle employees doing research. I'll give a quick example and then propose a personal problem for those who want to skip my dribble. ;)
EXAMPLE: I've held various levels of IT positions at various companies. Great. At times, you need to do more than just read a quick article or blog post, you need to do some serious reading (and testing) if you are doing some major changes. At times, this reading was met with dirty looks or snide remarks from upper management, but I was lucky 90% of the time and my immediate boss would back me up. For clarification, I would also spend hours reading (and testing) at home.
I understand the thought of not paying someone in corporate to read, but at some point, I think it should be reasonable to allow employees to read on the job. How do you police it? That's a different conversation.
(unless you want to read personal dribble you can stop here)
Personal anecdote: in two different jobs I became the "go to" research person. In one instance, I stopped coding, but I kept writing algorithms. Nothing at all fancy. But my teammates loved it. One specific colleague and I worked together regularly to come up with faster and cleaner ways to do some complex business logic in our web applications. I'm not much of a sports person, but everyone else was...my nickname was "special teams" and they would call me in where there was a problem.
Sure, he could have done this on his own, but I worked better as a generalist, a problem solver. I do not like coding for work, I love doing it on the side. I was in heaven, so was he. Clients were happy.
The problem? There are not many jobs, at least that I can find, where I can say "Yeah, I don't want to code, I just want to be your 'special teams' guy." I mention this to say, be careful where research takes you. I might suggest that you let it improve your skills or go full-research route. Sitting in limbo between the two isn't pretty.