Published on 12, July, 2020
So i've been thinking about an issue that I think is dificult for STEM employees and especially autistic ones in companies. And that is that there offten isn't a path to career progresion that doesn't involve transitioning, even if gradually, from a technical to a people manament role. The issue is a lot of stem personel don't want to do this. And for autistic personel it may not be within their capabilities. That isn't to say autistic people are bad at managing tasks, planing projects, just not nessiceraly good at handeling the people working on those tasks and projects. So my proposal in a nutshell is let the two aspects of managment be seperated. Let the task manager and the line manager be two seperat people. Let the people persons specialise in line mangment and the probblem solvers specialise in task managment. Lots of orgonisations already do matrix managment where one person may answer to multiplu project heads but generally only has one line manager (who is also a project head or who is line managed by one) So why not have line managers who are not project managers, they just look after people. Training, vacations, sicknesses, absences, complaints etc, all that stuff. but not actual bread and butter work which they leave to the project managers. That way people can bepromoted from technical roles into technical roles or even promoted in place as they get more expert so the orgonisation can keep that acumulated skill.
The way I see it as things stand autistic people get stuck in junior roles, leave for other companies or go into roles that don't realy suit them. Also if you get really great people persons as line managers they can mange more people. And freed of the red tape project managers can project manage more people. And do it better.
What do people think?
In the University of Manchester, with around 10,000 staff (half of which are academic) there are probably about 20 senior roles (equivalent to a senior lecturer) rewarding technical/scientific expertise. These are roles that do not involve the management of other people or teaching. In most biotechnology companies that I am aware of, representatives that sell stuff and managers (all requiring good interpersonal skills) are paid far more than the scientists who actually develop, test and ensure the quality of the products.
In academia and technology-based commerce the skills that typify autistic people are systematically undervalued.
For 25 years I worked as a 'bench scientist', focused on projects that I had control over, designing experiments, solving problems and contributing to writing papers for publication. I was very happy and fulfilled, if not conspicuously over-rewarded financially. For the last 9 years of my working life I ran scientific facilities in a research institute, some of the skills were transferable, but I tended to be solving other people's problems, had to process the finances that supported my facilities, dealt on a weekly basis with many more people than I had previously, was constantly switching attention between my scientifically unrelated facilities plus a health and safety role, and had management responsibility for a support technician. I was quite frazzled for much of the time.