Every now and again I touch on the problems faced by dual-career couples who are trying to land real jobs in the same geographical location. This is a topic of many faces since in touches on the problem of getting a job in the first place, family and couple dynamics, gender politics and other tricky subjects.
Many workplaces, including Universities, have policies in place to discourage people hiring their own family members or from becoming direct supervisors of their family members. For all of the obvious reasons of fair employment conditions for all workers, fair opportunity to be hired for a given position and the like.
And yet many areas of science are littered with couples who work together. In the same lab or department. Sometimes just in the same University. Sometimes one spouse is actually the direct employee of the other. How has this been accomplished?
Our good blog friend DamnGoodTechnician had a recent post on institutional nepotism rules in which she tracked down some published policies. This is never enough information, however, since there seem to always be loopholes. Head on over to DGT’s place and offer your experiences, will ya?
K-mechanism and Job Titles
April 27, 2009
We had two comments in a prior thread which are suggesting something new to me. Either that or we are exploring, yet again, the dark underbelly of career transition and it is important to understand it and make it work for you. Instead of letting it get you down.
msphd noted:
even if my scored-but-unfunded K-grant proposal were suddenly back in for reconsideration, I would still have the problem that my university doesn’t want to give me a job title that NIH would find suitable enough.
to which I responded:
Something doesn’t add up.
DrugMonkey 