When PI narcissism jumps the shark

Genomic Repairman relates the not-uncommon tale of a lab head who negotiates for a new job and then springs his decision on his trainees and technicians with ~ 2 months notice.
The PI was then wondering why his staff was not jumping for joy at the opportunity to join him in his move to a new city and new University.

PI: “Why don’t they want to come with me, I mean they came here to work with me?”
GR: “Uh, you realize you sprung this move on them after keeping them in the dark.”
PI: “Yeah but I had to work out negotiating my hiring package.”
GR: “Um, that doesn’t mean squat to them. All they see if you taking care of yourself and while you are telling them you aren’t going anywhere.”
PI: “But they came to work with me, they should want to follow me.”

And that, my friend, is the point at which a PI’s narcissism truly jumps the shark.
If one of my colleagues started down this line of wounded dismay that her trainees weren’t coming with her on a move to another institution, well, “are you kidding me?” would be the polite version.
Look, it is one thing to want your people to come with you. I’ve known one hell of a lot of PIs who, when contemplating a lab movee, work pretty hard to make an attractive offer to their indispensable TurboTech, for example. And you want to do right by your graduate students and any postdocs who have just started with you. Quite naturally the move is all upside with great new resources for your laboratory in your opinion- since you accepted the offer after all.
But really, it is a pretty lofty height on Narcissism Mountain for you not to understand that your trainees and technicians don’t see from the same vantage point as yourself. They do not see it as unalloyed upside. Is it really news to you that not everyone feels free to just pack up and move to a new city!??! There are spouses and significant others and children in school to consider. Care for aging family members. Personal preferences come into play as well. Moving to the Bible Belt or the BigCitee or to East Jesus or to the South or Canuckistan does not have the same valence to every person in your lab.
Do keep in mind that all that lack of respect at your current institution that prompted you to move in the first place (insufficient salary bumps, lack of promotion to Full Professor, failure to provide the space that you “deserve”, etc) is not really a motivating factor for your laboratory members. They might be perfectly happy at Current University and wonder what in the heck your problem is! (Word to the wise, if all they can see is that you are getting a bigger salary this is not going to help your case.)
Sidebar: Hmm, at this point I’m wondering how much of a say in the decision the PI’s spouse and children (if any) had….
So, let’s recap: If any PI starts having this conversation with you and you manage not to laugh right in his face, you’ve done better than expected value.
With that said, my dear trainee readers, let us turn to the other side. Yours. It sucks, no doubt, to have a lab move sprung on you with only a few months notice until the PI departs. But this is life. Sorry. You gotta deal.
In most cases that I am aware of the announced departure date of the PI was not the same thing as the drop-dead date for the laboratory at Current University.
So if you are facing this sort of announcement from your PI, you should recognize that unless the timing has been incredibly well managed and fortuitous there can still be an interval in which a grant or two is still active. Most of the time NIH grants can be moved to New University with only minor paperwork hassle however, this takes place at the noncompeting funding anniversary. The NIH grant is allocated in yearly intervals, even during the total interval of proposed and approved funding. So it is most typical for the University to continue to run out the current funding year and then for the new year to start at New University. This means that the departing PI’s lab can continue to function in some form or other. I have seen many Universities that manage to use this to provide a long slope for the trainees to wrap things up. Perhaps another local PI has to take over responsibility for the animal use/human subject/biohazard protocols and maybe even the formal supervision of the trainees- but they manage to make it work out.
This can turn a seeming 2 month drop-deadline into a 6-9 mo proposition. This provides the trainees with a little more room to wrap up experiments and seek another job or graduate training supervisor. Maybe even to defend a dissertation.
So all is not as horrible as it sounded at first. Don’t get me wrong, this still is not a GoodThing. It is painful and distressing. But you can survive it. Many of your peers and even some of your more-senior colleagues have weathered these situations.
The mentoring side of this is simple. Whether you are a local PI, postdoc drinking buddys, jogging friends or graduate school classmates with the affected trainees, you have to apply the boot in the rear. The people in the departing PI’s group are going to be depressed, anxious and paralyzed. Your job is to help them stop feeling (justifiably) sorry for themselves and to look for the solutions for their particular situation. What can they wrap up scientifically so as to escape with a partial-loaf publication…or even a completed figure? What other PIs might be willing to take them? Which Dean should they try to tap for temporary salary support?
Science is not a CareBears Tea party and having your lab head take a job at another University is one of those times when this is made crystal clear.
Make sure you survive it.