Comment by doctorpangloss
6 hours ago
I don't know if it's so much that talented people are being locked out, as much as it is that communities everywhere, not just industry, are requiring a level of people skills that academic people lack but nonetheless thrive without.
Academics do have a reputation that way, but only the 100% safe, tenured ones. The majority of academics are required to have a strong level of communication just to get their grants accepted. Imagine if, on top of working your normal job at maximum efficiency, you then had to make a presentation to the government every year about why you and everyone that depends upon you deserves to eat, while the government you make the presentation to becomes increasingly antagonistic and detached.
There's quite a lot of people skills involved in surviving as an academic in today's environment. Imagine if you had to teach calculus to 150 random, uninterested teenagers (barely adults) every 12 weeks. There's some serious people skills involved in doing a good job at that (most people do actually try to teach well, I've known multiple people this year refused tenure based on rate-my-teacher ratings).
It's a different set of skills for sure, but being an academic isn't as socially challenged as the zeitgeist appears to believe.
do you think communication skills and people skills are the same thing?
i like academics, don't misunderstand me.
> do you think communication skills and people skills are the same thing?
yes, or at least largely overlapping circles
8 replies →
[dead]
Academic's, FTR, have to have a huge amount of people skills. Their job isn't just to discover, it's to share.
You cannot share (effectively) if you cannot communicate in a way that others can understand.
Further the entire ecosystem that academics rely on to get what they need to do for their research (grants, and other funding, resources, and so on) necessitate them to convince people who control those, who do not necessarily understand the purpose of the work