I have to make a decision and I thought I would canvas some views from the good and wise people on IIS. There has been a new position created where I work and it would be a promotion but do I want it? Should I apply?
At the moment I am the 'professional officer' in the geochemistry labs at uni. There being only one general staff member in the labs I am the instrument tech and so I run and repair various instruments; calibrate the data from the instruments I use; supervise other users (mostly post grads but also some visiting academics); teach most of those how to use the instrument(s); do most of the purchasing, liaising, OH&S and other admin; look after the lab computers etc etc. It's a good job but I do feel too often that I am on a treadmill and that I too often have to disappoint people who want - and generally rightly expect - me to provide them assistance in a timely manner. That gets me down. On the oher hand I'm involved in science that I enjoy. I get to see careers develop, meet some interesting people and see data I've generated published in journals.
The new job is 'School manager' and that person would be my boss. The logic of creating the position is that the school is now large enough to warrent a high-level administrative support. This person would relieve the administrative load from academics and so free them up to do what they really should be doing - teaching and research. There is veritable plethora of tasks on the duty statement but how many of them will be actually done by the manager and how many the manager will just make sure someone else does is yet to be seen. Some of my more unpleasant tasks are supposed to be moved to the manager but I'll believe it when it happens. The person who does the equivalent job in another academic unit reckons they do virtually no routine work but basically just problem solve, which sounds OK, but they also spend a lot of time on committees and at meetings. There is also the certainty of being involved in difficult personnel management issues. We have just has a situation where some people were forced out and I can't see why it won't happen again at some point in the future.
Of course there are extra $$ involved. I'd be looking at about $10,000pa now but it would get out to $20,000 after 10 years. That's not be sneezed at, especially for someone who started full-time employment fairly late in life.
What would you do????
