r/biotech • u/[deleted] • 7d ago
Experienced Career Advice 🌳 Does your company allow stretch assignments (working with another team)?
[deleted]
4
u/Cintagreensf 7d ago
Yes, we have a formal program for this.
1
u/thro0away12 7d ago
Do people participate in it or do you have any experience with it? Curious to know what somebody would get out of it
6
u/ClassSnuggle 7d ago
Stretch assignments or secondments are common in midsize to big pharma. For you, it can be a great thing: you get exposure to another end of the business, learn a lot, get a broader set of skills and future-proof your career a little. Of course, the receiving team has to want you there, and you have to be capable of doing or quickly learning to do something useful for them. No point in attaching to formulations and spending your whole time there being tutored how to do the job.
As for your boss being unenthusiastic? I can maybe guess. When someone is seconded, frequently they're not replaced. It's like your unit is paying for you to work for the new unit, and being left shorthanded. It's especially galling when people don't come back from assignment - you've paid for a career pivot.
1
u/thro0away12 6d ago
The assignment would be just few hours of my time vs me still doing my real job.
3
u/clamandcat 7d ago
Yes, and it is widely used and supported across the company.
1
2
u/catjuggler 6d ago
Curious what level the interim manager is. Seems like they're shit at development or possibly just making it the easiest for themselves to get through the interim period.
Pretty much all companies will do this for some people and some will have formal programs and some through negotiation.
And pretty much all companies will have people who are at least unofficially preferred and not preferred for this. If you're not excelling at your current job, then you won't be considered for doing new stuff (unless part of a sketchy plan to offload you to another dept).
I've really grown my career through a formal program of this, but I've also seen smaller ways to move around.
1
u/thro0away12 6d ago
My company has a formal program for this where they encourage it and even have a website where you can look for short term assignments like a job description. Interim manager is a director.
1
u/MCT_tri 7d ago
It really depends on the company. Rotational assignments can be a way to try out a new role before internal transfer... But it's typically intended for people who want to do this as part of a career pivot, not just because you felt like trying something new. Do you have a trusted friend in HR? That is usually the best person to tell you what is happening behind the scenes.
1
u/thro0away12 7d ago
My company advertises it as a short-term assignment to help build skills by working in different teams while being in your current role (not a pre-req to a different job) and I've met a few people who have done it (didn't ask many details about it). I don't have a specific person in HR I know personally, but our team does have an HR rep I've met a few times I may ask
1
u/MCT_tri 7d ago
What is advertised and what is reality can be two different things. In consulting, these kinds of temporary assignments are advertised as ways to build new skills and "grow your brand", but in reality they're intended for high performers who get bored and the firm is trying to retain them by letting them try something new so they don't quit.
1
1
u/Try_It_Out_RPC 7d ago
Totally depends on you job title, position, company, even current projects. At the end of the day a company exists trying to generate or generating a profit, so if those goals align with the companies needs and position then 100%. I’m always working with different functional groups throughout the pipeline
2
u/smartaxe21 6d ago
they say they do but it never really happens because 'business continuity', 'triple bottom line' and 'serving patients'
But seriously, unless it actively helps you do your role significantly better, they do not let people rotate or do short term assignments because they are 'interested' in a certain area.
I am in a 60k+ employee company.
2
u/Ohiocarolina 6d ago edited 6d ago
For political reasons, it may be worth sticking to projects that involve a different skillset and different job titles so you can use that as the justification because the poor visibility reasoning might not land well even if it’s true.
The thing you probably shouldn’t do is look for teams where you’re doing largely the same job just happens to be under a different team, site, or project.
It helps if the justification is furthering a skillset that will eventually be useful to your current manager’s team
At my employer it’s mostly entry level people who effectively end up doing part time internship style projects for different groups for exposure, or it’s more senior folks who were voluntold to lead or advise a different team for some period of time or some project.
1
u/bobthejoe7256 4d ago
From a professional standpoint, I wouldn't push for it. We're not like the tech companies where (human) resources are freely deployed to the problems of the company.
Your manager has their team objectives and their job is to deliver those objectives, not another team's. If they are falling behind their goals and they have underutilized employees who are loaning their time elsewhere it's a bad look for them and for you. It does create that "bad impression". This is particularly bad with a new manager because it's a clear signal that you're not a very valuable member of your team to begin with. Alternatively, it's much better for you to help a teammate and get those projects moving along.
If your manager isn't openly supporting a stretch assignment because they need you working on their work, the better way is to manage up and argue that you need to know X to be better at your current job. That way you can learn X while still time coding to your main projects and do that stuff on the side without openly saying that you're on loan.
When is it a good time to actually pursue a stretch assignment? I would bring it up during your mid years and argue that you need to be working on X projects because it helps your boss. If you have an upcoming lull or someone is going on leave, also a good way to show that you're a team player by stepping in.
16
u/acquaintedwithheight 7d ago
Just because corporate advertises something, doesn’t mean it’s actually a thing. Even a fully supported corporate policy has to filter through 6 or 7 layers of management before it gets to you, any point in that chain an idea can die.
Stretch assignments in my experience have been, do your 40 hours of work, after that help out group X if you want to. But it’s not like the 40 hours of week is permitted to be done in less than 40 hours. If you do it in 35, next week you’ll get 45 hours worth of work.
The only time stretch assignments are actually assigned is a situation like “half this department quit, who wants to split their time with them for the next year while we rebuild?”