As early career investigators become funded, they become employers, because they will need to hire and train staff, and hiring and training staff means that you also must do evaluations in a timely way, make assessments about whether people get raises, deal with people who are underperforming or who are having specific problems, as well as support and promote the career of even younger investigators who are even earlier in their career, for example, fellows or residents.

So one of the career tasks that a developing investigator must face is how to become an effective and competent employer, to help shape and improve the performance of those who are struggling, to nurture and encourage the performance of those who are doing well, and regrettably, sometimes help a person move on to a different place career-wise if they simply aren’t able to do the work.

So again, the recommendation for your own work, to start small. It’s much easier to learn how to do this with 2 or 3 employees than it is with 12 or 15. And so working on a larger collaborative project does give you the opportunity to see how your mentor, the more senior investigator, does things, and sometimes you can learn positively from observation and sometimes you can learn what not to do from observation.