2010–12While doing her postdoc, Doucleff moonlighted as a freelance writer, penning articles for health magazines after a day in the lab. Realizing that she didn’t want to be a researcher, Doucleff applied for academic teaching positions and jobs at scientific journals. She decided to take an editing and writing position at the journal Cell. “That’s where I realized I love writing,” she says. But her writing almost got her fired. Doucleff angered her bosses at Cell when, without their permission, she wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal about why Adele’s “Someone Like You” is a tearjerker. Their response prompted Doucleff to apply for an opening at National Public Radio (NPR).
I imagine that there might be circumstances where there would be limits to what kind of writing an editor can participate in, but this seems a bit extreme.
It's funny how employers don't like their employees having side gigs, but it seems to me that's the sort of thing that should be established clearly and requires some kind of financial compensaion for not taking other positions...
I read that profile too. I wasn't totally surprised by the editors' reactions. In my previous industrial life it was explained to me that "your brain belongs to us". No outside work in the same field (in her case, writing for publication) without prior permission.
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