Supervise scientific or technical personnel
Little of this can be handed to software today.
The reporting and paperwork around management automate well. Directing, developing and evaluating people does not, and people do not accept it when it is attempted on them.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Managing, training and developing people |
| Jobs that do it | 20 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Enterprise platforms |
| O*NET activity | Guiding, Directing, and Motivating Subordinates (4.A.4.b.4) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 20 occupations that perform it.
- Manage laboratory teams or monitor the quality of a team's work.
- Supervise biological technologists and technicians and other scientists.
- Direct the work of technicians and information technology staff applying bioinformatics tools or applications in areas such as proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, or clinical bioinformatics.
- Supervise technical personnel and postdoctoral research fellows.
- Supervise or direct the work of other geneticists, biologists, technicians, or biometricians working on genetics research projects.
- Supervise biological technicians and technologists and other scientists.
- Supervise professional, technical, and clerical personnel.
- Direct, coordinate, or advise personnel in test procedures for analyzing components or physical properties of materials.
- Supervise or train students, environmental technologists, technicians, or other related staff.
- Supervise and provide technical guidance, training, or assistance to employees working in the field to restore habitats.
- Coordinate and supervise the work of professional and technical staff, including research assistants, technologists, and technicians.
- Direct and review the work of staff members, including survey support staff and interviewers who gather survey data.
- Direct work of statistical clerks, statisticians, and others who compile and evaluate research data.
- Supervise or coordinate the work of urban planning technicians or technologists.
- Supervise or train agricultural technicians or farm laborers.
- Direct or monitor other workers producing chemical products.
- Direct activities of workers in laboratory.
- Plan and direct activities of workers who operate equipment to collect data.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Buy nothing. The reporting and paperwork around management run on whatever you already use for documents, and the part that is actually managing people does not automate at any price.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Enterprise platforms
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
20 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Agricultural Technicians
- Biochemists and Biophysicists
- Bioinformatics Scientists
- Biologists
- Chemical Technicians
- Chemists
- Environmental Restoration Planners
- Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health
- Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health
- Epidemiologists
- Forest and Conservation Technicians
- Geneticists
- Geological Technicians, Except Hydrologic Technicians
- Hydrologists
- Microbiologists
- Molecular and Cellular Biologists
- Social Science Research Assistants
- Sociologists
- Survey Researchers
- Urban and Regional Planners
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Supervise personnel activities”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.