"Please don't water down my PhD ... by teaching me management skills - I'm not in business school.""
Most faculty manage groups of 5 - 20 people (their lab), a budget (their startup and other research funds) and have to deal with all the problems of running a team of people with varied skills, interest and motivation. Some faculty go on to be department heads or directors of institutes. In all these cases, management skills would be useful. Sure, you're still doing research, but you'll spend a good chunk of your time managing the lab.
"These are the people we can trust with tenure, because they would do research even if we didn't pay them at all"
It's this attitude that keeps the postdoc (and in some cases the junior faculty) salaries so low. Just because you love what you do, you shouldn't have to raise a family on $40,000/year
Most faculty manage groups of 5 - 20 people (their lab), a budget (their startup and other research funds) and have to deal with all the problems of running a team of people with varied skills, interest and motivation. Some faculty go on to be department heads or directors of institutes. In all these cases, management skills would be useful. Sure, you're still doing research, but you'll spend a good chunk of your time managing the lab.
"These are the people we can trust with tenure, because they would do research even if we didn't pay them at all"
It's this attitude that keeps the postdoc (and in some cases the junior faculty) salaries so low. Just because you love what you do, you shouldn't have to raise a family on $40,000/year