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Aagar posted:So I just got an e-mail via LinkedIn from a head hunter looking to fill a Scientist position with a big company in my area. If you want, you can add "If you're ever recruiting for a position <process engineer/R&D/pharmaceutical compounding/whatever you're interested in>, feel free to contact me."
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Sep 19, 2013 22:35
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Sundae posted:I just sat through a change control meeting in which someone presented a retrospective FMEA for an equipment alteration they'd already gone and implemented. poo poo like that happens from time to time at my plant. People just kind of override Quality if the CEO wants to ship product bad enough. Then we go back and try to document it doing poo poo like quote:go around the room and have everyone sign backdated forms 
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Sep 19, 2013 22:38
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So in my case it was in the middle of a client audit where there was a request for the training and certification records for a particular young woman. Of course the forms weren't there and it was near the end of the day so my boss made up some new records going back two years for her to sign. She did so quickly and then left for home. As I looked over the document, I realized that she had been married six weeks prior, and had signed the forms going back two years with her married name, not her maiden name. 
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Sep 19, 2013 23:06
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Aagar posted:So I just got an e-mail via LinkedIn from a head hunter looking to fill a Scientist position with a big company in my area... Just decline nicely if you don't want it. I get these for process engineer / RCA-CAPA positions all the time, and my typical response is "Thanks for your interest, but I'm afraid that I'm currently (happily employed / not seeking further employment / only open to opportunities in the ______ areas). Please keep me in mind if you end up needing to fill any openings matching these criteria." Oh, and 50/50 chance they're going to respond asking you for leads next. 
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Sep 20, 2013 00:16
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seacat posted:You're way overthinking this. QC positions like that have high turnover and you're probably the 10th person he's talked to that day about it. They're tough to fill and keep filled so if you have any industrial lab experience you'll probably get more solicitations like that in the future. There's nothing unprofessional or impolite or bridge-burning about the vague statement "Thank you for your interest, but after thinking it over I've decided this position isn't a good fit." Thanks for the replies - and yeah in retrospect I was overthinking it. I got a case of the "it was an honor just to be nominated." I essentially reponded with something appropriately vague, and added the "if any other positions come up keep me in mind." I didn't even get a response back (asking for leads or otherwise), so yes, they probably didn't give me a second thought. Ultimately I really like my job from a what I do day-to-day standpoint, but there are two major downsides: 1. It's a not-for-profit, biotech-ish start-up company with 4 more years of government funding. After that I think we're on our own to break even. It's possible, but I can see the steps they are taking to fill the revenue gap long term, and it might not pan out (e.g. building new production facilities in other parts of the country to make radiopharmaceuticals). 2. There is very little room for upward movement. We're already dangerously top-heavy as it is - my team alone has 5 managers/supervisors for 9 workers. Add in all the brass at the top and it's questionable if this model is sustainable long-term regardless. In any event the odds of making it up will depend mostly on if people leave, but my team has a very low turn-over (in my two years none have left and two were fired). What it all boils down to is that I'm not closed to the idea of moving jobs, because I have to go on the assumption that my company will fold (ultimately I'd like to think the government would keep it afloat on a bad-money-after-good scenario considering the millions they've pumped in already, but can't bank on it) and I'll be back to looking for a job (albeit with more experience than last time). Hopefully by then demand for radiochemists will have gone up - there seems to be a dearth right now (a lot of companies talking big about starting radiopharmaceutical production while not building any infrastructure to make it a reality). On the subject of training/SOPs/control forms we're pretty well off compared to the Development and QC people - we have a few operating SOPs and the usual amount of training (WHMIS, Violence/Harrassment, Fire, etc.) as well as radiation safety. I'm sure if the company hangs in long enough to grow we can expect the usual exponential growth and bloating of the whole system.
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Sep 20, 2013 01:40
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squigadoo posted:I do not think it is a dumb question. I don't know if I really have a solid answer. Thanks for responding, that was quite helpful.
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Sep 21, 2013 08:00
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I have a couple HPLC questions. #1: Does over filling a vial cause issues? One of the other lab techs left a note claiming it would cause the machine to pick up an air bubble. Wouldn't an overfilled vial just leak over when the needle plunges into the vial? #2: Same lab tech also claims that mixing mobile phase too soon before it is needed causes issues, also. For reference, our mobile phase is 10 mL of 4N H2SO4 into 4L of ultrapure water. The rest of us are pretty sure that this is BS. Is there any truth to any of this?
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Sep 24, 2013 01:07
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It's burgin' time! 
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I heart bacon posted:I have a couple HPLC questions. #1)Depends on how good the septum is. A perfectly air-tight seal around the needle could potentially cause issues if there was no compressable volume. I'd be skeptical, but it's not outside the realm of possibility, imo. It may be specific to a certain instrument or injector. gently caress, you're a scientist. Test is both ways and see if it makes a difference on injected volume. #2) Bullshit. The sulfuric acid is already in water if it's 4N. Reducing it's concentration isn't going to affect anything.
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Sep 24, 2013 01:39
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I heart bacon posted:I have a couple HPLC questions. 1. Depends on the instrument. Waters Alliance 2695's for example sometimes draw less volume on an injection of a completely full vial which caused recoveries to be low for us. We switched to filling vials half-full a couple years back on suggestion of a field engineer and haven't had that issue since. I have nfi how it could cause an air bubble, though. 2. As long as your mobile phase is fully mixed and not too far off in temperature (maybe 5 degrees C) from the system temp it won't make a difference. For your particular case I can tell you 100% he is full of poo poo. I've prepped mine by throwing the components into a 1-L solvent container and shaking thoroughly 5 minutes before run start too many times to count.
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Sep 24, 2013 02:46
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Thanks for the responses. For the samplers, I'll have to do a little testing to find out if there's any difference. He did mention the non-compressible space, but I'm still skeptical about the vials being air-tight or it causing an air bubble, which he claims. Difference in sample volume, sure, but not an air bubble. They're both Waters. One is a 717 autosampler and the other is a 2707. I don't know why there was a claim about the mobile phase going bad after sitting. Typically as the flasks in use are nearing empty, we'll mix up a batch of fresh for each, then degas them and seal them up with parafilm. One time, I mixed them up about a day too soon and came back on shift to a note written up on the board.
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Sep 24, 2013 08:36
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I have a kind of strange situation that I'd like to run by you guys. Up until a month or two ago, I was working for a biotech company contracted to the CDC to operate a small lab. Earlier this year that contract was up for renewal and several other biotech firms made aggressive proposals for the contract, which is something that apparently hasn't happened since the lab was opened 20+ years ago. Or maybe the CDC just never put the contract up on the market until now, I dunno. The second option is my guess, because the CDC has been giving the lab a lot more scrutiny over the past year than they ever have before. Anyway, the management demeanor of the lab changed practically overnight once it looked like they might lose the contract. I don't know how much detail I should go into here, but the contract process didn't go well for my company and a new company began to interview the non-management staff, getting our contact info and whatnot. (For reference, I liked the look of the new company much more than the old one. The job I had was dead-end, both in skills and advancement; I was only there for the money while pretty much constantly looking for a better job. The new company was much bigger and far more varied, with offices all over the state/country/world.) But then some behind-the-scenes stuff happened and the turnover doesn't happen. Over the course of the next month I start getting called in and chewed out for things that had never been problems in the nearly two years I had been there, so I start to wonder if I'm on the chopping block. I was right and was fired a little over a month later. This morning I get both a call and an email from the new company. Apparently the contract is beginning to swing their way again and they want to get a hold of me and have me go ahead and apply for my old position. That was always their plan; they told just about every employee that their intent was to keep the lab staff almost entirely as-is and that they would just have everybody apply for their current job to keep things organized. I have to assume that they don't know I was fired, but maybe they do and don't care. The one interview I had with them seemed to go pretty well and they even seemed to entertain the notion of me being transferred somewhere else after they got settled in the new lab and I had trained a replacement. So here's what I'm trying to work out: I have until Wednesday to apply for my position and was given a non-public link to do so. It seems like there's really no reason for me not to, since I can always back out of it later. But I also have no intention of going back, so that might be unethical or something. I pretty much took getting fired as my cue to seriously work on getting a career that I actually give a poo poo about so I don't want to take any steps backward, even if my job hunt is still being unsuccessful. Right now my tentative plan of action is to just be completely upfront to them. Tell them that I was let go and ask if they know of any other positions that they might consider me for, possibly with some arrangement where they have me train a new person for my old job. I considered trying to skirt the issue of me being fired, but I have to assume that they'd find that out pretty quickly and that it wouldn't look good for me to have started things off with a lie by omission. I also don't want to risk getting hired for my old job and then never getting transferred, putting me right back where I was. My problem is that I have nothing to bargain with. I'm still essentially an entry-level hire for any scientific field because of how brain-dead easy the work I did there was. I can't think of anything I did there that any company would care about, unless reading/scanning frozen vials and moving them from one box to another counts as a skill. Plus maybe some aliquoting. About the only thing I have going for me is that the two people from the new company who interviewed me seemed to like me. One other thing I thought about is to trash my old company. I'm hesitant to do it, but now that I've been let go there's really nothing stopping me from saying something like "yeah, I got fired, but here's what I think was going on behind the scenes." I wouldn't be making anything up, but it could backfire and make me look disloyal and/or petulant. I really do think my firing had more to do with panic over the impending loss of the contract, but I don't know how much (if any) detail I should go into about that. My plan for any other interviews was to just say something vague like "the culture changed rapidly as a result of a contract dispute and I suddenly found myself outside of the new boundaries." Does anybody have input? Maybe somebody who's been through a turnover like this or has hired people in similar situations? Sorry for the wall of text, but I've been wrestling with this all day and I'm in a jumble right now. I'm stuck between the prospect of financial security/insurance coverage and holding out for a job that has a future that I can care about. When I type it out it seems like the latter is the obvious choice, but in this market and in this town I'm not sure when it's time to be pragmatic.
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Sep 24, 2013 09:00
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Zenzirouj posted:I have a kind of strange situation that I'd like to run by you guys. Up until a month or two ago, I was working for a biotech company contracted to the CDC to operate a small lab. Earlier this year that contract was up for renewal and several other biotech firms made aggressive proposals for the contract, which is something that apparently hasn't happened since the lab was opened 20+ years ago. Or maybe the CDC just never put the contract up on the market until now, I dunno. The second option is my guess, because the CDC has been giving the lab a lot more scrutiny over the past year than they ever have before. Anyway, the management demeanor of the lab changed practically overnight once it looked like they might lose the contract. I don't know how much detail I should go into here, but the contract process didn't go well for my company and a new company began to interview the non-management staff, getting our contact info and whatnot. (For reference, I liked the look of the new company much more than the old one. The job I had was dead-end, both in skills and advancement; I was only there for the money while pretty much constantly looking for a better job. The new company was much bigger and far more varied, with offices all over the state/country/world.) But then some behind-the-scenes stuff happened and the turnover doesn't happen. Over the course of the next month I start getting called in and chewed out for things that had never been problems in the nearly two years I had been there, so I start to wonder if I'm on the chopping block. I was right and was fired a little over a month later. The new company wants you because you're a known quantity. You can work on that specific project and deliver results. You have some leverage here. You have the ability to specifically train new people on exactly the techniques that the new company is trying to learn. Tell the new company that you see this transition as an opportunity to move forward. That you'd be available to train new people on those specific instruments/techniques, but you'd like to branch out and take on new responsibilities. Absolutely do not mention anything about the old company unless asked directly. If asked directly, mumble something non-committal about funding loss and culture change, but the people hiring you probably know better what happened than you do. quote:the culture changed rapidly as a result of a contract dispute and I suddenly found myself outside of the new boundaries.
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Sep 24, 2013 12:32
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I heart bacon posted:Thanks for the responses. Just for my two cents: 1. We have a 2707 as well. My first thought is "don't overfill the sample vial in the first place." We have radioactive solutions so we play on the far side of safe when it comes to vial volumes. Air bubbles are a worry (esp. with 200 uL max-recovery vials) but just knock them a few times and the bubbles sort themselves out. 2. That sounds like bullshit. We've had some phosphate-bases aqueous buffers with some tween that go south over longer periods due to bacterial growth (nipped that in the bud with some azide), but dilute acid can basically sit around for months or longer if it's sealed properly. We've had a fun learning curve with antibodies and size-exclusion HPLC. Did you know that antibodies tend to settle at the bottom of the vial? Makes mass determination by a standard calibration curve (280 nm) somewhat of a bitch when the sample isn't perfectly mixed. Also I think growth was happening in our columns, because one of them finally poo poo the bed (antibody peak drifted from 7-10 min - where 12 min is the small-molecule elution - before it just died. The other column we got the peak back to 7 min by flushing with a lot of aqueous with 0.025% azide w/w). Good times. Edit: Dik Hz posted:Absolutely do not mention anything about the old company unless asked directly. If asked directly, mumble something non-committal about funding loss and culture change, but the people hiring you probably know better what happened than you do. Seconding this - they either know more, or you were fired without cause (I assume that's a thing? In my company, in Canada, we've fired a couple of people without cause, because with cause the company is open to getting sued for wrongful dismissal or something so it's easier this way). If the latter then you can say whatever you want because your old employer can't say anything about it (Dik can correct me on that - I may have gotten some of my information from the back of old sugar packets). In any event you're better off not rubbishing anyone and just try to look good while asking about other opportunities, which sound more plentiful in the new company. Aagar fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Sep 24, 2013 |
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Sep 24, 2013 14:56
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Dik Hz posted:Personnel change and stress over funding is par for the course in biotech. Don't take it personally. They were hard on your rear end to try to show cause for firing so they could deny unemployment when they inevitably fired you. Is there any good way to word "I was fired but I have my suspicions about whether it was for a good reason"? Or is it best to just keep it to "I was fired" and only give more information if they ask? I assume it's a normal question that will come up in an interview when they ask why I'm not working there any more. Aagar posted:Seconding this - they either know more, or you were fired without cause (I assume that's a thing? In my company, in Canada, we've fired a couple of people without cause, because with cause the company is open to getting sued for wrongful dismissal or something so it's easier this way). If the latter then you can say whatever you want because your old employer can't say anything about it (Dik can correct me on that - I may have gotten some of my information from the back of old sugar packets).
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Sep 25, 2013 06:05
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Zenzirouj posted:Is there any good way to word "I was fired but I have my suspicions about whether it was for a good reason"? Or is it best to just keep it to "I was fired" and only give more information if they ask? I assume it's a normal question that will come up in an interview when they ask why I'm not working there any more. I think you will always get asked why you've decided to leave a position. Why not say something like, "I appreciated my time there, but thought it was time for me to move on." That is pretty much what I'm going to say, and it's true.
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Sep 26, 2013 14:15
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squigadoo posted:I think you will always get asked why you've decided to leave a position. Why not say something like, "I appreciated my time there, but thought it was time for me to move on." That is pretty much what I'm going to say, and it's true. As for the whole other thing, it somehow went exactly as planned. The guy from the new company already knew that I had been fired and didn't seem to care, so that was taken care of right off the bat. My old position is available assuming that they win the bid again (and they probably will), so I have that to fall back on if somehow everything goes like poo poo job-wise for the next few months. Mainly they just needed me to put in my interest and willingness to work for them so that they can put that in their bid proposal. He's now pushing for me to get an entry-level analytical chemist position that's currently open, which I was angling for. So I get a job that involves skills and they have me around if they need some kind of help getting the lab switched over.
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Sep 27, 2013 04:12
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I finally land a lab job doing QC and on the first day they tell me I can't wear headphones on the lab floor  I suppose that makes sense from a safety perspective but having music/podcasts going all the time was a big part of how I survived grad school. That's some monkey's paw poo poo right there.Day 2 tomorrow, get hype. C-Euro fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Sep 28, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 05:21
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squigadoo posted:I think you will always get asked why you've decided to leave a position. Why not say something like, "I appreciated my time there, but thought it was time for me to move on." That is pretty much what I'm going to say, and it's true. This is what I do. Even if you're let go through a firing or layoff, it's short and too the point without crossing into bitter ex-employee territory. C-Euro posted:I finally land a lab job doing QA and on the first day they tell me I can't wear headphones on the lab floor That sucks. Boring jobs get more tolerable with something to listen to. The last plant I worked in killed all streaming media along with putting up a insanely strict web block. Morale was bad enough before that, too. The plant I'm working in now has a mildly annoying web filter, but not bad enough to get in the way of music or lunch break web browsing.
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Sep 28, 2013 07:07
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I heart bacon posted:That sucks. Boring jobs get more tolerable with something to listen to. I can at least wear them at my desk (which is also technically in the lab), so that gives me an excuse to look up archived samples and poo poo, which I've been told is a good way to make everyone love me when our normal archive person isn't around. VV I've only worked two days, I'm still learning the terminology 
C-Euro fucked around with this message at 20:18 on Sep 28, 2013 |
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Sep 28, 2013 19:33
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C-Euro posted:I finally land a lab job doing QA and on the first day they tell me I can't wear headphones on the lab floor If you work in a chemistry lab you're QC not QA..
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Sep 28, 2013 20:02
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Today's fun (well, several weeks worth of fun): CAPA project has been going on for five loving years. I inherited it when I arrived at new job. This should have been my first red flag. CAPA deliverables require confirmation batches demonstrating that a problem with an API has been fixed. These confirmation batches will provide the feeder material to prove that we're good to go on validation, leading into process qualification batches after that. Meanwhile, execs (having the brains of jelly beans), have promised vendors that this product will be on their shelves come the beginning of 2015. Where's my experimental API? It's in Puerto Rico. When did they make it? April. Why isn't it here? Why isn't it at least on a boat? Puerto Rico never bothered doing the paperwork and the previous project owner knew he was leaving and didn't bother pushing them for it. When's the API expiration date? October 5th. LATE SEPTEMBER MAD RUSH ENSUES. MUST GET MATERIAL ONTO A BOAT. DO YOUR GODDAMNED PAPERWORK, PUERTO RICO. Why a boat? Because that's what the SOP says. I can't put it on a plane because they specified boat in the SOP. It's going to take 7-14 days to get to me now because a deranged armadillo wrote our SOPs. By the sheer grace of God, customs doesn't hold up the material and it arrives today. If I hurry and blend it, I might be able to salvage the project because then the blend's hold time becomes the defining time limit and not the API expiry. ... except, the incoming materials SOP has a mandatory seven day hold time, during which nothing can be done but characterization and micro testing. The SOP for extending expiration dates of materials has been amended to a one-page document that says you can't do it, even for experimental materials. Upper management and QA both sided with the SOP and refused to allow any sort of deviation from plan for my experimental work. I even got my manager to get on the phone and let them know that we'd be listing them as the reason the project failed in our reports, and they still held firm that the SOP can never, under any circumstances, be deviated from even for experimental materials. That's right--experimental materials and batches are, under our new SOPs, treated identically to full production batches in almost every respect. They effectively threw 600 kilograms of material onto a boat just so I can throw it away up here in the states instead of in PR. I'll just order new material, right? Nope. The API line in Puerto Rico has a six month campaign for a different API getting priority for the next six months. They can maybe make me a new batch of API in April of 2014. Then we get to do the whole shipping thing over again and find a way to get all the qualification and validation work done in time to package and ship lots all over the USA in time for January 2015 relaunch. I'm so hosed. It's 2013 and I can already tell it's not happening.
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Oct 2, 2013 03:46
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seacat posted:If you work in a chemistry lab you're QC not QA.. Wait, can't you have both? Shouldn't you have both? Isn't QC ensuring that the product being made is correct, while QA is ensuring the process used to make the product is performed correctly?
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Oct 2, 2013 14:29
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Solkanar512 posted:Wait, can't you have both? Shouldn't you have both? Yeah, you're right but QC requires a lab while QA is pretty much just paperwork. Since C-Euro works in a lab, its safe to say they are in QC.
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Oct 2, 2013 16:16
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So anyone screwed over by the Merck layoffs? What states are going to be affected most?
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Oct 2, 2013 16:31
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I have a couple clients that work there, but I haven't heard if they're still going to be on staff or not. According to this story the layoffs will mostly be in NJ. The entire Summit site will be closed. It looks like about 50% of the cuts will be to R&D, 50% to sales.
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Oct 2, 2013 17:34
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iloverice posted:Yeah, you're right but QC requires a lab while QA is pretty much just paperwork. Since C-Euro works in a lab, its safe to say they are in QC. I worked in QA in a lab - you usually have to have all sorts of documents on hand like calibration records, logs of expiration dates or temperature logs, training records, that sort of thing. Then again, this particular shithole had their entire QMS on paper, so that was fun.
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Oct 2, 2013 18:29
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Just survived my first internal GMP audit, acting as one of the leads for the business side. The auditors were pretty reasonable, which makes me suspicious on what will be in the final report.
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Oct 2, 2013 21:20
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Yeah, I do lab work but there is plenty of paperwork that goes through my department, but I believe it all pertains to said lab work and not any production process (I haven't been trained on the paperwork yet so I guess I don't know for certain)
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Oct 3, 2013 03:03
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Appachai posted:I have a couple clients that work there, but I haven't heard if they're still going to be on staff or not. According to this story the layoffs will mostly be in NJ. The entire Summit site will be closed. It looks like about 50% of the cuts will be to R&D, 50% to sales. I'm trying to take this news in stride, but it's hard not to be cynical. In North America, it seems we're now pumping out Ph.D.'s relative to previous generations, and now another round of big layoffs releasing highly qualified scientists back into the seeking employment pool. I transitioned to radiochemistry because (besides enjoying it immensely) I felt that it was the last bastion where demand for skilled scientists exceeded supply. In the last week though we just hired a guy I've known for decades, who has has over 10 years experience in radiochemistry/radiopharmacy, and he had the door closed in his face at every other center he applied at (a couple dozen across Canada). Following C-Euro's saga among others it seems the general trend that the demand for science is trending down, and fast. I can imagine some of it is outsourcing to other countries, and looking at the time and money going into clinical trials, it seems easier to let small companies here get a hit and buy them up rather than Big Pharma taking a big risk on developing something in house. Not sure what my point is - I'm just frustrated. I'm glad I found the job that I did - we have funding for another five years, so worst-case I can get as much experience as I can and hope I'm somewhere in the front of the pack in a job market that isn't constantly shrinking.
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Oct 3, 2013 13:20
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They're closing the Summit site? Jesus, bullet dodged. =X I interviewed there less than six months ago. I didn't get a good feel for the manager and declined further rounds of interviews in favor of my current trainwreck of a company. Good luck, all of you Merckians.
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Oct 3, 2013 14:18
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It's kind of strange, we're currently in a biotech boom, with ~40 IPOs, but things still seem pretty bad overall.
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Oct 4, 2013 01:59
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Yeah, if I get hired permanently here the first thing I'm doing is figuring out what it takes to get moved to one of our R&D or product development labs, so I can do the thing that I studied for seven years. At least this Master's degree gets me a few more bucks an hour right now, even if I'm just a button pusher right now.
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Oct 4, 2013 05:33
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C-Euro posted:Yeah, if I get hired permanently here the first thing I'm doing is figuring out what it takes to get moved to one of our R&D or product development labs, so I can do the thing that I studied for seven years. At least this Master's degree gets me a few more bucks an hour right now, even if I'm just a button pusher right now. Yeah I'm a temp in a QC lab and I'm thinking this as well. I actually applied for an R&D position when I also applied for the QC position. I've found out today that the R&D people wanted to interview me but the Quality department is more desperate for people and gets first dibs on new hires.  Plus, they say the position is temporary but they are way, way too desperate for workers for this to be an actual temporary position. I think they're just trying to save a few bucks.Either way I'm not sticking around for this QC job for more than a year. I've been here a month and half and I've only been trained to perform two kinds of testing. I'm supposed to receive more training this week but I already know it's not going to happen. The executives want us to have a record breaking 4th quarter* but I know that isn't going to happen either. In theory, they want the company to be the kind of place where "people see a problem and rise to the challenge without having to be ordered to do so." In practice, middle and upper management just expect things to happen magically. There is no planning. Nothing is anyone's responsibility so poo poo just doesn't happen. Anyone who isn't on the bottom rung of the corporate ladder just CYAs** and blames the people below them until some line worker or analyst gets fired or quits after being asked to work quintuple overtime. Also, QC Analyst is a dead-end job in my company. One person has moved-up and out of the lab in the past 10 years. So I'm still spending most of my day trying to look busy. We aren't allowed to listen to music and the lab computers are blocked from accessing anything that isn't the company intranet or things like USP. Anyone who has an actual desk can spend half their day on Facebook though. *Only managment gets performance bonuses **e.g. trying to get people to sign backdated training forms.
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Oct 8, 2013 01:13
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Anyone here do metrology? I'm about to start a metrologist position in an ISO 17025 accredited lab. Kind of wondering what I might expect? I will actually be calibrating instruments, and eventually training others, from the sounds of it. More importantly, I'm wondering if experience in an ISO 17025 lab leads to good opportunities down the road. My very preliminary job search indicates that it does, or at least can.
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Oct 18, 2013 15:29
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johnny sack posted:Anyone here do metrology? I'm about to start a metrologist position in an ISO 17025 accredited lab. Kind of wondering what I might expect? I will actually be calibrating instruments, and eventually training others, from the sounds of it.  HOLY poo poo THIS WAS MY JOB FOR THREE YEARS! Are you working in a food safety lab by chance? What sort of industry are you working in? Which instruments? Who is accrediting your site? To answer you last question, the answer is yes. It's really great for jumping industries. I went from food safety to aerospace.
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Oct 18, 2013 22:14
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Solkanar512 posted:
I can answer most of these questions after I start next week. The company does a ton of different calibrations, I am not yet sure who has accredited it. I am glad to hear it is a good stepping stone. You did it for 3 years, you must have liked it?
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Oct 19, 2013 06:08
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johnny sack posted:I can answer most of these questions after I start next week. The company does a ton of different calibrations, I am not yet sure who has accredited it. I am glad to hear it is a good stepping stone. Nah, I started that job in 2008. The job itself was actually fine, the management was just incredibly loving horrible. The job itself consisted of me sitting in an enclosed cubicle with an HD radio tuned to NPR or BBC World all day while I calibrated pipettes/scales/thermometers and kept track of our ALL PAPER QMS.
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Oct 19, 2013 14:01
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Maybe this is a problem in every profession, but for you other QC folks- do you feel like your department is always undermanned? Yesterday my boss was gone all day for a follow-up to some recent surgery, then today two people were sick and another was in training for the first half of the day, then tomorrow about half of the lab is gone for some all-day training course, then one older woman in our lab gets a half-day on Thursdays and a day off on Fridays. There are currently FOUR temps (myself included) and it already feels like we're stretched pretty thin, I certainly hope there were other people working these spots before we showed up. And to my knowledge they're only planning on making two full-time positions out of those but maybe all four of us will go full-time?
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Oct 23, 2013 04:03
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C-Euro posted:Maybe this is a problem in every profession, but for you other QC folks- do you feel like your department is always undermanned? Yesterday my boss was gone all day for a follow-up to some recent surgery, then today two people were sick and another was in training for the first half of the day, then tomorrow about half of the lab is gone for some all-day training course, then one older woman in our lab gets a half-day on Thursdays and a day off on Fridays. There are currently FOUR temps (myself included) and it already feels like we're stretched pretty thin, I certainly hope there were other people working these spots before we showed up. And to my knowledge they're only planning on making two full-time positions out of those but maybe all four of us will go full-time? Happens here a lot too. Especially on one of the process benches. They hire anyone with a pulse who can show up. So there's a lot of calling in or just plan no show. It's a revolving door over there. Don't really blame them though. 8-hour rotating shifts blow.
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Oct 23, 2013 16:51
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My company sent out a very interesting thing last week. (I'm on vacation for my anniversary and told the company to go gently caress itself until I get back, so I have no idea how this little saga ends yet.) They have some day-shift manufacturing operator positions opening up. Now, it's normal enough to see internal postings for positions before you send it to outside, and it's also normal to see referral requests for internal listings. The thing I'd never seen before was an internal salary-bidding process. They listed a certain hourly wage as a starting point in the e-mail and applicants were expected to bid what they'd require to do the job. In order to get off of night-shift / rotating weekend work, operators were bidding down the position. Every time the e-mail went back out again, a new (lower) bid was in the place of the previously higher salary. People were encouraged to re-bid if they were still interested. I want to smack both HR and every stupid fucker who replied to that listing. Congratulations, you've just guaranteed that every last one of you will have salaries frozen for 'equity balancing' for the next X years, until you reach parity with that lower wage, and you've just dropped the starting wage for your own job for all future employees. Go you.
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Oct 25, 2013 16:43
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