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Dik Hz posted:I'm looking to hire a GC Chemist with industry experience and the confidence to take apart, service, and reassemble GCs. In addition, the person should be independent, self directed, and able to develop methods and analyze data. Experience working with polymers and/or pyrolysis unit is a major plus. Job is located in Thomasville, NC. Convenient to the Piedmont Triad area of the state. If you're interested, send me a resume and cover letter to dikhzgcjob yahoo com. If I knew more chromatography I would jump on this position. I doubt a NMR jock who would be willing to do instrument and analysis work is would be considered? Also after working in GMP I can understand how you they might not be a great fit. I feel like a lot of my coworkers just mindless run Test methods like drones and cannot do much else unless they are the people developing the methods.
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May 26, 2014 06:02
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Ezekiel_980 posted:If I knew more chromatography I would jump on this position. I doubt a NMR jock who would be willing to do instrument and analysis work is would be considered? Also after working in GMP I can understand how you they might not be a great fit. I feel like a lot of my coworkers just mindless run Test methods like drones and cannot do much else unless they are the people developing the methods. Method development is such a loaded phrase. I've interviewed people who thought method development was following a matrix of columns and run profiles. To me, method development requires critical thought and an understanding of how the instrument works and what you're looking for. I know job hunting is difficult. But hiring is just as difficult.
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May 26, 2014 12:58
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Dik Hz posted:I'm looking to hire a GC Chemist with industry experience and the confidence to take apart, service, and reassemble GCs. In addition, the person should be independent, self directed, and able to develop methods and analyze data. Experience working with polymers and/or pyrolysis unit is a major plus. Job is located in Thomasville, NC. Convenient to the Piedmont Triad area of the state. If you're interested, send me a resume and cover letter to dikhzgcjob yahoo com.
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May 30, 2014 00:58
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Farside posted:I want to to look for a new job, however I have no idea as to what to call myself on my resume. On the company org chart I am listed as 'Filler' which means jack poo poo to anybody outside of my company. I like the suggested "gas quality control specialist" suggestion. Also, when I got my resume overhauled by a resume writing service from SA, my description wasn't a word or a short phrase, but a sentence that summed how many years I've been working in labs and what I've been doing. So, something like "Gas quality control specialist with 8 years experience in testing and certifying multiple gases with XX instruments to meet protocols and client assistance." If you're hesitant about your resume and need a hand, I'd highly suggest that SA resume writing dude. It worked really well for me to get all the important things I've done out on to paper.
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May 30, 2014 14:24
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My supervisor gave me this little jem yesterday, trying to decide how to weight out a volatile sample for a weight percent analysis. "yes weighing the sample in glass vials will work, I developed the method of weighing samples in glass vials for weight percent analysis!" That's right I work for the person who invented this technique!
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Jun 10, 2014 12:57
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Ezekiel_980 posted:My supervisor gave me this little jem yesterday, trying to decide how to weight out a volatile sample for a weight percent analysis. I must have learned from your boss years ago.
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Jun 10, 2014 13:03
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My girlfriend is currently working at LabCorp in NC as a tech trainee, running radioactive immunoassays all day, errday. I am, unfortunately, dragging her to Roanoke, VA to start school in the fall. Compared to RTP and the Triad, this place looks desolate in terms of research/lab/biotech work. Where should we focus our job-hunting, Blacksburg? She doesn't really enjoy LabCorp, but she says pharmaceutical work is what she wants to get into. What can she do to build relevant and meaningful experience to break into that field?
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Jun 10, 2014 20:22
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Donald Kimball posted:pharmaceutical work is what she wants to get into. WHY???????????? I know gently caress all about Virginia but the pharma ship as a source of good money for technically oriented people/scientists sailed the last decade. If she wants to get into it to develop drugs to help people, lol.
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Jun 11, 2014 00:37
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Donald Kimball posted:My girlfriend is currently working at LabCorp in NC as a tech trainee, running radioactive immunoassays all day, errday. I am, unfortunately, dragging her to Roanoke, VA to start school in the fall. Compared to RTP and the Triad, this place looks desolate in terms of research/lab/biotech work. Where should we focus our job-hunting, Blacksburg?
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Jun 11, 2014 00:40
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quote:but she says pharmaceutical work is what she wants to get into I don't even know what to say.  Though to answer seriously, I don't know where the biotech jobs are anymore. I've been sucked firmly into the vortex of value-added decision processes and corporate bullshit, and I haven't seen the inside of a lab since July of 2011. There were a lot in MA a year or two ago (both in the Boston area and the Worcester area), but I have no idea if they're still around. Cubist, PFE (ha), and Regeneron had a lot of lab-scientist openings in MA.
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Jun 11, 2014 01:06
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Dik Hz posted:Blacksburg graduates 10 people for every job available there. Honestly, everywhere that isn't Thousand Oaks or New Jersey sucks for biotech jobs compared to RTP. Also, I'm in the triad area and we have steady work for scientists, but it's nothing compared to RTP. New Jersey is good for biotech?
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Jun 11, 2014 01:31
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seacat posted:WHY???????????? Her mom has been a bigwig QA or QC leader at just about every major pharmaceutical company for a while, so I guess that's where the appeal comes from? She also likes being "in the lab." Honestly, she just wants to make money and live a comfortable life, but I'm not sure where to point her with a B.S. in biology. She doesn't like blood and needles, so nursing and medicine are out.
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Jun 11, 2014 03:01
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I don't think Jersey is particularly great for jobs in biotech specifically. The state has done a poor job attracting new bio companies, despite all the pharma that used to be in the area. I know my company is investing heavily in biologics in MA, rather than expanding capabilities in Jersey. The bio group is going to have to relocate in a couple years once they get the new facilities built.
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Jun 11, 2014 03:03
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Donald Kimball posted:Her mom has been a bigwig QA or QC leader at just about every major pharmaceutical company for a while, so I guess that's where the appeal comes from? She also likes being "in the lab." Honestly, she just wants to make money and live a comfortable life, but I'm not sure where to point her with a B.S. in biology. She doesn't like blood and needles, so nursing and medicine are out. She will never make money or live comfortable life working in the lab with a bs in bio unless she hits management level. Chem is a major you can do that with. Microbiology techs get paid like 12 bucks an hour at all the companies around here (dfw) although where she's going it might be different. I doubt it though. A generic biology degree just isn't worth much. Also being a quality supervisor/manager has very little to do with lab work (I'm a quality manager). Tell her to get over it and get into nursing. Hospitals are creaming themselves to hire any nursing grad whos passed the nclex for 30$ gh minimum.
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Jun 11, 2014 11:31
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Donald Kimball posted:My girlfriend is currently working at LabCorp in NC as a tech trainee, running radioactive immunoassays all day, errday. I am, unfortunately, dragging her to Roanoke, VA to start school in the fall. Compared to RTP and the Triad, this place looks desolate in terms of research/lab/biotech work. Where should we focus our job-hunting, Blacksburg? Pharma is a terrible place, development jobs are getting sent to India. The few that are here are QC lab slave jobs that are soul sucking and dont pay very well. If shes hell bent on an early grave from stress MA seems to be a big one now days. seacat posted:Tell her to get over it and get into nursing. Hospitals are creaming themselves to hire any nursing grad whos passed the nclex for 30$ gh minimum. What is this and how do i get into it?
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Jun 11, 2014 12:40
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Sundae posted:I don't even know what to say. Seattle is also poo poo for Biotech. My friend at Dendreon just told me that her CEO just up and left with no notice. Donald Kimball posted:Her mom has been a bigwig QA or QC leader at just about every major pharmaceutical company for a while, so I guess that's where the appeal comes from? She also likes being "in the lab." Honestly, she just wants to make money and live a comfortable life, but I'm not sure where to point her with a B.S. in biology. She doesn't like blood and needles, so nursing and medicine are out. Tell your gf to get into QC/QA, then switch industries all together.
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Jun 11, 2014 14:06
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There are tons of pharma research jobs that are not poo poo which is what it sounds like his gf wants. I kind of gather from the discussion here very few people are in research though. The jobs are mostly in the SF bay area, Boston, and San Diego as far as I know, though there are some in other places. I have had like 5 recruiters contact me to move to NY for various companies out there in the last year, but I don't think the biotech stuff is as dense so it could be kind of risky going to the only company in town unless you would like to move every time you get laid off. Also, even in high cost of living areas you can live quite comfortably with a BS in biology. It does seem to ramp up a lot with experience, where you might start around mid 40k, but after 10ish years of experience or so you could be over 80k (might vary depending on cost of living area and company). Not going to be rich unless you get lucky with a startup, but still pretty comfortable. Also, I have never in my life been GLP, feels good trying to find notes I wrote on a post-it. I am not that concerned about outsourcing in the industry for research, my main concern is that the dying giants (don't get a job in Penn/NJ) have been flailing around buying up all the successful midsized companies for the last 10 years or so to try and pad their pipeline, and they are just bringing them all down with them. I remember looking for jobs when I first got into the industry and there were tons of companies that were 100-2000 or so people that all had very nice perks and benefits or whatever. It kind of feels like now the companies are either 10,000+ or startups <50, everything in-between has been bought and killed.
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Jun 11, 2014 15:54
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You are receiving this broadcast as a dream...We are transmitting from the year one nine... nine nine ...You are receiving this broadcast in order t
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Pain of Mind posted:I am not that concerned about outsourcing in the industry for research, my main concern is that the dying giants (don't get a job in Penn/NJ) have been flailing around buying up all the successful midsized companies for the last 10 years or so to try and pad their pipeline, and they are just bringing them all down with them. I remember looking for jobs when I first got into the industry and there were tons of companies that were 100-2000 or so people that all had very nice perks and benefits or whatever. It kind of feels like now the companies are either 10,000+ or startups <50, everything in-between has been bought and killed. That's a very fair, real concern about the giants swallowing everything (I have a job in Penn/NJ ). It absolutely happens.quote:Also, I have never in my life been GLP, feels good trying to find notes I wrote on a post-it. Non-GLP is the best feeling. My first job was in a non-GMP/mostly non-GLP development lab environment, and apart from the office politics and constant layoffs, my actual work days were awesome. If I could stay out of meetings, I honestly enjoyed [or seem to remember enjoying; rose-tinted lenses a strong possibility three years later] working in the labs at PFE. The people I know who managed to keep their jobs there say it's changed beyond recognition now, though. 
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Jun 11, 2014 16:18
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Sundae posted:That's a very fair, real concern about the giants swallowing everything (I have a job in Penn/NJ I knew a guy who would start small companies, get swallowed by huge ones, pull away a few of his buddies to start a new firm, rinse and repeat. It was nuts.
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Jun 11, 2014 16:20
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Solkanar512 posted:I knew a guy who would start small companies, get swallowed by huge ones, pull away a few of his buddies to start a new firm, rinse and repeat. It was nuts. Dude what are you talking about? He's probably rich. In biotech that's probably the ultimate hope for the majority of small companies. Even if they have promising science it's really almost impossible for small companies to get past clinical trials. Some do, but then past approval stage many lack the reach and resources to market their products at launch. Launch failure can kill the product and there are no do-overs. The super duper large companies can pull this off and wring every bit of profit from an approved drug. Some mid-sized can do this also. This is especially critical since true first in class drugs are increasingly rare. Most of the time you have to fight it out with 5 other competitors who are very similar. In addition if the small company is VC backed they are going to exit as soon as possible and get their money out. They are not going to wait 10 years to go through approval, and wait 10 years post launch to maximize profits. They are going to sit on the board of directors, and loving sell the thing, pocket the millions and move on. So I think my prediction is that the big companies will remain but do less and less discovery. They fill their pipelines with stuff they buy from smaller companies and then use their regulatory and marketing knowledge to maximize profits. In other words scientist=small biotech, paper pusher = big company.
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Jun 11, 2014 16:48
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It feels like the outsourcing is having an effect. Our r&d departments state side are almost non existent, maybe 30-40 people total. Our India sites are several hundred people now. Although I work for a CRO so most of what we do is tied to what big pharma wants to fund this year. *edit* Also if you were looking to escape GMP pharma land what else is there for someone with the Chem MS?
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Jun 11, 2014 17:22
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Ezekiel_980 posted:It feels like the outsourcing is having an effect. Our r&d departments state side are almost non existent, maybe 30-40 people total. Our India sites are several hundred people now. Although I work for a CRO so most of what we do is tied to what big pharma wants to fund this year. What does your CRO do is it mostly preclinical/discovery or clinical?
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Jun 11, 2014 17:26
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Vladimir Putin posted:Dude what are you talking about? He's probably rich. In biotech that's probably the ultimate hope for the majority of small companies. Even if they have promising science it's really almost impossible for small companies to get past clinical trials. Some do, but then past approval stage many lack the reach and resources to market their products at launch. Launch failure can kill the product and there are no do-overs. The super duper large companies can pull this off and wring every bit of profit from an approved drug. Some mid-sized can do this also. This is especially critical since true first in class drugs are increasingly rare. Most of the time you have to fight it out with 5 other competitors who are very similar. In addition if the small company is VC backed they are going to exit as soon as possible and get their money out. They are not going to wait 10 years to go through approval, and wait 10 years post launch to maximize profits. They are going to sit on the board of directors, and loving sell the thing, pocket the millions and move on. Sorry, what I meant is that for the average working stiff in a lab, it sucks. For him, yeah, he was loving loaded.
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Jun 11, 2014 18:08
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For those of you in academic labs, can you offer any insight into the high-profile research fabrication that's been going on? Specifically the stem cell stuff like Hwang Woo-suk and now apparently Haruko Obokata. Why would anybody take the risk of falsifying results when you're in such a prominent position and publishing papers that get scrutinized by your entire field?
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Jun 19, 2014 16:42
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Sometimes humans do irrational things, particularly if there's some kind of underlying personality disorder.
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Jun 19, 2014 17:15
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I saw a lot of data-massaging when I was in grad school. In one particularly egregious case, someone got called out for it. No big surprise, the whistleblower, not the massager, got in trouble. What can happen over a long time is that many small massages lead the researcher down the wrong path. But at this point, it has gone from a mere hypothesis to an entire model with a published track-record. So, this particular experiment has to work, otherwise the model falls apart. That is where the invisible line finally gets crossed from presenting the data most favorable to the hypothesis to outright fraud. But since they didn't get caught massaging the data, they figured they won't get caught this time either.
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Jun 19, 2014 17:29
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I've seen one case in a moderately high profile lab (the PI thought they were extremely high profile, but another story) where data was generated years ago that had a huge implication. Further confirmation was needed. Graduate students / postdocs who did not recreate the same data were shown the way out of the lab very swiftly. The people who replaced them mysteriously got everything to work after that. I think that's a part of the problem. Don't underestimate the ego problem of some of the old grey hairs at the top. I've met far more good ones than bad mind you, but the bad ones I've met can be ridiculous. Been close witness to someone sliding off the rails and go from academic dishonesty to harrasment of employees and now to sexual harrasment. The ombudsman says to take up the complaints with the dept chair. The dept chair is currently married to a former employee of theirs after a pregnancy and said employee is now a student in the same department.
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Jun 20, 2014 02:53
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Bubbacub posted:For those of you in academic labs, can you offer any insight into the high-profile research fabrication that's been going on? Specifically the stem cell stuff like Hwang Woo-suk and now apparently Haruko Obokata. Why would anybody take the risk of falsifying results when you're in such a prominent position and publishing papers that get scrutinized by your entire field? Also, my PI at one point told me to just repeat an experiment for her grant application until I got 3 numbers that agreed with each other and then just report those 3 numbers. gently caress that bitch.
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Jun 20, 2014 03:03
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Vladimir Putin posted:What does your CRO do is it mostly preclinical/discovery or clinical? Both, we go from discovery all the way to commercial
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Jun 20, 2014 12:35
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The Dalibor Sames/Bengu Sezen case recently was a huge controversy for falsified data. It was all done by the grad student and the PI had no knowledge. When other students/postdocs couldn't repeat the results they got fired.
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Jun 20, 2014 19:19
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Vladimir Putin posted:The Dalibor Sames/Bengu Sezen case recently was a huge controversy for falsified data. It was all done by the grad student and the PI had no knowledge. When other students/postdocs couldn't repeat the results they got fired. Oh poo poo haha I forgot about that case. Dude fired 2 grad students and pushed another one into quitting because they couldn't repeat the falsified data. Blamed them as being incompetent and the person falsifying the data as a 'star'. Seen literally the same thing happen recently except no ones been willing to come forward and confront the PI about the falsified data because they hold so much influence over the field.
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Jun 20, 2014 19:36
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Honestly if someone wants to falsify data they can do it and it's hard to catch. The cases that are usually caught are in highly influential fields or over a large swathe of papers. I can't tell you how many results I've tried replicate and then have it not work. I just go 'meh' and then move on to the next thing. Unless it's something huge like a method to create energy out of cow fecal matter people usually just assume that it's a unintentional error. And that's to say nothing of things that work but not as well as reported in the paper.
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Jun 20, 2014 20:16
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Wasn't there a few grads at MIT not that long ago, who got caught using a computer program that spewed a bunch of pointless words together and managed to get several articles published journals using this method? I'd look the article up but on my phone right now.
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Jun 20, 2014 20:59
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Ezekiel_980 posted:Wasn't there a few grads at MIT not that long ago, who got caught using a computer program that spewed a bunch of pointless words together and managed to get several articles published journals using this method? This has been demonstrated many times, in both hard sciences and in even in literary journals. Most people who do it attempt to show that certain journals are extremely lax in their selection criteria. Others do it to prove that fraudulent data that superficially looks right will get published. I think my favorite example of it was where a poet attempted to write deliberately bad works and sent them into premier literary journals and was published. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ern_Malley quote:Their writing style, as they described it, was to write down the first thing that came into their heads, lifting words and phrases from the Concise Oxford Dictionary, a Collected Shakespeare, and a Dictionary of Quotations: "We opened books at random, choosing a word or phrase haphazardly. We made lists of these and wove them in nonsensical sentences. We misquoted and made false allusions. We deliberately perpetrated bad verse, and selected awkward rhymes from a Ripman's Rhyming Dictionary." You can get anything published anywhere if you make it a convincing enough hoax.
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Jun 21, 2014 02:18
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Its hard though, there is no grant money just for confirming results. Stupid bullshit will always get through if someone is deceitful enough. Its a good area for some industry involvement, there is a lot of motivation to confirm things before any products can even be dreamt about. However, then you get into falsification for lobbying ammunition...
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Jun 23, 2014 02:52
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So this week at work (not-for-profit Biotech company) I received a 3.2% raise. The letter that accompanied the raise made it sound like it was due to my performance review, and that it was a big deal. My question - is it? A quick Google search showed that average wages were expected to increase (in Canada) by 3%. So should a cost of living raise be expected, or should an employee be happy to get a raise at all? I feel my judgement is skewed having my early career marred by the post-2008 fiscal crunch which saw wage and hiring freezes across the board. I'm obviously happy with the raise regardless, but I'd be miffed if the company was passing off a cost-of-living raise as giving me a big reward for a good job done.
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Jun 26, 2014 13:13
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Aagar posted:So this week at work (not-for-profit Biotech company) I received a 3.2% raise. The letter that accompanied the raise made it sound like it was due to my performance review, and that it was a big deal. I have received a ~3% annual raise (at a company doing well it might be 3.5%, and a company doing poorly it might be 2.8%) at every company I have been at for longer than a year. The real raises/promotions I have received have been 6-10% depending on the company. Purely anecdotal, with a sample size of 4. Pain of Mind fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Jun 26, 2014 |
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Jun 26, 2014 16:18
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Has anyone else had to deal with lab renovations? My PI recently decided that we needed to update our genetics lab, so he made me measure everything and draw up a plan before we chose an architect. Now the real plans are almost finished and I have to move all of my lab equipment into a smaller, shared lab space for a few months. I think I've got space mapped out for everything, but the prospect of moving it all and still being functional seems kind of nuts.
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Jun 26, 2014 17:23
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I swear, this company doesn't give two shits about FDA compliance. We're gonna be back under consent decree the moment we get out at this rate. Haha, no we'll never actually get out. We're just hosed. Solkanar - you did QA work in lab-land before going to your current job, right? How did you guys stack up against production? Did you get to tell them what to do / not do? Production gets final say in everything here, and management just let them override our process validation schedule, squeezing us into an impossible timeline (2 days where we need 4-5) so that they can make more batches. QA disagreed and said it was dangerous, but were then overruled in favor of more production. One single fuckup in this validation and all their production stops dead in its tracks, and yet they still won't give us equipment time.
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Jun 26, 2014 18:09
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Sundae posted:I swear, this company doesn't give two shits about FDA compliance. We're gonna be back under consent decree the moment we get out at this rate. The head of QA was the brother in law to the owner, so luckily we had the final say. They just made up for it by making the H1-B visa holders work 16 hour days in an offsite lab (down the street, past the strip clubs!) that our clients/accreditation agency didn't know about. The owner never hosed with validation though, and if we needed anything equipment wise he was more than happy to personally troll DoveBid or eBay for the finest in no-name, provenance-lacking used equipment.
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Jun 26, 2014 19:06
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