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That Works posted:
Happened to 2/3 assistant professors in my department that started the same time I did (as a PhD student). The third moved to a second tier school to remarry her ex-husband. I don't miss academia one bit. I love running an industry lab, though. Dik Hz fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Feb 6, 2016 |
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Feb 6, 2016 17:16
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Dik Hz posted:You successfully avoid the pitfalls of post-doc'ing. You get a tenure-track assistant professorship at one of the top 5 schools in the nation. You win your first grant through a new investigator program. You use the money to buy some state of the art equipment and pay a post-doc and a couple students. But you can't attract top tier people because you're so new. Oh well, you can train them. You start off optimistic. You publish a couple papers, despite your students not being the best. Despite vowing to stay above it, you get embroiled in drama about promotions, shared use facilities, and how much of your grant goes to the department and the school. You make some mistakes in leadership and management because you've never had any formal training. But you carry on. Your first student graduates and gets a sweet post-doc. You're proud. However, your first grant is running out. You push yourself and your students hard to get the data necessary to win another grant. You get a reputation as a slave-driver, which impacts the quality of students you can get. You watch your unethical colleagues fudge data and win grants. You still haven't gotten your second grant, but your data is good and impactful. Unfortunately, you aren't eligible for the new investigator grants and you don't win any more funding. You're denied your promotion and forced to leave. Your students scramble to find new professors to hopefully graduate. Half burn out to depression and you feel like a miserable failure.  Trust me, more than well aware of this and have several friends well past me in the process who have gone through most of what you describe above. I've also got several who got the nice industry job, settled down then their company got bought out, their department dissolved and then they had to relocate halfway across the country. Or others who went through similar things and got laid off outright. I absolutely will not say that industry is worse than academia in that regard, more saying it just to mention that nothing is certain and while the risk is greater in academia, it's something that I am aware of and still continuing with. Teaching and training were my primary motivators when I started the whole thing and I guess I am staying with that now. Somewhere along the way I got good at doing research and writing grants and if academia doesn't work out then I am certain I could transition to industry and still be alright.
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Feb 6, 2016 18:59
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Dik Hz posted:You successfully avoid the pitfalls of post-doc'ing. You get a tenure-track assistant professorship at one of the top 5 schools in the nation. You win your first grant through a new investigator program. You use the money to buy some state of the art equipment and pay a post-doc and a couple students. But you can't attract top tier people because you're so new. Oh well, you can train them. You start off optimistic. You publish a couple papers, despite your students not being the best. Despite vowing to stay above it, you get embroiled in drama about promotions, shared use facilities, and how much of your grant goes to the department and the school. You make some mistakes in leadership and management because you've never had any formal training. But you carry on. Your first student graduates and gets a sweet post-doc. You're proud. However, your first grant is running out. You push yourself and your students hard to get the data necessary to win another grant. You get a reputation as a slave-driver, which impacts the quality of students you can get. You watch your unethical colleagues fudge data and win grants. You still haven't gotten your second grant, but your data is good and impactful. Unfortunately, you aren't eligible for the new investigator grants and you don't win any more funding. You're denied your promotion and forced to leave. Your students scramble to find new professors to hopefully graduate. Half burn out to depression and you feel like a miserable failure. Other than taking on additional grad students, this is almost exactly what happened to my grad school PI. Now he's in biotech and I eventually made my way to biotech too after my postdoc. Now our two companies are collaborating. Biotech is a surprisingly small and very weird place.
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Feb 6, 2016 19:01
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Day Man posted:You can probably just jump two of the wires together to have it think the door is always closed. I suggested that. No one here knows how to do it so it's back to using a microscope to see what size things are. This is exciting.
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Feb 6, 2016 19:33
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Dik Hz posted:You successfully avoid the pitfalls of post-doc'ing. You get a tenure-track assistant professorship at one of the top 5 schools in the nation. You win your first grant through a new investigator program. You use the money to buy some state of the art equipment and pay a post-doc and a couple students. But you can't attract top tier people because you're so new. Oh well, you can train them. You start off optimistic. You publish a couple papers, despite your students not being the best. Despite vowing to stay above it, you get embroiled in drama about promotions, shared use facilities, and how much of your grant goes to the department and the school. You make some mistakes in leadership and management because you've never had any formal training. But you carry on. Your first student graduates and gets a sweet post-doc. You're proud. However, your first grant is running out. You push yourself and your students hard to get the data necessary to win another grant. You get a reputation as a slave-driver, which impacts the quality of students you can get. You watch your unethical colleagues fudge data and win grants. You still haven't gotten your second grant, but your data is good and impactful. Unfortunately, you aren't eligible for the new investigator grants and you don't win any more funding. You're denied your promotion and forced to leave. Your students scramble to find new professors to hopefully graduate. Half burn out to depression and you feel like a miserable failure. My god it's like music diving directly to my soul. Music made of nails. Rusty nails.
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Feb 6, 2016 20:41
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So I'm 5 months into a job as a QC tech in big pharma. My lab is an SRID farm checking the antigen concentration in flu vaccines. The work is pretty much hell, but at least my boss is cool.
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Feb 10, 2016 02:27
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All these qc and qa jobs seem awful
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Feb 10, 2016 05:29
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And yet I still really want to break into quality work. Oh well.
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Feb 10, 2016 09:50
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QC is doing the same thing over and over then getting yelled when you get a different result.
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Feb 10, 2016 10:15
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Phosphene posted:I suggested that. No one here knows how to do it so it's back to using a microscope to see what size things are. This is exciting. What model instrument is it?
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Feb 10, 2016 14:43
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Appachai posted:All these qc and qa jobs seem awful As someone currently in Regulatory I wish I could go back to QC/QA, though admittedly at my last QC position I got to do a bunch of cool non-QC stuff so that probably clouds my perception of it. It's funny, I'm at a desk job now and would much rather be at a bench, but without a PhD my options are pretty limited unless I resign myself to Quality. Meanwhile my wife has a biochem PhD and a postdoc that could get her in just about any lab once she completes it, but wants to get into marketing/consultung/patent law instead.
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Feb 10, 2016 15:55
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Appachai posted:All these qc and qa jobs seem awful Depends on the industry. Aerospace is pretty fun and lots of QC/QA experience is transferable across different industries.
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Feb 10, 2016 16:59
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Ended up working for a big east coast pharma again. I am not sure if it is big companies that love bureaucracy or east coast companies that love bureaucracy, but it seems like east coast companies are the only ones that drug test.C-Euro posted:As someone currently in Regulatory I wish I could go back to QC/QA, though admittedly at my last QC position I got to do a bunch of cool non-QC stuff so that probably clouds my perception of it. That is entirely dependent on company, there are tons of research jobs that do not require a PhD where you are actually contributing to the science, and not just a set of hands for someone with a PhD. I have known Director level people without PhDs that had multiple PhD level people reporting to them. That is somewhat rare, but scientist level non-PhD people are fairly common. I have worked with hundreds of chemists without a PhD who do bench work.
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Feb 10, 2016 18:05
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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:Ended up working for a big east coast pharma again. I am not sure if it is big companies that love bureaucracy or east coast companies that love bureaucracy, but it seems like east coast companies are the only ones that drug test. I think it's big companies. I've had mandatory drug tests as part of the hiring process in Connecticut, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, California and Ireland now. The only overlapping factor is "big."
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Feb 10, 2016 18:45
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Day Man posted:What model instrument is it? Horiba la-300. Turns out the broken chip is only 5 dollars but the vendor is dragging their feet about getting it shipped. I've had stern talks with at least 4 people related to the lab. On the up side, i did fix the p-pump on our FTIR over the weekend so i look slightly less stupid now.
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Feb 10, 2016 21:03
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Phosphene posted:Horiba la-300. Turns out the broken chip is only 5 dollars but the vendor is dragging their feet about getting it shipped. I've had stern talks with at least 4 people related to the lab. Well, that's good! Good luck getting them to ship the part out. You might be able to get them to tell you how to hot wire the switch to get you back up and running while they ship the part.
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Feb 11, 2016 00:06
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Phosphene posted:Horiba la-300. Turns out the broken chip is only 5 dollars but the vendor is dragging their feet about getting it shipped. I've had stern talks with at least 4 people related to the lab. Find your local field service engineer and ask them if they have spares. They ALWAYS have spares and the nice ones ones will Fedex them to you for free.
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Feb 11, 2016 00:27
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Appachai posted:All these qc and qa jobs seem awful OOT and OOS investigation could be cool -- running experiments to figure out WHY a stability concentrate has been increasing for the last 2 months. I dunno. I miss my research lab at school -- but that doesn't pay nearly what Big Pharma (TM) does. DemeaninDemon posted:QC is doing the same thing over and over then getting yelled when you get a different result. Thank you -- this made me laugh. C-Euro posted:As someone currently in Regulatory I wish I could go back to QC/QA, though admittedly at my last QC position I got to do a bunch of cool non-QC stuff so that probably clouds my perception of it. I suspect there is a very special hell that the people who do cross-departmental document approval and coordination exist in. Like site IO Training has metrics that they have to reject so many documents for whatever long list of reasons. I swear the people who manage GDP practices are just making poo poo up as they go. In other news -- 5 months in and I just got assigned the qualification modules for an analytical balance and a micropipette. 
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Feb 11, 2016 01:15
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Mourne posted:In other news -- 5 months in and I just got assigned the qualification modules for an analytical balance and a micropipette. LOL this used to be my job. I listened to so much NPR/BBC World back then.
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Feb 11, 2016 01:34
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Mourne posted:OOT and OOS investigation could be cool -- running experiments to figure out WHY a stability concentrate has been increasing for the last 2 months. I dunno. I miss my research lab at school -- but that doesn't pay nearly what Big Pharma (TM) does. OOT and OOS is only cool for the first few times. Then you discover that it's almost all the same and that you'll never do anything about it and that all your trend limits / control limits are bullshit based on no form of reality whatsoever and you realize that you're going to be stuck with them forever. You're stuck with them forever because there's no corporate will to change the limits, because to change the limits admits (in QA's twisted, bullshit mind) that your limits were wrong in the first place, so NOPE NOPE NOPE. I may or may not have just chalked up my 150th completed OOT investigation in less than 3 years.
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Feb 11, 2016 04:12
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Here I thought getting assigned to remake all the IC standards/QCs was bad. God speed pipette king.
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Feb 11, 2016 04:15
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I'm going to take this thread as evidence that, no, I'm not crazy, calibrating micropipettes is actually the worst thing in the world. I appreciated learning it as part of my capstone internship last fall, but I'd be okay with never actually doing it again.
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Feb 11, 2016 05:17
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Antivehicular posted:I'm going to take this thread as evidence that, no, I'm not crazy, calibrating micropipettes is actually the worst thing in the world. I appreciated learning it as part of my capstone internship last fall, but I'd be okay with never actually doing it again. Is it a worse of a task than dumpster diving? 
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Feb 11, 2016 05:27
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DOOP posted:Is it a worse of a task than dumpster diving? Depends on how cheap your lab is.
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Feb 11, 2016 05:35
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Solkanar512 posted:Depends on how cheap your lab is. extremely cheap we don't have micropipettes to begin with so, Nissin Cup Nudist fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Feb 11, 2016 |
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Feb 11, 2016 06:39
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DOOP posted:extremely cheap Is this the legend I've heard The legend of... the Pasteur Pipette Reusers
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Feb 11, 2016 06:41
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Antivehicular posted:Is this the legend I've heard maybe? we go through a case of pasteur pipette like its going out of style
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Feb 11, 2016 06:43
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One of the liquid handlers I was in charge of was in the background during an interview on CBS Evening News this week while the CEO was frantically telling the interviewer that their test is actually scientifically valid I never thought I'd be happy getting laid off, but here I am.
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Feb 11, 2016 09:56
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Solkanar512 posted:Depends on how cheap your lab is. Back when I worked at CSHL, they had a post-doc who regularly mouth-pipetted. If that wasn't weird enough to see in the mid-2000s, it was to control the anesthetic flow rate to rats on which we was performing brain surgery. Just get a goddamned microliter syringe pump. I know you're on a tiny academic budget, but God almighty.
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Feb 11, 2016 15:50
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DOOP posted:extremely cheap The lab I worked at, which is incidentally the main adviser to Chipotle, bought all of their equipment off of Dovebid and eBay. Good times
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Feb 11, 2016 17:47
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Ebay is a surprisingly good place to buy lab equipment.
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Feb 12, 2016 00:46
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Today is day 3-4 of a production run and I haven't done poo poo the entire week as our pipes freeze and everything else malfunctions. I work at a quality operation Thankfully I'm the QC jockey and get to stay inside and not be one of the plant workers in the cold I still get paid so w/e Nissin Cup Nudist fucked around with this message at 01:06 on Feb 12, 2016 |
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Feb 12, 2016 01:00
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DOOP posted:Today is day 3-4 of a production run and I haven't done poo poo the entire week as our pipes freeze and everything else malfunctions. I work at a quality operation  pipes froze crew.
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Feb 12, 2016 02:37
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Dik Hz posted:Ebay is a surprisingly good place to buy lab equipment. I'm wondering how these people can be too poor to afford micropipettes, you can get then off ebay or surplus actions for less than $20.
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Feb 12, 2016 02:37
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I miss having a stupidly high Capex budget. Then again I'm getting an eight figure budget to build my new core, so at least there's that.
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Feb 13, 2016 08:54
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Bastard Tetris posted:I miss having a stupidly high Capex budget.
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Feb 13, 2016 13:17
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Bastard Tetris posted:I miss having a stupidly high Capex budget. Spend some of that budget on a new LIMS from your friendly local goon LIMS vendor!
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Feb 14, 2016 18:34
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john ashpool fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Mar 13, 2016 |
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Feb 15, 2016 17:55
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john ashpool posted:Was the ceo wearing a black turtleneck? Hahah no, thank god. Just a nasally older white guy.
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Feb 17, 2016 07:26
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I've been doing my new clinical job in biotech for 5 months now, it's really enjoyable, I'm kicking rear end at it, recognised as doing a great job and working significantly above what I was brought in to do. I'm in the UK but my boss is in the US. How soon is it OK to ask for a raise? 6 months?
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Feb 21, 2016 13:41
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