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Johnny Truant posted:Oh god, story of my lab. I recently did an inventory of one of our larger cryo tanks and found an entire rack with four completely full boxes of unreadable, some unlabeled, vials. On the bright side, UCSD is starting a new barcode/app system for our chemical inventory and it seems good so far. Going to take a while to go through our reagents but hopefully this will make finding them easier and cut down on duplicate orders. We had four different bottles of benzyl bromide...
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May 15, 2016 21:24
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Want to turn reviewing responses to agency questions into a total clusterfuck? Include the quality and regulatory people from different 3 companies. It's only 20 reviewers with different/conflicting philosophies!
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May 15, 2016 22:07
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Bastard Tetris posted:Goddamn, with my network, legal transgenic weed would be way better than my current BIG PHARMA job if I didn't have to deal with all the awful blowback from the marijuana industry. Then again with dabbing they seem to have solved that problem so they can get high as gently caress without me. What blowback is that? Anti GMOers? Also for the record I was just poking fun. I'm definitely not anti weed, i have an application in for a license myself.
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May 15, 2016 22:47
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At my last job we had one woman where 75% of her job was logging, storing, and throwing away retains. She was as grumpy as anyone I've ever worked with (allegedly she made someone in a different department cry) but the retains were drat well organized.
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May 15, 2016 23:43
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I'm feeling smug as all hell right now. So we make milk and have a big ole homogenizer and a particle distribution analyzer to make sure that homogenizer is working. Analyzer tells us that our distribution is off by a whole 2 percent. "Not to worry" says the quality manager. "You must be doing it wrong. Test it again and i'll schedule a meeting to go over how we use that particular machine. 2% doesn't mean anything anyway. Get the maintenance crew to check the homo." I do. And they tell me i don't know how the homogenizer works and that its operator error for the particle analyzer. So i clean the cuvette and recalibrate and test again. Off by 2 percent. Marked out of spec, signed by production manager. Whatever. Skip to three days of out of spec results later. "Phosphene, when did you first notice this problem?" Oh i don't know, starting last week when it was reported in the out of spec results and signed by yourself. "Oh. Well all of our product has separated and can't be sold. If you hadn't said anything, we'd be in deep poo poo. Good catch. "  Even better, the homogenizer ran out of oil which is why it stopped working which is maintenance's job. I was right and literally everyone else was wrong.
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May 16, 2016 01:29
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Lt_Tofu posted:That's the dream. I am in an academic lab and finding any samples from previous people is almost impossible. My boss is certain that there's a mg of a absolutely rare natural product in a LCMS vial somewhere in our freezers. My coworker need it and every few months he tries to find it but the notes and labeling of the grad student are awful. The irony is that the grad student was a "star student" that our boss won't stop talking about. Boss freaking loves the system so far. We're about half done right now. Current stuff is done and I'll be going back through older stuff. We're pulling everything that expires at the end of this month and not cataloguing it since it'll be expired by the time I'm done anyways. It does feel pretty awesome to be able to find something that fast.
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May 16, 2016 23:54
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It's burgin' time! 
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PSA (public sales announcement): Buy a LIMS and consolidate all your sample and reagent data into one application! Track instrument and analyst certifications! Integrate your complex and simple instruments to get rid of time consuming transcription and reduce errors! Easily generate reports! And more!
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May 17, 2016 02:10
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Epitope posted:What blowback is that? Anti GMOers? I meant more like getting straight up robbed. It happens a lot in CA dispensaries and grow operations.
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May 17, 2016 03:43
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Lyon posted:PSA (public sales announcement): Buy a LIMS and consolidate all your sample and reagent data into one application! Track instrument and analyst certifications! Integrate your complex and simple instruments to get rid of time consuming transcription and reduce errors! Easily generate reports! And more! Lol, my old lab used to have an all paper QMS.
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May 17, 2016 04:09
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Bastard Tetris posted:I meant more like getting straight up robbed. It happens a lot in CA dispensaries and grow operations. Ah, yes. The marketing guy thinks we "should get shotguns," but no thank you I'm not getting in a gun fight over 4 grams of weed in methanol and a tank of helium. Also I think I've convinced financial that all-paper is not cost effective for information/quality management. God I hope so.
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May 17, 2016 04:24
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Lyon posted:PSA (public sales announcement): Buy a LIMS and consolidate all your sample and reagent data into one application! Track instrument and analyst certifications! Integrate your complex and simple instruments to get rid of time consuming transcription and reduce errors! Easily generate reports! And more! I'd love a LIMS system at my current place but the accountants are cheap and the managers seem afraid to use something other than books. Also I am skeptical of your claim on integrating instruments, i can assure you that NMR software is in fact poo poo and works right with nothing, even NMRs.
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May 17, 2016 11:23
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Ezekiel_980 posted:I'd love a LIMS system at my current place but the accountants are cheap and the managers seem afraid to use something other than books. Also I am skeptical of your claim on integrating instruments, i can assure you that NMR software is in fact poo poo and works right with nothing, even NMRs. You act like that's not a design feature. I love the export to lims button so so much. Except when the customer doesn't enter the workflow correctly so it can't export.
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May 17, 2016 11:32
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Epitope posted:Ah, yes. The marketing guy thinks we "should get shotguns," but no thank you I'm not getting in a gun fight over 4 grams of weed in methanol and a tank of helium. Just ask them how they'd feel of a complete copy of their controlled documentation just walked out the door. Yes, this happened at my lab.
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May 17, 2016 11:35
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Epitope posted:Also I think I've convinced financial that all-paper is not cost effective for information/quality management. God I hope so. I was talking to an administrative assistant yesterday and she told me my department uses three times more paper than any other department. My reply, GMP stands for generate more paperwork.
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May 17, 2016 13:09
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Lyon posted:PSA (public sales announcement): Buy a LIMS and consolidate all your sample and reagent data into one application! Track instrument and analyst certifications! Integrate your complex and simple instruments to get rid of time consuming transcription and reduce errors! Easily generate reports! And more!
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May 17, 2016 16:17
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We've been trying to allow certified electronic copies, so we can scan stuff and then get rid of the paper copies. Quality is really really concerned that something will screw up with the scanning, and we'll just upload garbage. We've finally gotten them to allow us to run a pilot program, but it requires every copy that gets scanned and uploded to our document management system to have two levels of approval.
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May 17, 2016 22:30
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I'm trying to get end-to-end LIMS/sample tracking in our whole automated workflow set up but I really really really don't want to be the person in charge of it. God I hate being Captain Capex at work sometimes.
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May 18, 2016 07:48
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Bastard Tetris posted:I'm trying to get end-to-end LIMS/sample tracking in our whole automated workflow set up but I really really really don't want to be the person in charge of it. God I hate being Captain Capex at work sometimes. I legitimately work for one of the top two LIMS vendors in the world if you have any questions. My experience is more on the QC manufacturing side of things but we also have a massive segment of customers in pharma (specialized qc/r&d), life science (I guess I mean specimen banking and sequencing and all that fun stuff), academic research, etc. I do a mixture of sales and training since our training department is wildly understaffed and that's my background so if I can provide any info to anyone in the thread let me know. One day I will sell a LIMS to a goon and my life will be complete.
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May 19, 2016 08:34
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PM me when you get a chance. Any business will be arm's length as all hell so I doubt you will be able to sell LIMS to a goon, but hey.
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May 20, 2016 08:27
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Hi hello wrong board poster here crossposting from the science subforum as I'm clearly not smart enough to figure out my question was a career question and not a scientific one. Anyone wanna give some advice about my very fragile dream of becoming a lab tech? I checked out the education you need, it's a 2½ year thing in my country, with pretty low admission requirements, but before I set sail on the grand adventure of studying this I figured I'd absorb whatever information I could, regarding what it's actually like to work in a lab. Is it social or solitary? Is it repetitive and hum-drum, or not? How hard is it to get a job working with things that aren't food-related? Tell me anything you think would be relevant for a young up-and-coming go-getter dreaming of sneezing at an inopportune moment and accidentally blowing up half the lab / releasing a deadly supervirus upon the world as a result
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May 31, 2016 00:47
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Submitted my capex budget... 2.3mil. Wonder if I will get any of it!
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May 31, 2016 06:44
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Appachai posted:Submitted my capex budget... 2.3mil. Wonder if I will get any of it! We've got plans based on how much we're getting, should be tense!
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Jun 1, 2016 02:41
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Uhhhh so I don't know exactly what a 'lab tech' means in your country, but I have a BS in chemistry in the states, which is our four year degree, and I do a buttload of hands on lab work, so functionally I think this might answer your question, but then again, what's a lab tech? Everyone in my labs have bachelors or up.Trier posted:Is it social or solitary? Yes. When you are in the darkroom setting up multiple square-meter paper chromatography blocks with nitromethane for several hours, it can get kinda lonely. When you are aliquotting thirty thousand vials using autopipettors alongside the entire lab's labor pool because this thing is made once every several years and it's not worth buying a filler machine over it, people say dumb poo poo. Trier posted:Is it repetitive and hum-drum, or not? Yes. See above. There is so much stupid esoteric poo poo being done in labs that it's really just a matter of waiting for the right interview and you can find goofy schedules, weird hours, night crew, huge lab staffs or tiny tech teams, or whatever else. Plenty of 9-5m-f too.
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Jun 1, 2016 03:34
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Bastard Tetris posted:We've got plans based on how much we're getting, should be tense! The answer was that the bossman would really prefer that it be 1.5, before it goes up one more level (to get cut again, I'm sure)
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Jun 1, 2016 05:28
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RadioPassive posted:Everyone in my labs have bachelors or up. Huh. That's a little bit odd, this 2½ year thing I was talking about isn't even at a university, it's a... profession education, I guess it'd be directly translated to? Professional Academy? Not sure how to translate it, cause I'm not sure America has something like that. It's a course specifically aimed at working in a laboratory, that's all you can do with it. Thanks for your other answers, makes sense that it'd have plenty of variety in how the work is carried out.
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Jun 1, 2016 09:52
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Trier posted:Hi hello wrong board poster here crossposting from the science subforum as I'm clearly not smart enough to figure out my question was a career question and not a scientific one. Hi there, in the lab I work at you definitely don't need a degree to be a lab technician, in fact several of our technicians have no qualifications besides being in the right place at the right time to be hired. The work we do is very repetitive, the exact same things day to day, doing the same tasks over and over each day. Although this is a good science lab and the tests we do as well as the products we recieve do change as the years go by so that helps with the repetitiveness. It's also very social here, sometimes there is work that just had to be done along of course, or there just happens to be no one around (I work at a pretty small lab, with few employees) but typically we are collaborating and working together and a good time is had by all. Also don't be afraid of food science, its not bad, except the microbiology department gets a little stinky sometimes.
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Jun 1, 2016 13:33
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Jesus christ, today I was reminded why DNA projects in our lab are just loving stupid. My old boss put it correctly: it's like chickens with their heads cut off trying to all coordinate. I just wanted to quantify, normalize and aliquot, but now I'm sucked into the shitshow that is creating a plating list, organizing our hundred some-odd samples which should've been organized in the first place, and having to play catchup because the tech extracting the DNA keeps giving me more samples than I can complete in one day, delaying the schedule. Not to mention our lab manager, who's rarely even in lab, for some reason told the PI we could ship out a week earlier than everyone initially said, even our loving department head. Someone please come kill me.
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Jun 10, 2016 18:28
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Trier posted:Hi hello wrong board poster here crossposting from the science subforum as I'm clearly not smart enough to figure out my question was a career question and not a scientific one. Hello, As a low level researcher at a reasonable university I recommend your best course of action is think about alternatives. I am only slightly kidding. If you are even slightly University inclined you will be better off as an accountant, engineer or as a project or HR manager. I am definitely not Jaded at all. no way Unless of course you are talking about being a Medical laboratory scientist, someone who processes blood and faeces for hospitals or doctors, doing haematology or what have you. That work can be repetitive but at least the pay is better that being a low level researcher. If I had to do science again I would do Med Lab instead of Molecular Microbiology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_laboratory_scientist I have friends who worked in clean rooms and others that work in PC3 containment vessels. The work is basically the same as other entry stuff but with harsher SoP's and tighter tolerances. The clean room friend spent the better part of a week grinding up Sheep brains to extract something, before cleaning the entire room.
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Jun 13, 2016 04:15
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Today's fun, get a last minute request to run a sample, not a big deal but this one has a gimmick. The gimmick is that it's kept in a vault so I have to request it from a person with the keys. Of course this person is not here today. Now the requester is having a woe is me moment about how they are screwed. They have had a month to ask me or my boss to do this, unsurprisingly when they asked me what they should do I told them "plan ahead" and have retuned to filling out notebooks while they wonder the office bemoaning their fate.
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Jun 13, 2016 19:29
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Wuzzlez posted:Also don't be afraid of food science, its not bad, except the microbiology department gets a little stinky sometimes. Be afraid if you end up working for Molecular Epidemiology/Institute for Environmental Health.
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Jun 14, 2016 21:39
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Ezekiel_980 posted:Today's fun, get a last minute request to run a sample, not a big deal but this one has a gimmick. The gimmick is that it's kept in a vault so I have to request it from a person with the keys. Of course this person is not here today. Now the requester is having a woe is me moment about how they are screwed. They have had a month to ask me or my boss to do this, unsurprisingly when they asked me what they should do I told them "plan ahead" and have retuned to filling out notebooks while they wonder the office bemoaning their fate. I used to work for a guy who would say "Piss poor planning on your part does NOT constitute an emergency on mine."
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Jun 15, 2016 02:10
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I heart bacon posted:I used to work for a guy who would say "Piss poor planning on your part does NOT constitute an emergency on mine." Ooh I'm totally stealing this when my old boss has a freak out.
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Jun 15, 2016 13:39
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I have a job posting for any Boston area lab goons. Location: Cambridge, MA Job posting is here. The firm I work for is building batteries for the power grid using a new aqueous redox chemistry. We're scaling up and we are in need of an analytical chemistry tech to help with our QC and R&D. We are actively in a research and development phase, so we are still defining the scope of our analytical process. So the role will be a mixture of running tests on supplier electrolytes and in-house synthesized electrolytes. The role will also include significant method development and validation. Compensation is competitive with experience (I.e. We don't have strict pay-job title links). Current methods we use commonly are GC, HPLC, UV-VIS, pH probes, viscosity meters, turbidity meters, ICP-OES, water activity meters, conductivity meters, and titrations. We are still actively looking for new methods, so flexibility is a plus. Comfort with chromatography and ICP-OES are weighed heavily. The team here is enjoyable to work around. There aren't any real social problems. The science is really high level and we're still figuring a lot out, which is fun. But that also means you should be comfortable having your work challenged. The work here also feels meaningful, like you're contributing to making something worthwhile. If you are interested in to position or have questions email me at: znorman@lmcoenergy.com You'll also need to apply through the posting above because corporate policy, but I can give a quick thumb up / thumb down if it's worth your time and help get your resume through the corporate filter.
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Jun 20, 2016 18:17
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A couple weeks ago, my supervisor decided to redo the lab, specifically move the GCs around because ???. He got the company grease monkey to put in the new gas lines for the new location. Seems alright. So when we got back to running, I noticed that we were burning through hydrogen like mad and emptying our tanks super quickly. Turns out the new hydrogen line had leaks everywhere in it. If there was a junction in the line, there was a leak. I enjoy being in an active hydrogen leak area for about a week. And our AC unit has been broken for about the same time too. Hot as balls in the lab.
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Jun 21, 2016 15:18
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DOOP posted:A couple weeks ago, my supervisor decided to redo the lab, specifically move the GCs around because ???. He got the company grease monkey to put in the new gas lines for the new location. Seems alright. So when we got back to running, I noticed that we were burning through hydrogen like mad and emptying our tanks super quickly. Turns out the new hydrogen line had leaks everywhere in it. If there was a junction in the line, there was a leak. At least its UHP Hydrogen. Classy.
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Jun 22, 2016 01:32
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We just had a staff meeting at the bloodbank where I work and accounting / upper management has decided to switch around our hours. Secondshift (what I'm on now) is going from 3pm to midnight to 6 or 7pm to 3/430 am. In addition, every other week I will be on call every day from 0500 am to 4pm or so and have to work a double shift if they call me in. This is pretty loving bad, so I'm looking to jump ship as soon as I can. Has anyone ever gone from bench work to more of the LIS side of things? I'm thinking about making a career move but I'm not sure what certs I need to grab. The few LIS/LIMS admins I have talked to said they got into the position mostly by luck (right place right time, telling their boss they like computers).
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Jun 22, 2016 21:47
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robotoilet posted:We just had a staff meeting at the bloodbank where I work and accounting / upper management has decided to switch around our hours. Secondshift (what I'm on now) is going from 3pm to midnight to 6 or 7pm to 3/430 am. In addition, every other week I will be on call every day from 0500 am to 4pm or so and have to work a double shift if they call me in. This is pretty loving bad, so I'm looking to jump ship as soon as I can. DID SOMEONE SAY LIMS??? *Kramers through door* Unfortunately becoming the LIS/LIMS admin is typically right time right place. If you don't become the LIS/LIMS administrator internally to gain some LIS/LIMS experience then it can be difficult to acquire. First you would have to gamble on purchasing training from a particular LIS/LIMS vendor of which there are a few hundred. You could then attempt to apply for any LIS/LIMS job and say you have relevant experience but that's still a risk. Second, my company has a strict policy of only training current customers (and very very grudgingly contractors hired by those customers) so you wouldn't even be able to sign up for a training with my company. I'm not 100% sure how common that is at other LIS/LIMS vendors but we are one of the top two LIMS vendors (#2 obviously :P) in the country. You could look for job postings for LIS/LIMS administrators in your area and see if they will hire you without a lot of LIS/LIMS experience or another option would be to apply directly to work for a LIMS vendor. We prefer to hire customers/former customers because they have lab experience and experience with our software but we also hire people directly from the lab a lot too. Probably the most lacking thing in our organization is people who truly understand the lab space and have experience with the problems we are trying to solve (although we've been getting better about this). A lot of the lab people we hire view working for a LIS/LIMS vendor as an intermediate step, it gets them out of the lab and gets them experience with LIS/LIMS software and also with project management (typically we hire lab folks to work as business analysts).
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Jun 23, 2016 00:22
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Hey there blood bank buddy! That's a pretty crummy shift change they're trying to force on you guys and man they're going to lose a ton of people to it (let me guess the change is happening due to understaffing to begin with?). I'm actually in the final round of consideration for a hospital IT position working with a laboratory, which I really hope I get. They weren't very concerned about my lack of IT training/certs, but are really excited about my understanding of the general lab and blood bank workflows- I guess I didn't realize how much of an asset it is. I also have some additional math/stats courses that I took, so that might have helped show I can do tech things. So keep an eye out in local information services departments- what we do is confusing and full of technical jargon, and they might be looking for someone like you. List the programs you have worked with on your resume- I think this was super important to their decision. Also, have you looked into jobs with LIS vendors like Cerner? They have openings in a bunch of states, and from their responses to my resume, they're pretty open to hiring entry level people with lab experience. If you're down to moving to Wisconsin, Epic might have a good role to apply to. Good luck getting out of the lab! A lot of our skills are very transferable, it's just a matter of convincing people who aren't familiar with our field that they are.
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Jun 23, 2016 14:37
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 On a real note, how often are you working with something that is colorless vs colored.
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Jun 28, 2016 23:37
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I deal with plating baths so yeah they're colored. We got lime Gatorade, blue Gatorade, and hungover piss colored.
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Jun 29, 2016 03:37
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