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Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost
EDIT: It's perfectly acceptable for laboratory refugees to post here as well, don't be shy!

Maybe you're trying to finish up your degree and it's a work study position to keep you in beer money. Maybe you're whoring yourself out to a huge testing or pharmaceutical laboratory for rent. Maybe you're one of the few in the Ivory Towers of Academia.

Some of us are down in the trenches in white coats and biohazard suits while others are upstairs writing up grants and regulatory paperwork. This is the place to let loose! Enjoy! Hell, if this is something you actually want to pursue, feel free to ask questions! I'll add more resources and industry groups as they are mentioned.

Just to start things off, I do calibration and QA work for a large food safety and consulting firm. The lab stinks terribly and we're all paid poo poo wages to make sure food doesn't give you a surprise abortion or simply make you wish you were dead. The regulatory end is a complete game filled with clueless client auditors and accreditation agencies funded only by the fees of the labs they themselves attempt to regulate.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask! If not, post your own stories of laboratory hell! :science:

PS: If anyone is willing to design a banner, I'll be more than happy to pay for it.

Solkanar512 fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Mar 11, 2012

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Lyon
Apr 17, 2003
My girlfriend is a microbiologist in a lab doing a lot of work with Dengue virus. She just finished a bunch of compound screenings that turned up no results. Basically (talking out my rear end now) they modeled a (or a bunch of) compound(s) on a computer and what would be required for them to form. They can ordered a bunch of chemicals/bacteria/whatever sloshed it all together then started testing to see if the compound they were looking for formed.

How often does this kind of work fail to show any positive results?

Secondly, I work for a LIMS company, we are used by tons of QA labs that run the gamut from food, pharma, water, etc.

What is your take on LIMS, does it help/hurt you, etc?

plester1
Jul 9, 2004





Lyon posted:

How often does this kind of work fail to show any positive results?

Failure is basically the norm. That's the nature of research.

Lyon
Apr 17, 2003
Good point, she was a little surprised they rewarded her for finishing the job with a $75 in gift cards when it was super easy and they didn't find any of the compounds they were looking for. That was what made me curious I guess.

Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost

Lyon posted:

Secondly, I work for a LIMS company, we are used by tons of QA labs that run the gamut from food, pharma, water, etc.

What is your take on LIMS, does it help/hurt you, etc?

I hate to say it, but I don't use the LIMS system. To the best of my knowledge we had some in house hack job until recently when it was upgraded. We'll see how that goes. We have a nasty habit of doing or making everything in house to "save money" but it doesn't at all.

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005
Ooh, yay! I was waiting for this thread. :D

I'm down in the dark and scary basement laboratories of pharmaceutical drug development. My work is a cross between chemistry, engineering, and material science. Basically, someone upstream hands me an active drug ingredient, and they say "figure out what the gently caress to do with this thing". Sometimes they'll be a bit more precise and say "This is (Drug Name). It's an IR tablet normally. Make it a transdermal patch for us instead so we can squeeze even more money out of it!!"

I spend a lot of my time yelling at our marketing department, telling project managers that they're insane, and exchanging punches with our business units (the douchebags who control our research budgets and have slashed them by 60% in the last year).

I spend most of my time making new versions of drugs that already exist, but every now and then I get an awesome little bonus like a cancer medication that actually does its job (cryzotinib recently - that was fun!) or my own little side research that I can publish.

But mostly boner meds that already exist.


EDIT: I am willing to answer any questions about working in scientific positions in big pharma that you'd like. For a quick TL;DR, though... big pharma isn't stable, so don't work here.

Sundae fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Feb 25, 2011

Bastard Tetris
Apr 27, 2005

L-Shaped


Nap Ghost
I've wanted to make this thread for six years, but now I'm corporate and bound by a shitload of NDAs :)

My previous background was in a uHTS lab programming industrial robots to move microarray plates around to screen millions of small molecules for a variety of therapeutics.

Virtual screening like that dengue screen is bullshit, hit rates are terrible :(

The lab I run now is a 10 year old HTS lab that I'm in charge of renovating, but our screens are much more focused on alternative energy research instead of drug discovery. Fortunately I'm in a pay-to-play field backed by a huge company so the budgets are nice.

We currently use our in-house LIMS but one thing we're starting to realize is that system continuity is tough when all of the designers left five years ago. Supportable infrastructure is really really really important.

tishthedish
Jan 21, 2007

I'm standing at her shores
Another lab rat checking in! I work the evening shift in the Texas Medical Center in the microbiology lab. I got my BS in August 2010 and am a certified Medical Laboratory Scientist. It's not a terribly well known field because we aren't really visible to the patient, but I found out about it in a microbiology class and decided it was the best career for me. There's a major shortage (that's getting....shorter) of MLS' because of the vast increase of old people, so it was a good choice for job security.

Anyways, I am the ~Gram Stain Queen~ at my lab. I've read 1500 since October. Also, I never thought I would be so comfortable shelling stool into small containers to be tested for C. dificile. Rectal swabs for VRE aren't something I thought were so prevalent, but after urines, it's what we got most of.

Any other MLS'? (or, as they're mostly known, MT's?)

rds
Nov 28, 2004
Lab rat in the making here.. I've been a Clinical Lab Assistant for about two years now at the main hospital laboratory for a fairly prominent healthcare organization in Utah. I'm plodding along in getting my degree in CLS so that I can be doing benchwork, but I get to see absolutely everything coming in through the pre-analytical phase and work with every department so there is a ton a variety.

Now that I have a better idea about hospital laboratory work, I've started to wonder what the other potential job opportunities are for a laboratory science degree? Pharma has been mentioned, but what other fields do some of you work in?

Naffer
Oct 26, 2004

Not a good chemist
Grad student in my last year of PhD in synthetic inorganic chemistry checking in.
I probably ought to start writing my thesis soon, but I can't seem to tear myself away from my bench.
I'm also kind of learning small molecule x-ray crystallography on the side, so I can talk about that too. I've done around 40 complete structures in the last two years or so.

Merou
Jul 23, 2005
mean green? :(

tishthedish posted:

Another lab rat checking in! I work the evening shift in the Texas Medical Center in the microbiology lab. I got my BS in August 2010 and am a certified Medical Laboratory Scientist. It's not a terribly well known field because we aren't really visible to the patient, but I found out about it in a microbiology class and decided it was the best career for me. There's a major shortage (that's getting....shorter) of MLS' because of the vast increase of old people, so it was a good choice for job security.

Anyways, I am the ~Gram Stain Queen~ at my lab. I've read 1500 since October. Also, I never thought I would be so comfortable shelling stool into small containers to be tested for C. dificile. Rectal swabs for VRE aren't something I thought were so prevalent, but after urines, it's what we got most of.

Any other MLS'? (or, as they're mostly known, MT's?)

I'm an MLS too, I graduated in 2009. I also work evening shift but here all shifts other than day shift has everyone as generalists and we pretty much work each department by ourselves. I've probably only read about 1000 gram stains in the year and a half I've been doing this, but I'm only in micro once or twice a week.

What CLS program did you go to? I went to Scott & White, everyone else on my shift went to Texas State.

Acelerion
May 3, 2005

Im a physicist for a venture capital startup. The only scientific staff left thanks to layoffs (there were 2 of us to begin with to be fair).

While Id love to share some stories Ive got a sneaking suspicion my immediate superior is a goon. Despite all my frustration I still gotta pay them bills.

galvetron
Jul 1, 2007

Bastard Tetris posted:

I've wanted to make this thread for six years, but now I'm corporate and bound by a shitload of NDAs :)

I work in the legal and ethics office of a large defense contractor; managing the paperwork stream for those NDAs and Conflicts of Interest Certifications is no fun either.

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005

Bastard Tetris posted:

I've wanted to make this thread for six years, but now I'm corporate and bound by a shitload of NDAs :)

gently caress NDAs and the stupid 'internal confidentiality' poo poo. Why the flying gently caress is the floorplan for my lab building labeled "Confidential, internal use only" ? Oh, that's right... because the building was designed by half-crazed orangutans, and the company wants to hide that. (PYF TPS thread reference, sorry.)

Seriously, though... the number of things I'm not allowed to tell people that I really, really need to tell people is astonishing. How am I supposed to get pricing quotes for drug components from vendors if I'm not allowed to tell them what I want to order from them? That's right... we clamp down on formulations so hard that I can't even order excipients these days! (Meanwhile, every one of the damned things will be listed on our label on release anyway. Any moron with a bottle of our drug, a USP subscription, and the ability to run some mass spec can tell EXACTLY what's in our poo poo anyway.)

Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost

Sundae posted:

Seriously, though... the number of things I'm not allowed to tell people that I really, really need to tell people is astonishing. How am I supposed to get pricing quotes for drug components from vendors if I'm not allowed to tell them what I want to order from them? That's right... we clamp down on formulations so hard that I can't even order excipients these days! (Meanwhile, every one of the damned things will be listed on our label on release anyway. Any moron with a bottle of our drug, a USP subscription, and the ability to run some mass spec can tell EXACTLY what's in our poo poo anyway.)

Why is that a problem when you've been asked to buy illegal generics because they're cheaper anyway? :p

Yeah, we really don't give a flying gently caress about NDAs around my lab. You can tell by the boxes sitting in the lobby where are samples are coming from and often they are left in their retail packaging in the incubators fridges. There's nothing better than walking down to the food processing folks and asking, "what shouldn't I be eating this week?"

Here are two general tips for you folks:

1. There is a reason raw milk is pasteurized here in the United States. While I appreciate that countries in Europe sell it and make all sorts of lovely cheeses and yogurts and the like with it, they also have much much stricter food inspection and safety laws than we do. After all it will cause poor mom & pop farmers to lose their jobs in this tough economy! :jerkbag:

Here, there are often Listeria contamination issues. While Listeria doesn't affect men, it often gives pregnant women a surprise abortion. Even if you aren't pregnant, did you properly handle the raw milk such that a possible contamination won't spread to other surfaces or foods? Are you sure? That's why the United States can't have nice things.

2. Wash your drat greens! I know this is SA and eating veggies isn't as common as it should, wash them. It's not that greens are inherently dangerous, but that the public education on food safety has focused on meat (for a good reason) and folks just assume that their pretty little organic arugula hasn't ever touched grey water (it has).

Merou
Jul 23, 2005
mean green? :(

Solkanar512 posted:


Here are two general tips for you folks:

1. There is a reason raw milk is pasteurized here in the United States. While I appreciate that countries in Europe sell it and make all sorts of lovely cheeses and yogurts and the like with it, they also have much much stricter food inspection and safety laws than we do. After all it will cause poor mom & pop farmers to lose their jobs in this tough economy! :jerkbag:

Here, there are often Listeria contamination issues. While Listeria doesn't affect men, it often gives pregnant women a surprise abortion. Even if you aren't pregnant, did you properly handle the raw milk such that a possible contamination won't spread to other surfaces or foods? Are you sure? That's why the United States can't have nice things.



I used to have a roommate who would buy raw milk from somewhere. She would always insist that I try it and get all uppity when I wouldn't. At least twice a month for a year. I guess when people don't have to take medical microbiology or parasitology they don't worry about stuff like undulent fever.

Also its Listeria monocytogenes right? We used use it in lab in college until the professor decided it might give women abortions and we stopped. I always liked the umbrella shape in the broth cultures.

Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost

Merou posted:

I used to have a roommate who would buy raw milk from somewhere. She would always insist that I try it and get all uppity when I wouldn't. At least twice a month for a year. I guess when people don't have to take medical microbiology or parasitology they don't worry about stuff like undulent fever.

Also its Listeria monocytogenes right? We used use it in lab in college until the professor decided it might give women abortions and we stopped. I always liked the umbrella shape in the broth cultures.

Oh yeah, that's the one.

Seriously, those tiny little organic farms that rely on volunteer labor and "do a little bit of everything" are the loving worst. I think it's great that they want to avoid treating animals like poo poo and the like, but guess what? There's plenty of "all natural" poo poo that can kill you or simply make you wish you were dead.

Bastard Tetris
Apr 27, 2005

L-Shaped


Nap Ghost
^^^^^^^ This is why I can't do raw milk.

Sundae posted:

Seriously, though... the number of things I'm not allowed to tell people that I really, really need to tell people is astonishing. How am I supposed to get pricing quotes for drug components from vendors if I'm not allowed to tell them what I want to order from them? That's right... we clamp down on formulations so hard that I can't even order excipients these days! (Meanwhile, every one of the damned things will be listed on our label on release anyway. Any moron with a bottle of our drug, a USP subscription, and the ability to run some mass spec can tell EXACTLY what's in our poo poo anyway.)

Yeowch, this is why I got out of pharma. Fortunately we are really good at collaborating so we don't have any internal issues, but since my boss is our compliance and ethics leader I have to play ball.

It's odd going from academia to industry, you feel so much less agile as a lab manager when every piece of paperwork has to pass through three sites and six people. Oh well, at least I have a huge budget now.

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005

Solkanar512 posted:

Why is that a problem when you've been asked to buy illegal generics because they're cheaper anyway? :p

That was great. You know what, though? They canned the project anyway, claiming it was too expensive.

I have literally zero internal development projects right now. Everything is a sourcing project trying to buy up small biotechs in India to steal their ultra-cheap pipelines.

Yeah... the applications have been flying over here. Not quite what I signed up for. I signed up for things like crizotinib (my previous spelling was incorrect) and for my first rheumatoid arthritis drug (which failed miserably). I didn't sign up for projects so lame that even BonerMed 2.0 is more exciting / useful.

Engineer Lenk
Aug 28, 2003

Mnogo losho e!
Yeah, a lot of drugs fail. Something like 22 NMEs were approved last year.

I'm a biostatistician at a CRO. We do a lot of clinical trial work for pharma companies of all sizes.

oracle6781
Sep 19, 2008
Just a general question out there for all you lab rats, do you guys like your jobs? I'm an undergrad who's been working working in a neglected disease lab in my school for 3 years, and while I enjoy the research, it seems all my coworkers can't wait to leave because of all the stress. Is that just the way it goes in an academedia or does it vary on where you work?

kitten smoothie
Dec 29, 2001

edit nm

kitten smoothie fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Feb 28, 2011

Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost

oracle6781 posted:

Just a general question out there for all you lab rats, do you guys like your jobs? I'm an undergrad who's been working working in a neglected disease lab in my school for 3 years, and while I enjoy the research, it seems all my coworkers can't wait to leave because of all the stress. Is that just the way it goes in an academedia or does it vary on where you work?

I would like my job more if the owner wasn't an abusive, micromanaging miserly rear end in a top hat who is too cheap to pay folks to properly invoice his customers. After all, when we aren't being hacked at the knees with shoddy equipment, we are protecting the public from dying.

I did attend a really difficult science/engineering school, and I will say that it's great not to worry about work once you get home.

tishthedish
Jan 21, 2007

I'm standing at her shores

Merou posted:



What CLS program did you go to? I went to Scott & White, everyone else on my shift went to Texas State.

I went to MD Anderson's program. :) Did my prereqs at Texas A&M, and I heard about the CLS program in my microbiology class.




oracle6781 posted:

Just a general question out there for all you lab rats, do you guys like your jobs? I'm an undergrad who's been working working in a neglected disease lab in my school for 3 years, and while I enjoy the research, it seems all my coworkers can't wait to leave because of all the stress. Is that just the way it goes in an academedia or does it vary on where you work?


There's stress, but I think there's stress and dumbass bosses (I have a dumbass boss) everywhere. The hardest part I deal with is the shortage of workers. Two weeks after I started, one of the technologists had some back issues and has been out since. My boss was trying to add another person to the evening shift because she was planning to give the evening shift more responsibilities. Well, she gave us more responsibilities......with the same amount of people. I just went and talked to her again about the fact that I CAN NOT do everything myself on the days my co-technologist is off. It's flat out ridiculous what they expect.


Buuuuuuut the job security is nice; I had a job 1.5 months before I graduated. I also started at $22.50 an hour (that includes my shift diff, though) and have already gotten a market adjustment. I am also getting a merit raise in a month. In December, I'll get a $5-7000 increase in salary because I'll be moving up in my PDM. Plus, oh God, I love not doing homework. Being able to clock in and clock out is awesome.

john ashpool
Jun 29, 2010
Post.

john ashpool fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Mar 19, 2016

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005

Engineer Lenk posted:

Yeah, a lot of drugs fail. Something like 22 NMEs were approved last year.

I'm a biostatistician at a CRO. We do a lot of clinical trial work for pharma companies of all sizes.

The funny thing is just how many of ours don't "fail", but are canned for insufficient revenue predictions.

"Insufficient" lately has meant "won't deliver buckets of gold to our doorsteps". I would say that easily 90% of the viable drugs that come through my department get killed for insufficient revenue now. That's not even counting all the miserable failures. :lol:

volkadav
Jan 1, 2008

Guillotine / Gulag 2020
Back when I was young and hopeful, I dreamed that really enjoying ochem and later undergrad research in a pharma-focused chemistry group would mean that working in pharma would be a fun future career. :unsmith:

(I ended up writing software for a living. v:shobon:v)

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005
Anyone stuck on projects with that one spineless guy who doesn't know how to say no?

You know... the guy who works 90 hours a week and then comes in on weekends too, then complains that he didn't finish everything and his boss will have his rear end for it? (I'm not even talking "come in for 45 minutes to feed your cell cultures", but "come in for 12 hours Saturday and another 10 on Sunday".)

I want to kill him, because he's making it very hard for me to keep my hours normalized. I have a very clear rule with my project leads and my supervisor: 40 hours, period. Not an hour more. If I have to work late or come in early, it's going to come off of other days. My only exception is for literally unyielding urgent deadlines. Paperwork for an FDA query with a due-date next week? Fine, I'll work late. People from our France sites coming over for a QbD meeting, need work done before they fly out on Friday? Okay, fair enough.

Project timeline accelerated because the guys in suits said so? Tough poo poo. They get 40 hours and not a minute more. I'm sticking firm to my 'tough poo poo' view, because I already know how this plays out. I'd finish the work, not even get credit for it, not get any benefit for it on my performance review at the end of the year, and I'm salaried without overtime so no extra pay.

My spineless co-worker, however, immediately rolls over and tries to get the work done without me. I've literally forced him to go home before after finding out he'd worked for 24 hours straight without sleep. I gave him an off-the-record safety violation and sent him home.

Is this seriously how it's going to play out? Every time I refuse to stay late, this schmuck is going to take it up the rear end from the company? For gently caress's sake dude... it's not worth your health. You don't even get overtime!

Sundae fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Mar 3, 2011

polyfractal
Dec 20, 2004

Unwind my riddle.
Lab rat on the acadamia side. Laboratory technician for two years so I can get good recommendations for grad school (second attempt, first was fresh from college and I didn't make my top schools).

I work in a molecular neuroscience laboratory about a random protein no one knows or cares about. Tentatively associated with bipolar and schizophrenia. I've spent six months troubleshooting a single assay because it is the "linchpin experiment". Despite there being easier experiments that are nearly as quantifiable.

Plus I have to stand in a goddamn refrigerated room for the entire experiment, which takes like five hours. :argh:

My immediate supervisor (not my PI, whom I love) is an anal micromanager that demands to know every detail of everything I do and has strict rules regarding everything (from the color of markers we use to how large I print out images for my own goddamn notebook). My supervisor refuses to acknowledge that I have previous experience and knowledge from undergrad - he explains everything from square one, all the time. Yes, I realize cells need serum to grow. Yes, I know DNA supercoils. Really, I didn't realize the CO2-buffered media requires CO2 to maintain pH. We butted heads for a long time until I finally just gave up and started playing by his inane rules.

My initial enthusiasm to help crack this protein's riddle has turned into apathy. I don't care about the science anymore - all I care about is appeasing my supervisor so I can go home without being bitched at.



Luckily this hasn't diminished my resolve to go to grad school, I just know what kind of adviser I don't want to work for and how not to treat my technicians in the future.

Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost

Sundae posted:

You don't even get overtime!

I'm guessing this guy has an H1-B visa, right? That's what they act like here.

Anyway, I wanted to throw this question out to the general audience for a bit of advice. Doing regulatory work for this food safety lab generally sucks, and I'm looking at my options. I have almost three years of experience in regulatory (fda/ISO 17025/17043 cGMP soon 9001) and calibration work. Also have a BS in Mathematical Biology from a great school, but crappy GPA.

I basically have two options.

A. Continue in regulatory stuff. It's hard to get experience in this area and it's always in need.

B. Become a Biostatistician/ go into Bioinformatics.

If I stick with regulatory, are there any sorts of courses/certifications/experiences I can obtain to make myself more interesting to laboratories? It's frustrating as hell because there's no development here and I'm really afraid of stagnating. "Promotions" are based entirely on politics and there is no title or pay change, so outside of developing a program for a new accreditation we're trying to get, I'm mostly a document/calibration bitch.

If I go to the Biostats, what do I need to know to augment my skills? Do I need to suck it up and get a masters here? What sorts of languages are widely used in this area? Can these sorts of things be self-taught or do I need specific degrees/certs/experience?

Thanks if you guys have advice, I'm just so tired of this place and I've only had two interviews in the past year.

Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost
Sorry for the double post, but I had another thought for the thread at large.

Is LinkedIn used widely in the Lab Sciences industry? If folks are comfortable, we should start networking.

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005
My company, at least, heavily uses it. I'd be game for networking.


I can't comment on the biostatistics stuff, but I know that there are regulatory courses and certifications that are available for FDA stuff. I'm supposed to be taking one this year if we have the budget for it (gently caress paying for it myself). I'll link the courses when I find them.

quote:

I'm guessing this guy has an H1-B visa, right? That's what they act like here.

No, he's a standard employee! I understand H1-B visa holders acting like that; they're basically indentured servitude and risk deportation if they get fired. He's just a regular FTE.

Merou
Jul 23, 2005
mean green? :(

tishthedish posted:

I went to MD Anderson's program. :) Did my prereqs at Texas A&M, and I heard about the CLS program in my microbiology class.

I got accepted to MD Anderson but I also got accepted to Scott & White so I went there since I really didn't want to live in Houston. Plus it only cost 500 dollars since the hospital pays for the program instead of the 13k MD Anderson wanted in tuition. Living in Temple for a year kind of sucked but probably less so than living in Houston.

Theres always that unfortunate downside to 2nd shift, they want us to do relatively more work than someone on dayshift would do but with far less people. When they sign up to work our shift for overtime dayshift for the most part can't handle our workload so we have to do theirs in addition to ours. But it beats waking up at 5 in the morning.

Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost

Sundae posted:

My company, at least, heavily uses it. I'd be game for networking.


I can't comment on the biostatistics stuff, but I know that there are regulatory courses and certifications that are available for FDA stuff. I'm supposed to be taking one this year if we have the budget for it (gently caress paying for it myself). I'll link the courses when I find them.

It isn't though ASQ, is it? I asked my immediate boss about those and he said they were a waste of time, but I trust very little of what they tell me at work anymore.

Engineer Lenk
Aug 28, 2003

Mnogo losho e!

Solkanar512 posted:

If I go to the Biostats, what do I need to know to augment my skills? Do I need to suck it up and get a masters here? What sorts of languages are widely used in this area? Can these sorts of things be self-taught or do I need specific degrees/certs/experience?

Thanks if you guys have advice, I'm just so tired of this place and I've only had two interviews in the past year.

Get a masters degree. There are very few biostatisticians without one. Don't quit ABD on a PhD after forever like I did - it should only take 2-3 years.

If you want to work in industry, learn SAS. If you already have a half-decent CS background this will take remarkably little time. In the academic setting you'll see more R/S+ and some Stata, since R in particular is very good for flexible simulations. I wouldn't bother doing any sort of language certs - just find an assistantship that uses SAS while you're doing your masters. The 9.2 documentation is very good compared to some of the other statistical packages, and pharmaSUG has a ton of papers and examples for more complex stuff.

Miss-Bomarc
Aug 1, 2009

Sundae posted:

Is this seriously how it's going to play out? Every time I refuse to stay late, this schmuck is going to take it up the rear end from the company? For gently caress's sake dude... it's not worth your health. You don't even get overtime!
It could be that he's just so astounded by the awesomeness of SCIENCE that he doesn't see spending twenty-four hours working as a bad thing, because OMG SCIENCE. He looks at an all-nighter in the lab the way you might, e.g., look at an all-nighter playing 'Starcraft'.

Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost

Miss-Bomarc posted:

It could be that he's just so astounded by the awesomeness of SCIENCE that he doesn't see spending twenty-four hours working as a bad thing, because OMG SCIENCE. He looks at an all-nighter in the lab the way you might, e.g., look at an all-nighter playing 'Starcraft'.

You've never actually worked in a private lab, have you?

tishthedish
Jan 21, 2007

I'm standing at her shores

Merou posted:

I got accepted to MD Anderson but I also got accepted to Scott & White so I went there since I really didn't want to live in Houston. Plus it only cost 500 dollars since the hospital pays for the program instead of the 13k MD Anderson wanted in tuition. Living in Temple for a year kind of sucked but probably less so than living in Houston.

Theres always that unfortunate downside to 2nd shift, they want us to do relatively more work than someone on dayshift would do but with far less people. When they sign up to work our shift for overtime dayshift for the most part can't handle our workload so we have to do theirs in addition to ours. But it beats waking up at 5 in the morning.

Yeah, I'm totally all right with the workload (as long as I'm compensated accordingly for what I do) because I love sleeping in everyday and working when almost no one is around. Evening shift people are generally more relaxed. Plus, at my lab, there are no supervisors in the evening! There's no one breathing down our backs, and the other technologist I work with has been there for 25 years so he can answer any type of question I have as a newb.

Where are you getting the 13k number? My tuition was $1500 a semester, and that included health insurance. It was practically a steal. Houston is definitely not where I want to live forever, but I know that having MD Anderson on my resume is priceless.

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005

Miss-Bomarc posted:

It could be that he's just so astounded by the awesomeness of SCIENCE that he doesn't see spending twenty-four hours working as a bad thing, because OMG SCIENCE. He looks at an all-nighter in the lab the way you might, e.g., look at an all-nighter playing 'Starcraft'.

Yeah, I'm with Solkanar on this one. Do you even work in science at all? ;)

To be serious, though - I work for big pharma. I don't get to do real science. I just make boner pills over and over again.


The closest I get to science is when people hand me completely impossible development tasks and say "make it work". Those can be fun engineering projects! For example, I had a two-drug combination where one was an acid, the other a base, and neither API worked if it left its specific pH range or formed salts. Meanwhile, one of them liked to hydrolize and release a second volatile acid, meaning contact-separation wasn't enough to get the drugs to work together.

That was actually fun, unlike the stuff I'm babysitting in a disso bath right this second. gently caress this drug. (The fun drug project got canceled about two weeks after I finished working out how to get the dose to work, citing insufficient revenue predictions. Of course.)

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Lyon
Apr 17, 2003
I'm all for some LinkedIn networking amongst you lab people, if you let me in on it too. My old boss is HUGE into LinkedIn and he's more or less the COO now, help me look good connecting to you scientist people! Just know that in 5-10 years I'll be trying to sell you software, suckers.

Also, any of you guys in the Philadelphia area? We have tons of pharma in the area as well as a lot of universities all clustered around.

To contribute actual lab chat, one of my customers is from a state/county water treatment plant and his job, well his staff now that he's higher up, is basically to go collecting samples of water from all over the state and then analyze them. I'm sure it pays crap and is pretty mundane lab work, but they get to have adventures! So if you guys are really fed up with big pharma you could always go looking to be a poor state employee...

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