|
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.  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.
|
#
¿
Mar 3, 2011 01:26
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 1, 2024 18:21 |
|
|
SBJ posted:Is this a good idea? How are my job prospects in these fields? I would love to eventually get a masters, and strive for a PhD if I have what it takes. I get the impression that the biotechnology and medical sectors will become very strong industries within the next decade or so (hopefully stem cell research will stop being hindered at every turn), am I on the right track? Or am I being very naive? I can't say for industry (but others here can certainly comment) but the academic side will be a tough route if you choose that. While not as bad as say, trying to secure tenure in History, the tenure track in acadamia is long and competitive. There are vastly more graduates than tenure positions available. Couple that to limited funding and you have a difficult environment. It isn't uncommon to work two or three post-docs before getting hired on as a assistant professors, and then you gotta work your rear end off to get tenure. But with all things science, luck plays into it too. You may be a brilliant scientist but if you get stuck on lovely project or an impossible protein, it won't matter how smart you all. Conversely, some people just luck into great projects that publish tons of top-tier papers in a few years. Regarding Masters vs PhD, I was always told that a Masters is worthless if you are interested in acadamia - you absolutely must have a PhD. I imagine this is different for industry though. I think industry is pretty bumping right now in terms of hiring, right?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 5, 2011 16:42
|
|
|
Sundae posted:I can't vouch for Australian industry, but biotech is imploding in the states right now. You can get jobs, but it's NOTHING like it was even ten years ago. That's not a good sign, because think of how little the field had going for it even ten years ago as far as technology goes. We've come a long way in the last decade, and there are even less entry-level positions than back then. Wow, I had no idea. Why do you think that is? Is it just because most things biology take longer to develop than other fields? Drowning because of its own hype about saving the world/cancer/immortality/whatever and then not delivering? Just too expensive?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 5, 2011 23:39
|
|
|
Thanks for all the information, I found it extremely interesting. Being in acadamia you don't really see any of this. All you hear are academics griping about wanting to leave for the "greener side" of biology in industry.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 6, 2011 14:53
|
|
|
Sundae posted:Don't ever use a coin in a presentation as a size comparator. I...what...how can... The mind boggles. How has she never have seen a dime before? I mean, really? I'm amazed you've avoided re-enacting Columbine your work Sundae.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2011 21:12
|
|
: "It's a dime."
|
The happiest I've seen a post-doc is when they are leaving to go somewhere else (often to industry).
|
|
#
¿
May 10, 2011 15:49
|
|
|
Hey industry biologists/chemists, how much do you guys use the academic biomedical literature? A lot? Sometimes? Never? Do your companies provide subscription access to journals?
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2011 03:42
|
|
|
seacat posted:I wish. We do have the USP monographs, Pharmacopeia, Merck Index, etc., but absolutely no access to primary literature because they don't want to pay for it although we definitely need it. So our main tool is to google poo poo, read the abstracts and whatever free poo poo we can find, then try to develop methods from that. Sometimes the companies that sell standards kits will provide you with some free info. soupy posted:Even when we were a small company we had access to a lot of journals. We are an organic syn lab and we do quite a bit of R&D on reactions we aren't familiar with. Sundae posted:Until last year, we were permitted to have full-access to journals our company subscribed to, plus a personal subscription to one journal of our choice regardless of its job-relevance. For example, even though I'm in mat-sci/chem now, I wanted to keep up with my old bio stuff + major science in general, so my personal subscription was to Nature. Interesting, thanks for the replies. I'm working on a virtual librarian/article recommendation algorithm to help academics sort through the mountain of primary literature, but I was also curious if industry might be interested too. If subscriptions are generally pretty limited, I imagine it wouldn't be very helpful (outside providing more relevant abstracts for you to read). (That said, if any of you industry folk have a burning need for a certain type of software or web service, feel free to let me know. I'm shopping around for ideas  )Generally speaking, it's too bad you guys don't have access to primary literature. I always assumed industry was voraciously reading what academics were writing since it is basically free R&D, guess that was a pretty naive thought 
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2011 18:21
|
|
|
seacat posted:It's a little naive, yeah. Except for the major journals (Science, Nature, JACS, etc) I don't think most scientific academic literature, gets read by anyone outside of that particular circle of academia. Engineering is probably much better since pretty much by definition it is the application of science, but I don't really know. Also, it's NOT free R&D, unless you're satisfied with abstracts only you have to pay for it and the price is not cheap, and then you have to adapt whatever method to whatever you're doing ANYWAY, so you're still paying for R&D  seacat posted:Another problem though is that it's hard to speak of "industry science" in general because there are so many vast very specialized fields.  ", which I can see is a flawed way of thinking about it
|
|
#
¿
May 21, 2011 16:49
|
|
Primary lit is some ideas scientifically demonstrated to work in a very controlled environment, that you pay for, basically. Applying it, whether in manufacturing or in medicine or whatever is a whole different story.
|
Sundae posted:In slightly less depressing news than my previous post (though still depressing nonetheless), my purchase order for black ballpoint pens was just rejected by our accounting department. Look at it another way: Your company makes $25B a year in profits because they don't spare you and other scientists $8.00 for pens.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 7, 2011 18:02
|
|
|
gninjagnome posted:How little some chemists regard safety still boggles my mind. We have a guy that still mouth pipets organic solvents on occasion. 
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2011 13:54
|
|
|
Sundae posted:If there's one thing I don't miss, it's cell cultures. gently caress nights. gently caress weekends. gently caress other people's bleach wipes. In fact, gently caress bleach. I'm never wearing white again. This. God this so much. I loving hate my cells. You don't know pain until you have to take care of primary neurons. We have the most ridiculous feeding schedule just to keep these drat things happy. Every volume has to be precisely correct or they get pissed off and die or swallow their spines. And then they all get contaminated three weeks later from a fungal infection because our incubator has it growing on all the sides. But nope! We can't take the incubator down to clean because we'd lose three weeks of experiments (even though our attrition rate is high because of the fungus).  Edit: gently caress western blots too. loving awful protocol - you get to do 15 minutes of work spread across an entire day, just so you can get a semi-quantitative band which probably isn't what you wanted anyway.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 8, 2011 22:07
|
|
|
Bastard Tetris posted:My next experiment involves a shitton of highly volatile, potentially explosive, carcinogenic, skin-absorbing and hepatotoxic organic solvents. Ahahaha oh man, have fun with that one! My coworker recently started using some methyl mercury compound to help their troublesome PCRs. It's apparently highly volatile and potentially shock-explosive so you have to be very gentle with the bottle, but also has to be stored at 4C. So we have this bomb sitting in our common fridge because where else are we going to put it? Not to mention she's using it for radioactive tRNA labeling experiments so it'd be exploding, radioactive methyl mercury solutions. Whee!
|
|
#
¿
Jun 9, 2011 13:31
|
|
|
Lote posted:Is methyl mercury as toxic as dimethyl mercury? Like 1 mg doses are enough to kill you? I don't believe it is nearly as dangerous as as dimethyl mercury. Certainly dangerous, but not "drop on your skin kills you" dangerous. Edit: Apparently it is not known if methyl mercury can diffuse across latex gloves like dimethyl mercury can. They do have different properties, but still...I think I'll warn my coworker to start wearing nitrile and maybe some heavier duty neoprene gloves or something. Edit: Found a picture on my cell phone from a while back. I have an entire incubator to myself. Behold, all my neurons in their horrible glory. I just tallied how many I have currently and its even more than this picture. I'm tending 84 dishes and plates of neurons. So awful. 
polyfractal fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Jun 10, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jun 9, 2011 17:25
|
|
|
I've been trying to convince my PI for months to get a new self-autoclaving incubator. Our current incubator grows more fungus than neurons. Cleaning doesn't help because it just takes one missed spore and they all come back. Edit: Buy a nanodrop and a Millipore SNAP ID western blotting machine and I'll come work for you immediately, no questions asked. polyfractal fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Jun 29, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2011 19:31
|
|
|
Seyelence posted:I'm going to be graduating with a BS in Microbiology next spring. I will have a year off before I start dental school. You might try looking for a job in a university research lab. Same as industry, many PIs won't hire for just a single year so don't tell them that. Most research techs get university benefits which is pretty sweet, despite the horrible pay. Finding academic lab jobs is a lot more work though since rarely are they posted on Monster or Biospace or whatever. You often have to hunt through the HR page of each university
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2011 21:04
|
|
|
Any hospital or clinical lab techs in this thread? What kind of diagnostic monoclonals do you guys use?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 10, 2011 15:37
|
|
|
Appachai posted:More than anything I just worry that I'll get there and they'll expect me to do a project without the equipment. Get it in writing before doing anything. My old advisor was promised many things by the department but most were never signed into a document as proof. Once he joined they basically said "welp, it isn't in writing and we don't remember ever promising, so tough luck". So yeah, get it legally written down.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 21, 2011 23:44
|
|
|
Vladimir Putin posted:Oh please, don't fill his head with lies. Most people get it done in two years. You forgot to tell him about the excellent pay and great work:life balance.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 6, 2011 00:01
|
|
|
Sundae posted:Are any of you guys working in the Cambridge MA area? I've got a strong chance of another job offer coming soon from a company there in the next week or two, but they've already indicated that relocation assistance is out of the question. Anything I ought to know about the rental market that would make it easier to get moved in, should the offer be suitable? (Do I need a realtor to actually get to see any apartments? Any particularly good sites, or are the typical craigslist / apartments.com things sufficient?) My experience with finding apartments in/around Cambridge has always been around the first of September, which is the big moving date and when most leases are up. I imagine apartments are a bit harder to find once the September rush is over. There is still a pretty good turnover so I think you'll be fine. Craigslist has always worked for me. With that said, I've rented two apartments. One was through a realtor (paid half-fee, landlord paid half-fee) and one directly through the landlord. Somerville/Teele Square/Union Square/Ball Square is where most young, working professionals live. It's a pretty nice area, on the Red Line (the best of the subway lines) and relatively cheap. Stay away from Allston unless you want to be surrounded by obnoxious, drunk college hipsters. Brookline/Fenway is a nice area but pretty expensive. Cambridge itself is either really expensive (some plush apartments there) or really cheap/lovely. Some of the apartments are downright slums. Somerville is much nicer than Cambridge. Cheap, spacious apartments can be found in Medford/Malden. The area is tolerable but definitely run down, and very far from public transportation. You pretty much need a car in these areas, but having a car in Boston is suicide. GPS is mandatory because the roads here were designed by a blind schizophrenic monkey. Most apartments/houses in Boston are older and poorly insulated. Be prepared to pay an arm and a leg for winter heating. Actually just be prepared to pay and arm and a leg for the apartment itself. Boston is stupidly expensive. 
polyfractal fucked around with this message at 01:41 on Oct 7, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Oct 7, 2011 01:39
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 1, 2024 18:21 |
|
|
Appachai posted:Boston is the largest biotech hub in the US, so it's a good choice if you want to work in a lab. Also there are a crazy number of universities and labs. Don't work for a university lab unless you want to be poor and plan to get a PhD. Edit: And bitter. polyfractal fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Nov 11, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Nov 11, 2011 02:05
|
|