Sometimes I feel as if my career is trapped in a bubble of time. While all the scientists around me flow purposely along the classical linear progression from neophyte to tenured lab head, I float in a recursive pattern somewhat above and removed from the brisk conveyor belt sliding past below, bobbling against the ceiling like a helium balloon whose string has slipped through someone’s idealistic fingers. And this time-bubble plays tricks: when I look into the faces around me, I can see myself in every one. I am the pale-faced PhD student the morning after an all-nighter; I am the new post-doc flush with her first publishable results and the boss’s admiration, and the seasoned one with many more results, not quite as celebrated. There I am, too, defected to industry and running a team of my own. I am the last researcher standing at a start-up company that takes a full year to finally die; seven leaving parties in three weeks and no one left for my own. I am on the dole in a strange land, not knowing when my professional life will restart. I am the senior fellow doing the rounds of job interviews, short-listed but never quite chosen. I am the science journalist, the editor, the journal manager. And I am also the mature post-doc, older than the lab head who hired her, coming back to square one amongst colleagues young enough to be her own offspring.
But the bubble of time is out of time, so I can also recognize myself in stages I have not yet and may never reach. So there I am setting up an academic lab of my own, drinking champagne at the success of my first program grant application, chairing my first session at a major symposium, speaking at my inaugural professorial lecture. At the same time, I am also washed out of research, returned to publishing. And I am cast away from science-related fields altogether, doing something terribly clever and fulfilling and never looking back. And I am cast away from science-related fields altogether, doing something terribly clever and fulfilling but suffering from terrible longing and regret at what might have been.
It’s the occupational hazard of a novelist, seeing all possible outcomes simultaneously. And recently, circumstances have imbued my career path with a particular stark clarity. This month marks a milestone; in precisely two years my career re-entry fellowship will come to an end. Thus far since returning to science, I have published two review articles and will submit a second-author paper in the next few days. In addition, I am a minor co-author on another. In the next few months I’ll be writing up my screen paper as a first author – it will get into a solid journal, but nothing splashy. I envision another first-author paper from my timelapse screen and possibly one or two more from following up interesting hits that have emerged from this gene discovery program. Trapped in my own time, now, there is no telling whether those later works will end up as top-tier publications. And I suspect that this factor is what will most dictate my success or failure in remaining in academia – which most days I am fairly sure is the most favourable outcome for my talents and temperament. I can work as hard as I like, but if the biology turns out to be uninteresting, there is nothing I can do about it.
I am trying not to let the future frighten me. I have a large number of authorships in my CV even though my path has been indirect. But if a research career doesn’t pan out, I have a good history of employment, a great deal of outside experience, and I do not doubt that I will be able to find work. But there is still a sort of terror in the unknown, even if you don’t believe you will come to harm. I cannot sustain terror for long, but it dogs me now like a shadow, flickering into life whenever the weather changes.
Beautifully written. A wise friend told me the other day to imagine telling my 17 year-old self that everything would turn out all right (as indeed it has); and then to imagine my 60 year-old self saying a similar thing to me now.
But no guarantee that the future incarnation will bear good news. Still, it’s a nice idea.
Well, no. Death and taxes, q.v.
“but if the biology turns out to be uninteresting, there is nothing I can do about it”… I rather disagree with that. I truly believe that all biology is interesting, unless you’re reinventing the wheel (or the imaginal disc, or whatever). I think that there is always an inherent risk in any research that it may be less groundbreaking than one might hope, but if the experiment is well-designed, and the experimenter has a keen eye, unshakable tenacity (this is a really key one), and no fear, then you will be successful, over and over again. I agree with my friend who once told me that luck is simply one’s ability to identify opportunities when they present themselves.
….and if you love science like it sounds that you do, the crappy days roll off the back and the good days are shiny and good. Science never stops bringing you new discoveries, whether they’re little fishy pawprints or the master regulator of the doohicky, it’s there to be found and it will astound you when you see it and you will be happy that life on earth is complex and beautiful.
if the biology turns out to be uninteresting, there is nothing I can do about it
The same phrase shone out to me as it did to Benoit – but my take was more pessimistic. Perhaps that’s why Benoit is a successful scientist with papers in Nature – and I am merely the editor that handles them.
@ Henry… oh come on, I saw you on the BBC, that’s the primo measure of success! Success is being happy doing what you’re doing and being satisfied with your accomplishment. Some people don’t want to do what I’m doing and dream of being journal editors… sometimes I wish I was (honestly, not kidding), since you get the benefits of learning all the new science, without the drag that comes with rejected grants, rejected papers (oh yes indeed, and with every one I feel like my heart has been kicked in the testicles), and experiments that take way too long and have been done only to please reviewer 3. And I do indeed picture the aforementioned , which once was in fact reserved for scientists performing reanimation and such.
I know exactly what you mean. For the first time in my life, even having been unemployed, I am scared a lot.
[Liiiiiike]
I kind of needed to read something like this today. I’m terror-struck by the realization that I have no “goal” anymore. I was always either in school or looking for work, so there was a clear endpoint to what I was doing, and usually an approximate timeline as well. Now that I found a job, I honestly don’t know what comes next. What is my goal now? Just survival? Money? For what?
I don’t know where I’ll be in five years, and I certainly don’t know where I’ll be in ten years, but it does help to read a well-written blog post from someone ten years older than me who has been through it all and turned out awesome. Even knowing that ten years from now I might still not know what the future holds, that still helps. That’s better even. I like knowing that there are lots of possibilities out there, and that I don’t have to decide my entire life right now. You’re kind of my role model for career-flexibility, I guess. (So don’t screw it up! 😉
“I kind of needed to read something like this today. I’m terror-struck by the realization that I have no “goal” anymore. I was always either in school or looking for work, so there was a clear endpoint to what I was doing, and usually an approximate timeline as well. Now that I found a job, I honestly don’t know what comes next. What is my goal now? Just survival? Money? For what?”
Eva, I really struggled with this after my postdoc, too. Without the old familiar concrete goals of degrees and papers, it was really hard to find the same kind of motivation. I’m eventually figuring it out – much smaller, but more frequent, goals. Submit a grant, or a progress report, that kind of thing.
I’ve also found that my main overall motivation these days is to keep learning new things, and to make sure I continue to be happy to come into work in the morning. Oh, and to get better at skiing. Not all your goals have to be from work – another major change that (for me) was more of an evolution than a revolution.
p.s. great post, Jenny!
Nice post!
I have been having much the same contemplation lately. I’m coming off the back of an amazing experience both professionaly and personally and now I’m sitting here in my new office, back in the place I did my original post-doc too many moons ago. It’s a bizarre reflection: In some ways I was transformed by my experience, in other ways I’m just the same. Despite my familiarity, everything about the place feels different… but in many ways nothing about it has changed.
I have reached a professional goal I have been aiming at for a while. Now having achieved it, something in my subconcious is determined not to let me enjoy it. It’s all stress and worry about a whole new bunch of problems and potential pitfalls!
return to navel gazing
That was a lovely post and reflective of the experience many of us postdocs have.
Your two years is my 3 months, and this time I have nothing lined up, no wild card, no possibility of a last minute grant being funded (being that I haven’t submitted one). I’ve got many things I want to try, all at once, and see a similar labyrinthine too-ing and fro-ing rom the bench to the science periphery.
For now, I for one am bowing out of the lab, but I may be back.
Best of luck with your future publications 😉
Jenny, thanks for sharing your thoughts and writing this.
I feel a bit like Eva, in that it is comforting to read wise words of people with more experience of life and think that it may be ok in the future (even if some of us don’t really know where we are going at the moment). I’m hoping your first authorship papers roll out and get impact! and that the grant writing (since I would assume that’s in there somewhere?) goes well too.
After leaving my post doc, I do feel a tad bit lost and have been trying to adapt more to what Cath was talking about. Smaller steps and all…. 🙂
Time is not so much the issue, if you have that luxury. A full year and a half of my postdoc was spent majorly screwing up, and not seeing the big picture; at that point I seriously considered a different career. Science is really hard, because the rewards don’t come often, and when they do, it is sometimes so exhausting just getting there that there is more just a sense of relief that it’s done with (paper, grant, whatever) and we often forget to celebrate these rare peaks.
I understand Eva, as I live from new thing to new thing, from waiting for the next issue of a journal to come out online, for the damn RSS feed to light up with just one measly number, to results from the lab, to our next paper, to the next iteration whatever Steve Jobs and co will make us think we love at first sight. If I didn’t have that constant flux of newness I’m not sure what I would do. And that’s what’s keeping me going; there’s always something else and something new, whether it’s coming from your hands or you’re massaging it for someone (That doesn’t sound right).
So Jenny, the future is not frightening at all. It’s filled with the unknown…and that’s a really good thing. I keep thinking after the last half-decent paper from the lab that it might be my last, that I’m tapped out, run out of ideas (which maybe weren’t so original anyways?), over the hill, send me off to pasture…. it stresses me out, keeps me up at night (OMFG I won’t be able to renew the grant)… but as with that abysmal 18 months of my postdoc, I remember why I’m doing this, and I shrug those thoughts off and keep doing my best and I try to remember to enjoy it. And I do. Every day (almost).
Thank you all for your kind comments.
@Benoit.
“but if the biology turns out to be uninteresting, there is nothing I can do about it”… I rather disagree with that.
Benoit, I think you have misunderstood this aspect of my post. The point I was trying to make is that there are two kinds of publishable biology, those results that are solid and those that are top-tier. I have absolutely no doubt that I can churn out the former until the cows come home, but getting a Nature or Science paper requires a certain kind of biological truth – one that is highly original and highly striking. It requires nature to conform to a narrative that is universally recognized as especially wonderful.
I wouldn’t normally covet the latter especially over the former – because after all, as you say, all biological knowledge is beautiful – but my point was that if you don’t stumble over a successful hypothesis that gives you a top-tier paper, in this country at least, you are pretty unlikely to be allowed to become a group leader. And that is a stark reality. It doesn’t matter how many papers I produce – if their impact factors aren’t high enough, I’m finished in academia. It’s pointless to put my head in the sand and say, “The crappy days roll off the back and the good days are shiny and good. Science never stops bringing you new discoveries… it’s there to be found and it will astound you when you see it and you will be happy that life on earth is complex and beautiful.” The sad truth is that the search committee is not going to share that same opinion when it comes time to give me a tenure-track job. The point is not that I’m not happy doing whatever little bit of science that I have the privilege to tackle. The point is not that there are highs and lows – I can handle the lows, always have done. The point is that to secure one’s first lab head job, to distinguish oneself from the hundreds of other applicants for the same role, one requires not just any papers, not just any biology, but ground-shaking ones.
In looking at your CV just now, I can see why you are sanguine about the enterprise – your lovely cushion of last-author Nature and Cell papers is going to speak volumes for years to come and function as a buffer zone when times are lean. I have no such cushion, and no indication at the moment that the next few ones I will publish will help me out in that regard. For everyone like you who says, don’t worry, it will be fine (because it was for you), there are hundreds of drop-outs, perhaps thousands, for whom the reality was very different indeed. For me not to acknowledge this would be naive. And because of my age and the length of time since my PhD, I won’t be able to get any more fellowships after this one. It’s now or never: two years for the lightning to strike, or bow out.
@Benoit: I feel like my heart has been kicked in the testicles
Do hearts have testicles? From a world authority on heart development, this is big news. I think you should write this up for Nature.
But seriously, folks, Jenny’s post raises all sorts of questions about career progression, including that most fundamental of all questions – what is a career anyway? I enjoy my job at Nature, but it’s been pretty much static for years. I’m about as senior as it’s possible to be without acquiring management responsibilities, and as these will suit me as well as a bicycle does a herring, I’m not likely to progress upwards any further (I’m just expanding sideways, instead).
These days, therefore, I tend to measure life’s achievements through things other than my career. Until recently it was books. After I finished my PhD I felt I had to launch into another project that produced a ream of paper at the end, so I started to write a book. Whenever I finished a book I felt depressed and so had to write another one. I see that this was a kind of academic displacement activity. Though I will continue to write books, my focus has shifted – I now measure my life by the progress of my children. They are 11 (going on 12) and 9, and are old enough to be able to fetch small objects unaided, and have concrete opinions about this and that. I hope no-one who is childless will be offended by this, but I do pity those who don’t have children, in some respect, because children do give you a focus and a sense of progression.
But, then again, what is progress, anyway? I have always been suspicious of the whole notion of progress, whether expressed in terms of evolution, politics, architecture, government or in any other wise.
Here’s some cod-eastern philosophy: ‘The past is history. The future is a mystery. The present is a gift – that’s why we call it a present’. (Source – Kung-Fu Panda)
@Eva I’m terror-struck by the realization that I have no “goal” anymore. I was always either in school or looking for work, so there was a clear endpoint to what I was doing, and usually an approximate timeline as well. Now that I found a job, I honestly don’t know what comes next. What is my goal now? Just survival? Money? For what?
I was about your age when I left academia, and all of these sorts of feelings and fears flooded in for the first time. But at that stage, I was better able to handle them. I think when you’re in your early thirties, you are in a better position to be experimental. Time is more forgiving – there are probably more opportunities. It’s not always easy to think practically, but at my age, there are certain uncomfortable truths. I have a mortgage that needs to be paid every month; what happens in two years’ time if the next job doesn’t seamlessly appear? I have only twenty odd year of pensionable service left – and my currently pension balance, thanks to the delayed gratification of my chosen profession, resembles that of your average 24-year-old. Although age-discrimination officially became illegal in Europe a few years ago, I have no doubt that it plays a part in hiring mentality. To be at this age and not yet settled into a permanent position – even if I didn’t decide to stay permanently – is a bit sobering. So it’s not all about not having goals or dreams – I cannot avoid it also being about the cash flow.
Hi Henry – our posts crossed. That’s a wonderful comment, and one I should bear in mind with my own off-piste pursuits. But one needs a stable financial base to keep up the fun stuff too. Once I have that, I’ll be able to relax a bit more.
But one needs a stable financial base to keep up the fun stuff too
You’re so right. If Mrs Gee and I won the lottery, we’d give it up and live on a smallholding.
Just up the road there’s a big house for sale, with some land, as well as a cattery and an animal feed supply business (it’s where I get bales of straw and sacks of chicken feed). The couple who run it is retiring and the house and business are up for sale. I’d buy this like a shot – if I had £750,000 …
@Jim
Best of luck with your new direction(s)! Do you have anything lined up yet?
Lots of great stuff here (as usual), in the post and the comments. Hope to have time to contribute later on…
Great post as usual Jenny. Good luck with the publications!
Probably the best blog post I have ever read.
This resonanted strongly for me, I still have time on my side, but can easily imagine myself in your shoes (although I wouldn’t have written it so elegantly). I think this is one of the toughest things about doing science, that you can’t go on as a post-doc forever but making that cruicial leap to lab head is not really within your control.
You clearly have many talents so I am sure things will work out for you either in science or doing something else.
Thanks, all. I had a few misgivings about airing these fears in public, but now am very glad I did.
Wonderful post (and comments). I feel the same as Eva. Now that I’m done with the degrees and have one post-doc under my belt, I’m really not sure what to shoot for. Sure, I’d like to get a position in outreach, but what will my goals be then?
I thank Cath and others for giving advice about having goals in after-post-doc life. It’s nice to hear that goals evolve with us and what we are doing.
Jenny, thanks for clarifying. The point I was trying to make is that if you love science enough, you will find a way to make it work for you. Sorry if I was too florid in expressing those thoughts. My cushion, as you call it, has not always been there, and my first job (at a nice place; Eva can vouch) was based on promise and two Dev Bio papers (solid but hardly the stuff of legend). And even with the cushion, it took me three years after my move to the US (having been indepent in Canada for 5 years) to get any grant to support my medium-sized lab, and no papers would get accepted for two years (none. for two years. not a happy camper this one). The cushion is a result of sweat and tears, and will help me only as I fall into my early grave. And as I mentioned, if this cushion is not replenished quickly, there will be a case of “what have you done lately” faster than you can say “the reviewers feel that the study is premature in its current form”.
And Henry’s point is important. Science is all I have to drive me. I have children, and being a parent is wonderful and fulfilling (I’m totally with Henry on this one), but I see that in a separate category. You guys publish novels and textbooks! That is phenomenal success for a full-time writer, let alone one who also does research in a fantastic lab! Jenny, I know what lab you’re in, and it’s a great place with a great PI.
So my final point is this: if you have the drive and the ambition, and it sound that you do, you will make it happen. You’re right, getting a Nature paper is based partly on luck, but I can tell you several stories about the ones I or my colleagues were fortunate to publish that have more to do with how the first result was followed up on. But most importantly, many many careers have been built on Development or J Neurosci papers, and while it’s good to aim high, thinking about that too much is only going to bring you down and make you forget to enjoy what you’re doing.
Last bit: thanks immensely for the post; beautiful as usual, and made me really think about what matters in my career.
@Henry: not offended! I think I know what you mean, from close contact with my six nephews, and with friends’ kids who I see once or twice a week. Just wondering, therefore, whether you’d agree that the kids don’t necessarily have to be your own?
Would you like one of mine, Cath?
Thanks, all. I had a few misgivings about airing these fears in public, but now am very glad I did
And so say all of us. Seems you’ve struck a few chords, here. I think we scientists are, like geeks in general, children who are still searching for what we want to be when we grow up. Sometimes growing up is not all it’s cracked up to be.
A few years ago, after I’d just written The Science of Middle-earth , I was invited to give the after-dinner speech at the annual dinner of the Tolkien Society. I was seated at the top table next to the Hon. Treasurer, an absolutely stunning redhead, so naturally I tried my best chat-up line: ‘so what do you do, then?’. Her reply was startling. ‘I’m an accountant … but I hate it. I want to be an astrophysicist’ – at which this thought rapidly passed across my mind’s eye. However, she was true to her word. She gave up the secure but dull world of accountancy, got her M.Sc. and is now working on her Ph.D., cavorting among the stars and nebulae and doing her very best not to grow up. She does a bit of accountancy to pay the bills, though.
No thanks, Richard. The trick is to experience all the good things, and then give the kids back to their parents and run away.
Although I opted out of an academic career path a long time ago, there are many points in your post that resonate with me. I’m honestly not sure that I’ll ever figure out what I want to be when I grow up. But some days, that’s part of the beauty as well as the terror.
Hear hear! When/if I grow up, I’ll let you know what I did.
@Cath: Just wondering, therefore, whether you’d agree that the kids don’t necessarily have to be your own?
I do agree, with this proviso – you have contact with them in the bad times as well as the good. Taking the morning off to do fun things like sledging, or have Gee Minor thrash you at Scrabble(TM), is the reward for changing endless diapers, worrying about school bullies, sitting with them half the night while they are ill, and putting up with all the tears and tantrums (and that’s just mine).
Jenny – add me to the burgeoning ranks of “people with whom your post resonated”. I particularly like the bit about being the last one standing on the burning biotech ship (to mix metaphors a bit). Bin there, dun that, more or less. And a few of the other things you describe, too.
Somewhere along the line, I just gave up worrying about it all. When I finished my postdoc, I didn’t know what to do next (certainly there was no “conventional” academic position on the cards). I chose a startup biotech as it didn’t seem intrinsically any riskier than another postdoc, paid better and seemed like it might be fun (long story there, believe me). Somewhere, during that stint, I managed to get myself to a place where I was confident enough in the skillsets I’d gathered that I just wasn’t worried about the next job that much… which, for me, is a big deal, believe me (there’s a great line in Finding Nemo which echoes this sentiment… speaking of having kids).
Somehow, it seems as though things keep working themselves out. Now, I don’t disagree that my job prospects might still go down a rat-hole at some undetermined time in the future, but I really am not finding it hard to be optimistic. Jenny, things sometimes do just work out.
/saccharine
As an aside, since Henry mentioned it, I asked for and received a copy of The Science of Middle Earth for Christmas. Add that royalty cheque to Henry’s smallholding fund. 🙂
Thanks for explaining further, Benoit. I remain unconvinced that I can secure a lab head position in the UK in the current economic climate without a single top-tier paper on my CV, in light of the prevailing British attitude on this subject, but of course that doesn’t mean I won’t try. I hope you didn’t think I was saying that your success was all down to luck – that was not my intention. I am in awe of you and of everyone who has done so well in such a challenging field!
And yes, publishing a novel is something that means just as much to me as science. Unfortunately when I collect my (estimated) US$700 royalty check for the approx 900-1000 copies that have sold to date, it won’t do much to allay my financial obligations. 😉
Our posts crossed, Richard W. Thanks for the story – I’d love to hear more about it one day. Despite the biotech having gone bankrupt, which arguably played the biggest role in derailing my career, I don’t regret the experience. It was really thrilling to lead a team of 8, to find a real drug target and to collaborate with a big Pharma to get it into clinical trials. I remain prouder of that patent than of any other discovery I’ve made to date, even thought the belated paper was only in J Biol Chem (where, gratifyingly, both referees said ‘you’re lucky to have this paper – accept it immediately without further revision’.). And the experience has fed nicely into the plot and atmosphere of Novel 2.
Heh. The mysterious Novel 2 – is that the one that you previously reported as “lacking in title”? 😉
I’ll pencil you in for a future meeting sometime, topic: sordid biotech failure stories. Should be fun. 😉
Oh, and totally agree with your comments on this – my biotech experience solidly excluded me from any academic path (which I’d abandoned anyway, so no worries), but I learned a lot from it. Not drug development per se (although there was a licensing/spin-off bit), but a lot about operations, costing, market intelligence, business development and all that other
tediousgood stuff. “Transferable skills”, indeed.I asked for and received a copy of The Science of Middle Earth for Christmas. Add that royalty cheque to Henry’s smallholding fund
Ker-ching.
🙂
Interesting, Richard. As you might know (if you read the series of posts I wrote early in 2009) I spent a couple of years in biotech, and then went back to a very successful academic appointment.
Mmm yes. I, on the other hand, spent 6 years in biotech, which was too long to facilitate an easy transition back to postdoc/research associate or equivalent. I’m in a “sort-of” academic appointment now, but not really (i.e., not a postdoc, not a staff scientist/professor/lecturer).
We really need to get together to yak about this sometime. 🙂
Oh and Henry, yes it’s a little known fact about the cardiac testicles; they’re tucked away between the outflows, very hard to find. More prominent in marsupials for some reason…maybe something to do with SRY…but now I’m giving away too much…
Indeed, Richard. I heard a rumour you were heading Yurpwards sometime…?
Yes, novel 2 is still in need of a final title. I’ve sent off a short-list to my publisher…it’s getting quite difficult in this day and age to find any title that isn’t already in use on Amazon.
‘Princess Diana’s Secret Diary of Sex and Cooking’ might work.
Book titles are such hard work. My first trade book was called Thirty Ghosts for all sorts of very good reasons with which I shall not detain you. In the end my UK publisher called it Deep Time, despite my objections, and the US publisher called it In Search Of Deep Time, which is worse. (I had, actually, wanted to call it Tropic of Cladistics , but my editors/publishers probably wouldn’t have gotten the joke.)
I actually think both Thirty Ghosts and Deep Time are very compelling.
How about ‘The Code of Princess Diana’s Secret Vampire Diary of Sex and Cooking’?
The Code of Princess Diana’s Secret Lesbian Vampire Diary of Sex and Cooking
Jenny – I like your writing, I wondered if it would be nice to write for the future of nature, only added a little cibernetic, a cup some tea, maybe a little history of the robots and ready. Honestly. would be published.
Alejandro, I did think my post had a bit of SF vibe. But sometimes I feel that we are all time traveling, every day of our lives.
ooh. Deep.
That reminds me, I was supposed to raise a clone army of lab minions to help me achieve
world dominationa tenure-track position.adds to the list
Thanks for the wonderful post, Jenny!
And I am cast away from science-related fields altogether, doing something terribly clever and fulfilling and never looking back. And I am cast away from science-related fields altogether, doing something terribly clever and fulfilling but suffering from terrible longing and regret at what might have been.
hmmmm. I switch between those two multiple times a day, most days.
No, nothing lined up.
Before Christmas I thought I had managed to secure a job at the Wellcome Trust working in funding, lots of liaising with the scientific community, identifying the new keys areas that could be developed with strategic funding, and supporting funded scientists, a pursuit I’d enjoy.
Alas, at a late stage it didn’t pan out.
So having identified something that I’d actually like to do, I now have to put that aside (for now) and do something else that is as rewarding and challenging. I think I will return my focus to finding something worthwhile in scientific publishing.
…and in the meanwhile, my aspirations of becoming a photographer and writer may receive a little more focus.
We are not only time travelling every day of our lives, but we are doing it at the speed of light 😉
Sorry to hear that, Jim. Before you defect to publishing, you might be able to find a similar role with another organization. Have you looked at Cancer Research UK, the MRC, any of the research councils?
So, when do we start nominating for OpenLab 2010?
Would be pretty funny if the post made it into OpenLab 2010 and I had won the Nobel by that point.
I particularly like the bit about being the last one standing on the burning biotech ship
@Richard W. The thing that was most annoying about that was that in Dutch labs it’s common to give quite a large chunk of money towards really decent leaving gifts. I think I parted with a total of about 100 euro by the very end, but on my last day there was no one left to buy me a consolation drink, let alone a present! Seriously depressing.
Yes, that does sound a bit sad. I managed to make off with my favourite stapler (with permission of the person disbursing such things), which now seems like some kind of coup.
I had the slight pleasure of being re-hired later on to do some consulting work for the company. The hourly rate was ahem considerably higher than they’d previously been paying me as an employee. And I got paid for it, which is more than a lot of creditors did once the wind-up came.
The Code of Princess Diana’s Secret Lesbian Vampire Diary of Sex and Cooking
…and the hit counter goes through the roof. Again.
I managed to make off with my favourite stapler
Was it a red Swingline?
Better than making out with your favourite stapler…
@RPG: OW. That hurt.
@Jenny: The Code of Princess Diana’s Secret Lesbian Vampire Diary of Sex and Cooking Of DOOM
I too have got good money for biotech consulting in the past – wondering if there is a way to do it more formally, because I’m good at it and it’s fun. Another sort of scary job you can do with my experience is become the hired scientist for banks and investors deciding which technologies are worth risking venture capital on. I think it would be too stressful – imagine if you got it wrong.
I’m so late getting around to this that there’s little left to say. But I think you have raised several important points and applaud the eloquent candour of your post.
I’m sure you have made a realistic appraisal of your future prospects. The public spending squeeze that is now being applied is sure to make thing especially difficult for the university/research sector in the next few years. What a pity the UK does not have the vision or faith in science that has been shown by the US, or even France. But I hope there won’t be an complete clampdown on hiring. and I think you are not entirely correct to assume that top-tier publications are the only entry into a PI position. There are plenty of very good PIs appointed who don’t have that profile (though of course it helps!).
I guess I fall into the category of those who have ‘made it’ in science (though I can’t claim to operate at Benoit’s exalted level). But, as Benoit has said already, doing so doesn’t necessarily free you from the doubts and worries about the future. I recall the transition from postdoc to new lecturer being particularly stressful since I had suddenly become a part-time scientist (as a result of teaching duties) with no-one to help me get new projects off the ground. (I guess it didn’t help that I was starting off with brand new projects – bad strategy!)
Even now there is no rest; past successes fade quickly. I think it’s important to look to your own lights for fulfilment (don’t ask me how – though I agree with Henry’s comment about the healthy grounding provided by children). One of the difficulties of science, especially when you are trying to strike out on your own, is just that – being on your own. Isolated, it becomes too easy to have a distorted view of how others are doing. That’s what’s so great about this post and the comment thread – it has resonated and drawn out so many similar stories and perspectives. For me, one of the best (but perhaps still under-developed) aspects of science is the sense of community.
Thanks, Stephen. So are you saying that when you’re a full professor at Imperial, you still don’t have job security? The rumors I have heard about academic professorships in UK universities must not be true.
It’s probably worth noting that having children might be somewhat counter-productive, at least at the beginning, and at least in the experimental life sciences. The new female lab heads/career dev fellows I know who have young children are finding it difficult to compete because they can only work very short days, and the window for them to succeed is slim, in terms of productivity years. Hopefully the funding and recruitment bodies will take this into account when it comes time for them to be judged. I think in this day and age it probably is a bit more enlightened in that regard – one hopes, anyway!
An excellent post and comments – it’s the New Year that brings out these thoughts, I’m sure of it. This week three different colleagues have started chatting to me about their career worries, independently.
Jenny wrote:
I think that when times are relatively good there is now some allowance made, Jenny. Unfortunately, times are not all that good at the moment so pretty much no allowances are being made for anyone.
Getting through academic “probation” in UK Univs is currently really tough. Cynically, if a Univ wants to reduce staff numbers, it is far easier for them not to take someone on permanently who is still formally “probationary” (stage which usually lasts 3-5 years post appointment) than it is to get rid of people who have full tenure. This really just stems from employment legislation. They can still get rid of the latter, of course, if they are determined to, but it is much more difficult. So the stages in dropping staff when savings need to be made from the wage bill tend to be:
(i) Offer accelerated retirement to anyone over 60
(ii) Offer accelerated retirement to anyone over 55
(iii) Make it incredibly hard to pass probation
(iv) Start planning for making mid-career people who are less research-productive redundant.
Most UK research-intensive Univs (esp the Russell Group) have already been through multiple rounds of (i). Some had also already done a round or two of (ii), while others (e.g. Leeds) are pushing (ii) hard at the moment. Most are now also practicing, according to the gossip (iii). And we hear that some places, like Imperial’s medical school, are already into (iv), with many other places rumoured to be considering it.
Leeds’ early-retirement campaign, incidentally, is slightly unusual in that they are, I hear, enthusiastically accepting offers to bail out from people who are still research-active, with grant funding. Many early retirement campaigns have historically tended to “target” the less research-active, but at the moment pretty much anyone who wants to retire early can do so, and quite a few are voting with their feet.
Sorry to sound doom-laden. If tenured people have research grant money, then they are typically OK. But once you are without any funding for a couple of years, you are probably on thin ice (to take a current UK metaphor).
@Jamieson – I think you’re right that the new year has something to do with these feelings. But mostly it’s the expiry date on my fellowship: 1 Jan 2012!
Austin, what a valuable (if dream-destroying) chunk of information. I don’t have a hope in hell, do I?
Well, the silver lining (sort of) is that UK Faculty hirings in sciences are still made 90% on the basis of “research achievement” or “research promise” and “fits into our Departmental/Faculty/institutional research themes”, Jenny.
Of course, this is hiring into a probationary position, so at present in a Russell Gp Univ I would say you would need at least one, and preferably two, full-sized project grants as PI over the 3-5 yrs probation to get taken on permanently. And based on recent experience, to get hired into the probationary position in the first place you will likely need a dozen publications in good journals, including at least one first-author “high-impact general journal” paper in the last couple of years (as this is widely seen as a proxy for “will likely be competitive in the funding dogfight”).
Which is sort of what you said at the start.
Having said all that, though, you just never know with any advertised academic job precisely what hidden agendas are in play for that position. When you are in the business for a long time it is a commonplace finding that people that one Univ rejected are hired by a similar institution down the road and do very well. So I guess the message is that you have to keep applying. Glad it’s not me, though.
Though given my own “way past 40 and days of being “promising” well behind me” profile it is far from inconceivable that I may be joining you in the job market before too long.
@Ken: Was it a red Swingline?
Indeed it was! Well guessed, a lovely dark red one. It’s MINE I tells ya, ALL MINE!!!!
Mm, time to up the meds I think.
@Austin: Start planning for making mid-career people who are less research-productive redundant.
Now you’ve got me worried….
[runs off to work furiously on long-overdue manuscript]
Well, I managed to get a mortgage in the height of a housing crash, so maybe I’m destined for greatness.
I think Austin covered it pretty thoroughly but, being a ‘tenured’ Prof is no insurance against redundancy, at least not in the UK. For sure I have more job security than a postdoc/fellow on a fixed term contract, but I see trouble ahead, for the whole university sector.
One day at a time. One day at a time.
Well it actually gets worse… my colleagues who have a far better publication record than me are seeing their grants regularly rejected at NIH, so who can do science anymore if you spend all your time applying and reapplying and not getting those experiments done?
And reviewers get cranky as times get tough; perhaps they see someone’s success as contributing to their failure. Here’s a gem from one of my rejected NIH applications: “The background and preliminary data, however, show a poor understanding of the events in heart development… a lack of rigorous thought about the biological system.” Obviously from the one person who does understand heart development….(Those crappy misguided experiments did end up as the basis for one of our recent papers). So when it gets this nasty, how do you deal or respond? Perhaps I don’t have a tough skin, but rejection combined with personal attacks on my aptitude as a scientist really add a bitter taste to the whole process.
So Jenny, still feel like forging ahead? I do and I always will, and that’s the point.
Being told I can’t do something is like the proverbial red rag. I’ve got a female professor friend who keeps telling me, ‘I think you’d be much better suited to writing novels and doing other creative stuff than being a lab head – you can’t do both well, so why not concentrate on the latter?” To which my natural reaction is – watch me.
Oh, by the way Benoit – I can’t speak for grant reviewers, but I can say, from the science publishing end of things, that editors are very well attuned to bitchiness and are seldom swayed by it. A polite, measured rebuttal that doesn’t sink to the nasty referee’s level is always the best course.
bq. To which my natural reaction is – watch me.
eats popcorn
I admire your chutzpah, drive etc. Jenny, but be careful what you wish for. Benoit’s experience is not unique and shows what a grind the whole business can become. Don’t forget that if you get a university position, you will also have to teach, which can be a very time-demanding activity. The important thing (that I really struggle to keep reminding myself) is to try to make sure that each day is enjoyable, and not a nightmarish conflation of looming deadlines.
Pass the popcorn, Richard.
Fortunately I adore teaching.
Teaching is rewarding and even quite fun at times, Jenny. Unfortunately it still doesn’t have that much status as an activity in the UK research Univs, mainly because it does not generate “adjustable” income.
Teaching is all about bums on seats, as the phrase is. As long as it gets done, the money earned by the Univ is the same regardless of the quality of what is delivered. Of course, this is not to say that Univs don’t worry about stuff like student ratings – they do, a lot – but rather to say that being a good teacher and doing a lot of it does not get you anything like the kudos/pay/security that comes from being a good and prolific researcher. Now, I think a lot of folk who carry big teaching loads have always accepted the differential in kudos/pay vis-a-vis research achievement as part of the system. The looming lack of security (see comments above) is the big change in the last few years, and looking forward.
The lack of status of teaching is of course a long standing problem in British Universities, especially since RAE made the institutional income from research “ranking dependent”. One of the most astute writers on the tricky relationship between teaching and research in the UK research Univs) is Ecology Prof Tim Birkhead, who writes a lot for the Times Higher. I think this article is particularly good, and this one is also interesting.
Jenny – if you also adore marking essays and exam scripts (a core teaching activity), I think I can propose an arrangement that will enhance both our lives! 😉
Hear, hear, Austin.
Stephen, one can outsource pretty much anything these days. I’m surprised Imperial hasn’t looked towards India for this one…:-)
OK, so my enthusiasm for teaching won’t open any doors. Fair enough. How about the moonlight sacrifice of a small furry animal or two?
If Stephen is worried about the stretchiness of his grant money, why is he offering freelance teaching contracts?
OK, so now it’s time to dabble with the idea of those rare permanent senior scientist/scientific officer posts. I assume I’m overqualified and that every slot will have a slathering pack of hundreds after it, but it’s a theoretical possibility. Any thoughts?
bq. “those rare permanent senior scientist/scientific officer posts”
Good luck!
I have always thought that these jobs were one of the keys to productive laboratories, Jenny. Indeed, I tend to the view that they are one of the main differences between UK science (where such “experimental officer” / “super-technician” posts are now rare) and other countries where they still seem to exist, to varying extents.
About a decade back, I was part of a “coalition” multi-PI research group. We did a kind of 10-yr retrospective comparison of ourselves with our “competitor” labs in the US and Australia. One of the things we noted was that all of our best postdocs typically stayed exactly 2.65 years – the point being that at that point, into the last half yr of a 3-yr project grant, they could see that it was unlikely we would be able to fund them beyond the grant’s end. Thus they were looking for, and getting, other jobs. This happened at least five times.
In our (friendly) competitors’ labs, we identified in every case one, and sometimes two or three, key senior postdocs who were in the lab at the start of the 10 yr period, and still there at the end. One US lab we knew well had a senior electrophysiologist who was, in effect, a 50 yr old super-postdoc.
Now, this was not just “permanent scientist posts” – it was also in some cases grant systems with renewable grants, and in other cases success in moving to fellowship posts (but ones where the expectation was lab research, not becoming a managerial PI in turn) or perhaps just higher grants success rates – but it was very striking nonetheless. And we simply couldn’t match it over the 10 yr period we looked at, even though we had a 5 yr programme grant at one stage.
In the UK such posts have mainly been another victim of the RAE, at least in Univ science Depts. Why hire an experimental officer on £ 40K, goes the logic, when for the same £ 40K you can hire a lecturer who will write grants? Until recently such “senior experimental officer” posts often still existed in medical departments, where (i) the culture expected such posts to “back up” clinician researchers, and (ii) budgeting has historically been a bit more “flexible” than in straight science ones, but even there they are getting scarce. The main way they seem to hand on in the present UK system is in large multi-user resources like EM units, or multi-user Light microscope Imaging Facilities.
Think I’ll stop now as I must be sounding like the voice of Cassandra, only more gloomy.
Austin, that makes sense because I’ve never heard of SO posts in academia here. They are all in research institutes (e.g. ICR, CRUK). In my PhD lab we had a supertech who was the most amazing productive person I’ve ever met. As far as I know he’s still in that lab, maybe 20 years now, and he churned out first-author papers like no-one’s business. OK, maybe his salary is high, but look what you’re getting for your money. And you’re right: continuity is extremely valuable in a lab with otherwise very high turnover.
one can outsource pretty much anything these days
I sat through a very scary talk at a meeting earlier this year that pretty much described the “Nike” model of doing science. A big group in Sweden had essentially outsourced most of the grunt work on a big project to a team of (no doubt underpaid) scientists and pathologists in India.
A glimpse of the future?
That’s pretty scary, Darren.
Indeed. Even more scary were the cartoon lightbulbs over the heads of several PI’s in the room suddenly aware of how much further they could stretch their budgets using the same approach. Hey, big pharma woke up to this idea years ago, it was only a mtter of time really.
@Richard – I wasn’t offering to pay. But then neither was I going to charge for providing what would have been an enriching and enjoyable experience!
Admit it: you’ve eaten all the popcorn, haven’t you?
Austin’s points about the value of continuity in a lab are very well made. It has long struck me that our funding system is just nuts!
Is there a whiff of revolution in the air?
No, I think it was Richard. Popcorn does that.
Darren: when I did my graduate work in Sweden we ended up sending our DNA sequencing to Korea (they had huge genome sequencing facility since HUGO) with FedEx sicne that was cheaper than to go in-house to our sequencing facility…. I’m not surprised what you’d outsource these days. After all, all the grants are “minimum for maximum science” and then the quality/keeping jobs in the country isn’t their concern….
Austin: I must say I appriciate your insight and thoughts on this. If nothing else, I get reminded that I wasn’t the only one with a rather bleak outlook on my future in science – no matter how much I think I do good science, without super good finances it’s a no go, or at least very hard.
Jenny: Thanks again for opening this discussion. Even if there are things that I’ve read and talked about with my fellow post docs and friends time and time again, it’s always interesting and good to hear from others about the situation in other countries and other people’s concern and outlooks on science and their futures. (and for me, selfishly, I feel a bit better in that I do think I made a good decision since I don’t think I would have stopped worrying about funding and future for a looooong time)
Thanks, Asa – and everyone interested in this topic should scoot over to Heather’s place and read her latest.
I don’t think outsourcing is terribly evil: I’ve done it for years with antibodies and for a while we sent all our sequencing reactions to Germany because it was cheaper. I guess you only need to worry if significant analyses are being performed with minimal supervision on your part.
Looks like you’re trying to outsource your comment thread, Jenny, but it won’t fly, I tell you. The workers will stand and unite!
If there are any left in the house.
Stephen – groan.
Ha ha. Outsourcing is all well and good, but you’ve still go to pay.
Which is fine—it’s a capitalist society. The problem comes when outsourcing costs more in the long term than doing it yourself anyway, he mutters darkly. (Rant brewing).
When I was an editor at my last stint we outsourced some copyediting to India. (Yes, they were better at English grammar than your average Brit.) I always viewed this as a positive thing: how wonderful to give lots of smart, eager people in a relatively disadvantaged country a chance to earn money and pull themselves up as a result. OK, it probably does put the natives out of a job – but the natives will have to up their game to compete.
When it works, it’s brilliant. The two instances I’m thinking of—well, one was closer to home, and the other… well, it’s not copyediting, but it is in India, and it’s a tale your marrow to freeze and your knotted hair to disentangle.
Looking forward to the exposé. Just don’t eat all the popcorn beforehand.
@asa we outsourced our DNA sequencing to Korea too! It was cheaper, and when we were sequencing literally hundreds of clones, it just made sense.
Outsourcing of science, at least the animal research aspect of it, is well covered in Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat”. Reading that chapter on Yale and its outsourcing of animal work to a lab in China was eye-opening. I’m all for sharing the work, as long as everyone gets what they need out of it (and get decent wages).
Korea?? Cheaper even with sending the samples through the post? And hoping the tubes didn’t ‘leak’ (long story)?
Richard: cheaper sending the samples with FedEx for the next day, getting free resequencing if the first one didn’t work out as well…. then again, I guess it is depending on what you compare it to, but for us I think it was less than 1/3. And no tubes leaked, as far as I remember we sent them in small samples and maybe even with being dried DNA…. don’t remember than part though. But it was in eppendorf tubes…
Kyrsten: I did phage display. Lots of clones to look for those golden ones… 🙂
As a sort of update to my post, if anyone is still listening, I spoke to three professors yesterday, and all of them said they felt stressed out, worried about the future and not really enjoying their jobs.
Ah, I see: I’ve always walked my samples over.
Jenny, hard times. Henry’s post is pertinent.
@asa phage display! I was briefly looking at that when I was doing my MSc but I abandoned that idea quickly as I knew it wasn’t something I could do and get published in less than 2 yrs, including all the coursework I had to do.
My friend was making promoter libraries, meaning she was making literally hundreds of plasmids that had random promoters that would cause the cell to fluoresce when they turned on. We were looking for genes that would turn on in certain conditions, and she found at least one interesting one.
My own samples for DNA sequencing were walked over to the core facility.
@jennifer I know more than a few that feel that way. One of my friends is trying to get post-doc funding (she’s got a PhD and an MD, and is currently a clinical investigator, but she wants to get back into the basic virology research she loves), and although there are smaller grants out there, she’ll have to get a lot of them before she can actually live on the salary and do her research. I’ve actually told her that given the current funding situation in Canada that she would be better off just going back to being a regular doctor – she’ll make more, have less crazy hours, and have a guaranteed job.
In some ways doctors are lucky because, at least in the UK, they can get these 50% research and clinical postings – you have your small lab but you also earn good money doing rounds. I wonder if that’s an option?
@Jennifer – it is an option that she’s working towards – that’s exactly what she wants to do. However, she’s got do at least one postdoc to get there. The problem is that although she can get someone to sign for her on her grants as them matching her funding, they have found out they didn’t get their funding, so she’s now hooped too. I think they weren’t supposed to sign for that unless they absolutely had it, but I think they twisted a rule in “the wrong direction”. Rules. There are usually a reason for them.
Jennifer, you do have a slight advantage in that you are aware you can do lots of other things. Many people who have trained narrowly do not think they can. You would just rather not, which is a perfectly understandable position.
I would almost want to reply that Henry’s post is _im_pertinent… except I kind of agree with the idea that elites are useful members of society, being one of them, apparently. Then again, in France, they’re very keen on both elites and proletarians, and have a two-tiered higher education system in consequence based on ferocious entrance exams and multiple layers of preparing for the preparation for the entrance exams for the final exams for the new entrance exams for entry-level jobs… There is no perfect model as far as I can tell, anywhere, but it does help to admit that every member of society has a way in which they can contribute, and all ways are not equivalent.
Hm, I’m about umpteen comments late, but:
Regarding outsourcing – all well and good, until you run into a goverment funding agency that requires you to spend your funds in the country of origin.
Another sort of scary job you can do with my experience is become the hired scientist for banks and investors deciding which technologies are worth risking venture capital on. I think it would be too stressful – imagine if you got it wrong
I wouldn’t worry about this. Startups fail all the time, nobody would be expecting you to “get it right” more than about 1 in 10 times.
Regarding consulting – outfits like Guidepoint Global can be a nice source of extra spending money, but actually making a living as a full-time science/biotech consultant might be tricky. I know lots of people who claim to do this ahem, but with very few exceptions they all also have “day” jobs.
Jenny> some ways doctors are lucky because, at least in the UK, they can get these 50% research and clinical postings – you have your small lab but you also earn good money doing rounds. I wonder if that’s an option?
It’s a usual option in Sweden, at least looking at the biology/medicine grants going out. MDs getting paid being physicians at a research hospital and then working as researchers with the grant money. This also have been found in having 50% teaching assistant professorships, where you are supposed to find 50% research funding for you to cover your science part while employed by the university as a lecturerer.
Although,nowadays I think both positions are harder to come by. In December one friend called and told me that there were people doing research with 20% grant funding, working as “other things” (physicians/teachers/vets/etc) as 80% pulling the pay. I guess it depends on the area of reserch what’s possible?
Richard> the govermental funding agency requiring that… interesting. Even if you can get “more research for the buck the other way”? huh. I can understand if there is some kind of mistrust against “quality from other places” but isn’t that more xenophobic than truth?
Richard, that’s really interesting, about Guidepoint. But I looked in their categories and wasn’t sure what really applies – ‘healthcare’? ‘technology’? Do you know any cell/molecular biologists who’ve signed on?
Jenny – yes, me. The consults have all been about new technologies/instruments/widgets of the microarray and sequency type. Don’t know what else is encompassed, but I’d hazard a guess that anything related to biomarkers and prognostic/diagnostic value would be a good bet.
Hmmm. Very interesting.
heh. I recognize that tone of voice.
Thanks for pointing this out Richard
I’ve been sniffing around for something like this for a while to broaden my experience/CV (and supplement income a little).
I had a look at their website and the signup page but baulked when I got to the field asking for an hourly rate? Any ballpark suggestions? I know what some colleagues charge for looking over the odd patent but they seems to be asking rates that would make a merchant baker blush (or maybe not).
Hmmm. Very interesting
My dear friend – I liked Jenny’s response are a seductive woman, I think I’m falling in love, that my wife doesn’t know it.
@Darren – I would aim for not less than $200 USD per hour.
Richard> the govermental funding agency requiring that… interesting. Even if you can get “more research for the buck the other way”? huh. I can understand if there is some kind of mistrust against “quality from other places” but isn’t that more xenophobic than truth?
No, it’s more related to economic and societal benefits (Cath will be shuddering if she reads this!). The thinking is that taxpayer’s dollars should be used to pay for work done by Canadians (in this case) employed in Canada. This has knock-on effects in training, employment, and acquisition of new technologies and capabilities. Outsourcing to foreign contract organizations has none of these benefits. Of course, where such services are not available locally, you can go outside, but depending on the agency you might have to justify this choice.
The most simplistic counter-argument, of course, is that you should get the cheapest rate for the best quality data, no matter what the source. Both sides of this argument have merit, but frankly I tend to be on the former side. If my tax dollars are being distributed to someone’s research grant, the last thing I want is for all of those dollars to flow out of my country to somewhere else. Economies die that way (and yes, I know research $ are unlikely to cripple an economy on their own, but they can be a contributor).
That’s a lot of money – yikes.
I suppose the chances of ‘passing’ are pretty slim though.
That is a lot. On the other hand, hiring a “semi-professional” musician for a gig costs about half of that, so it is mathematically at least a professional rate for one-off jobs.
“Cath will be shuddering if she reads this!”
Indeed. (I’m also laughing at Darren’s “merchant baker” typo). Luckily we have a molecular pathology facility over the road and a major sequencing centre just a couple of blocks away that between them meet most of our outsourcing needs. And every grant we submit has support for at least two trainees in the budget. They like training Canadians as well as employing them!
The consulting is very, very interesting! I’d have to look into conflict of interest rules before thinking seriously about it – any comments on your experiences with this issue?
Richard> THanks for giving me some more good arguments 🙂 I’ve been trying to put words to a few things but you did that much better.
I guess it is partly about the grant funding source to realise then, that the “home” [whichever country we are talking about] might not be the cheapest place to get it done and adjust the funding. (I know the likelihood of that though, so not holding my breath.)
I guess this is partly more understood when doing an analogy to the car industry, where you have lots of “part manufactories” being in close vincinity of the actual big factory so therefore you’d want the factory in your home… hmm, I wonder how much this is thought about though? In the era of “as much research for the bucks as possible” etc? (Clearly Canada has thought a bit about it…)
That said, I just need to think about my hourly wage in general me thinks 😉 200USD…
Heh. It is a depressing business computing one’s “hourly wage” in science jobs, on the whole.
I remember about a decade back I was in charge of “matching” postgrad students to appropriate lab classes in the Faculty that they could help out in as paid “demonstrators”. In the second yr I did this there was a dispute about their pay rate. As I remember it this was something like £ 15/hr, which was typically tax-free as most postgrad students were tax-exempt.
Anyway, out of idle curiosity I computed my own “hourly rate” (based on various standard-ish assumptions, e.g. 40 hrs/wk and 45 wks worked/yr, or similar). I figured out that for actually TEACHING the class (with them as my side-kicks) I would have been making approx. £ 20/hr – so about a third more than the postgrad students, most (all?) of which extra which I would have instantly paid back in tax. And this >10 years post-PhD and after many of those yrs in a Faculty job.
But then they do say people don’t go into science for the financial rewards.
All things considered, in the UK at least, science is pretty well paid for its younger members. PhDs earn more than editorial editors, and postdocs, more than assistant editors, just to take one example. I’d be quite happy living for the rest of my life on the salary I’m on now – it’s not huge but it’s certainly respectable. I guess for group leaders and beyond, it might not be that satisfactory compared to other professions, though.
Just to make it clear; I wasn’t really complaining about my wage per se . Merely stating that 200USD/hour seems a lot (obviously not my present salary since I am trying to wrap my head around it 🙂 )
One thing to remember is that $200 USD an hour reflects the cost of not having benefits paid, employment insurance (depending on your home country). Contractors always make more than salaried workers. I know this because a friend of mine was a recruiter for IT guys and engineers. They would get contracts for $120 CAD an hour (PeopleSoft implementation specialists- not hard to do, doesn’t require much of a degree), but they have to pay for any and all benefits/insurance/taxes on their own, which can work out to a significant portion of the $120 CAD.
Regardless, finding out what business analysts with a simple B.Arts were getting was rather sobering…
In my last publishing stint, the marketing people, just fresh from university, were earning a lot more than any of the experienced news or journals editors, including those with PhDs. Business seems to confer an immediate salary advantage, even when one is an absolute newbie. I’ve never understood this.
Jenny, It is necessary to make what I make as a consultant, por lo menos uno se estabiliza economicamente and is independent.
Jenny, It is necessary to make what I make as a consultant, at least one is stable and is independent economically.
?Cuantas horas trabajas asi? Muchas horas en la semana, or menos? Tambien tengo mucho miedo que la compania me pregunta algo y no sé la repuesta…
It’s exhausting to write in Spanish when you don’t know how to make all the accent marks.
But that’s OK your Spanish, Jenny
It is necessary to specialize for example in some area. For example your job is the genetic (or I am mistaken). First you specializing in someone area of genetics that you like, but then comes the hard part enter in the market.
You have to compete for your product and answer what you know personally when people ask me something very sophisticated, is to try answer the simplest form without being superfluous and can convince that it can be carried out realizing. I things you really can not answer, you why i don’t know only one says you have to see another consultant. You understood at me, Jenny?
In relation at the other question, Jenny, there are days in that I work the 7 days of the week and sometimes 3 days, depends on demand.
Thanks, that’s really useful advice.
Sorry, just getting back to this. USD $200/hr. is not a lot of money when you consider (a) who’s paying for it, and (b) what the total pay-out is. A half-hour phone consultation might cost a market analyst a hundred bucks. Ten of those: $1,000. Absolute peanuts for someone who is attempting to gather opinion and market data to feed into how a multi-million dollar investment fund is managed.
The same argument applies to patent lawyers, whose hourly rates usually make $200 look paltry. But if you’re embarking on protecting something that will end up costing hundreds of thousands of dollars for worldwide coverage, and might turn into a product worth tenfold (or more) more than that…
It’s all about scale, and perceived value. And we scientists are, as a rule, remarkably poor at perceiving our own worth, at least in monetary terms. Not surprisingly, I suppose.
Richard: yes, you are correct. Scientist, at least myself and others I know, are poor at percieving our worth. Maybe since we do what we like or something like that?
I find it interesting that I have no problem making the math work for why $200 could actually be little…Especially not after reading your good example. it’s just when I try and add the number, hourly wage and myself that I run into that hard, brick wall …. 🙂 Good thing I have plenty of time to try and convince myself of my worth when it comes to consulting!!