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No science is historical a place of people working in poverty for the love of the job. I myself did a degree in Microbiology and started working at a research l

by rjd 15y ago

No science is historical a place of people working in poverty for the love of the job. I myself did a degree in Microbiology and started working at a research lab as an assistant. One thing caught me very quickly, people I worked with, some of the leading geneticists on the planet.. I'm talking about people who where splicing human DNA in animals to cure Parkinson's... where earning minimum wage. These people literally fought for basic funding, maybe they got a million dollar cheque, but boy that had to last, if the results didn't come through or you got 80% of the way there, there was no second cheque. Failing to deliver could also cost you further funding. So everyone was accounting for every cent, and there was no spending on anything extravagant. The head of my department wrote some of the text books I read through high school, thats how he made his living, he earned maybe $10k more than the rest of the scientists but that was still next to nothing. The only perk was a contract we had testing wine for pesticides. Which meant taking a 5ml sample from each bottle of wine and prepping it for testing. We literally had a shed full of wine which a research centre of several hundred scientists couldn't drink fast enough :) I was told by one scientist you had around 15 years to make a breakthrough and then it was more or less over. You trained till you where 30 to get a PHD so you could get funding, worked till you where in your 40s, then started writing text books, being a manager, or a teacher/professor. Decided I didn't have the constitution for a life like that and retrained as an artist and some how ended up a programmer. I could have always moved in the commercial of being a food technician or something, OK money doing that, but its crap work... unless you are inventing new ice cream flavours... otherwise you are more or less loading samples into a machine and waiting for the results... overkill for a scientist really.

wisty 15y ago
So why don't scientists get other jobs in the private sector? People with Arts degrees don't whinge about the lack of "Historian" positions, they just get jobs where they can utilize their amazing skills at churning out 5000 word faux-essays about why their cherry-picked positive paragraphs outnumber the negative paragraphs they threw in for "balance" (arts hater, sorry, but haters gotta hate). Maybe they are HR officers, or Marketing Stooges, or Strategic Analysts, or Project Officers, or even Software Engineers. There seems to be an utterly moronic disconnect betweens science students who want a job with "research" in the title, and businesses who don't want to reach out to smart, hard-working, honest candidates. Science students do have skills - the ability to read massive amounts of technically difficult work (for example, research articles, government regulations), math skills, statistics skills, and a deep understanding of physical and / or biological processes. I understand that they don't want to head-hunt full professors into C-level positions, but surely there's some scope for people crossing over. I mean, does anyone really think that science grads are less business ready than business grads, and if so, why?
- gyardley 15y ago
  Oh, man, do I know a lot of people that whinge about the lack of historian positions. - former Ph.D. student in History.
  - ericd 15y ago
    Is there a good way to look for just those people? I feel like there are a lot of jobs out there that aren't specialized, but could really benefit from having really smart (in a general sense) people.
    - gyardley 15y ago
      If there is, I don't know of one. History teaches all sorts of wonderful analytical skills that I use all the time as a start-up founder - it's great training for what I do. However, by the time you make it a significant way into a Ph.D. program, you get ruined culturally - you end up thinking you're going to get a job in academia, or you're a complete failure. Switching careers after your mid 20s feels like an impossible undertaking (it's not hard at all, but we're talking about feelings here), so you keep on slogging it out. If you do come across some all-but-dissertation from a good program who actually wants to try new things, snap them up.
- jballanc 15y ago
  What private sector jobs would you recommend? When I started graduate school studying Biochemistry, a job in the pharmaceutical industry was a credible alternative to academic research. Today, the pharmaceutical industry is hurting, with hiring freezes on nearly everywhere, mass layoffs following giant mergers, and all the while being maligned by the press and the public as over-charging money-grubbers. In short, the pharmaceutical industry is bust (most people just don't realize it yet). > I mean, does anyone really think that science grads are less business ready than business grads, and if so, why? Yes, yes, a million times yes. A science education includes absolutely no training in finance, management, organization, public speaking, etc. While it is true that there are scientists who are great at public speaking or business, in almost all cases these individuals were good in those areas before they became educated in science. Furthermore, in my time working in research, I've come to appreciate that science graduates are absolute luddites in every realm of technology that is not directly involved in their own research. Anecdotally, I've watched researchers working on promising cures for Parkinson's have trouble logging into their Windows XP machine and others working on cancer-fighting nanoparticles unable to connect a printer to print their manuscripts. Basic research can never compete in a capitalist economy because the profits of most research activities are realized on time scales greater than an individual lifetime and there is no monetary incentive (only altruistic incentives) to invest in something that will only pay out when you're dead.

by rjd 15y ago

wisty 15y ago

So why don't scientists get other jobs in the private sector? People with Arts degrees don't whinge about the lack of "Historian" positions, they just get jobs where they can utilize their amazing skills at churning out 5000 word faux-essays about why their cherry-picked positive paragraphs outnumber the negative paragraphs they threw in for "balance" (arts hater, sorry, but haters gotta hate). Maybe they are HR officers, or Marketing Stooges, or Strategic Analysts, or Project Officers, or even Software Engineers. There seems to be an utterly moronic disconnect betweens science students who want a job with "research" in the title, and businesses who don't want to reach out to smart, hard-working, honest candidates. Science students do have skills - the ability to read massive amounts of technically difficult work (for example, research articles, government regulations), math skills, statistics skills, and a deep understanding of physical and / or biological processes. I understand that they don't want to head-hunt full professors into C-level positions, but surely there's some scope for people crossing over. I mean, does anyone really think that science grads are less business ready than business grads, and if so, why?

gyardley 15y ago
Oh, man, do I know a lot of people that whinge about the lack of historian positions. - former Ph.D. student in History.
- ericd 15y ago
  Is there a good way to look for just those people? I feel like there are a lot of jobs out there that aren't specialized, but could really benefit from having really smart (in a general sense) people.
  - gyardley 15y ago
    If there is, I don't know of one. History teaches all sorts of wonderful analytical skills that I use all the time as a start-up founder - it's great training for what I do. However, by the time you make it a significant way into a Ph.D. program, you get ruined culturally - you end up thinking you're going to get a job in academia, or you're a complete failure. Switching careers after your mid 20s feels like an impossible undertaking (it's not hard at all, but we're talking about feelings here), so you keep on slogging it out. If you do come across some all-but-dissertation from a good program who actually wants to try new things, snap them up.
jballanc 15y ago
What private sector jobs would you recommend? When I started graduate school studying Biochemistry, a job in the pharmaceutical industry was a credible alternative to academic research. Today, the pharmaceutical industry is hurting, with hiring freezes on nearly everywhere, mass layoffs following giant mergers, and all the while being maligned by the press and the public as over-charging money-grubbers. In short, the pharmaceutical industry is bust (most people just don't realize it yet). > I mean, does anyone really think that science grads are less business ready than business grads, and if so, why? Yes, yes, a million times yes. A science education includes absolutely no training in finance, management, organization, public speaking, etc. While it is true that there are scientists who are great at public speaking or business, in almost all cases these individuals were good in those areas before they became educated in science. Furthermore, in my time working in research, I've come to appreciate that science graduates are absolute luddites in every realm of technology that is not directly involved in their own research. Anecdotally, I've watched researchers working on promising cures for Parkinson's have trouble logging into their Windows XP machine and others working on cancer-fighting nanoparticles unable to connect a printer to print their manuscripts. Basic research can never compete in a capitalist economy because the profits of most research activities are realized on time scales greater than an individual lifetime and there is no monetary incentive (only altruistic incentives) to invest in something that will only pay out when you're dead.