3 ms·

> Paying postdocs private sector hourly salaries will probably resolve the issue What's the actual issue, though? Is there something bad that this effect is ca

> Paying postdocs private sector hourly salaries will probably resolve the issue What's the actual issue, though? Is there something bad that this effect is causing?

alephnerd 3y ago
Salaries are basically limited to $50-70k a year with 50-60 hour workweeks. If you did a PhD in Biochemistry, you could make $100-200k a year plus stock working 40-50 hours a week at most working for Pfizer in Cambridge MA instead of earning around $60k working 50-60 hours as a Postdoc at a regional Boston based program like BU or Northeastern - you have to pay the same amount for rent and groceries, but you earn half as much and work much longer hours. At that point, the only reason to be a postdoc is to get your foot in the door if you went to a less recruited program or are from abroad. For example, in the article - “My personal experience is that Americans were always less willing to put up with conditions that foreigners like myself had to put up with,” says McDowell, who moved from the United Kingdom to the United States for a postdoc in biomedicine.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  But what's the actual problem that fewer postdocs causes?
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    Much less experimental and fundamental research. Companies aren't going to invest in experimental research in the biotech space as the costs are so high. Most compounds end up getting validated in some way shape or form by researchers, then productionized by the private sector. This has a pipeline effect on development in the industry. For example, mRNA Vaccine research was purely experimental research done by postdocs and junior researchers at UPenn in the 1990s, before being commercialized by BioNtech and Moderna in the mid-2000s.
  - el_cujo 3y ago
    There really isn't one in my opinion. Academic postdoc positions in many fields are pitched as a stepping stone to professorship, but professor positions are very few so you end up with PHDs continuing the low-pay grind after graduation to prop up academia for a dream that doesn't come true. I think it's good more are recognizing this and just going to industry, maybe eventually this will cause problems and academia can be motivated to fix itself instead of viewing post docs as disposable. Or maybe there's no problem to fix and this is academia just getting correctly recognized as the grind option for people who are actually ok with that
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      > academia can be motivated to fix itself The fundamental issues with postdoc salaries and grantmaking lies with the US Government. It is the grantmakers like the CDC, NIH, CMS, DARPA, etc that essentially set postdoc salaries for grants. And these agencies are completely averse to change. Furthermore, us in industry are NOT going to fund fundamental or experimental research due to relatively low margins.
    - etrautmann 3y ago
      The professor positions themselves aren't particularly cushy at the end of that road. Some postdocs take a look at the prospects of 60-70 hour weeks, very little time to focus on anything scientific or technical, and huge piles of administrative work, and relatively low pay and choose to industry options not out of a lack of the ability to land a professorship.
  - COGlory 3y ago
    Postdocs are the single most productive members in a research group. The PI is typically a tenured or tenure track professor, who got the job based on their research ability, but now they are relegated to an office, teaching 1-2 classes/semester, writing grants, reviewing papers for free for for-profit journals, reviewing grants for NIH/NSF, etc. Grad students are not well motivated, not skilled, need lots of training, take classes, need to work on a thesis, and often times also teach. So they are low output and high time investment. Postdocs require little-to-no time investment as they already have most prerequisite skills, have no other obligations beyond research, and sometimes even bring their own funding. They are basically professional researchers and are by far and away the most productive members of any given research group.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- COGlory 3y ago
  >If you did a PhD in Biochemistry, you could make $100-200k a year plus stock working 40-50 hours a week at most working for Pfizer in Cambridge MA instead of earning around $60k working 50-60 hours as a Postdoc at a regional Boston based program like BU or Northeastern - you have to pay the same amount for rent and groceries, but you earn half as much and work much longer hours. I was recruited pretty heavily relative to my peers, when I finished up my biochem PhD. Clearing $100k was actually a pretty tall order without a postdoc. There are jobs out there, and I managed to get one of them, but they were very competitive. With a postdoc, $150k was on the low end, but also still competitive. Basically no one is hiring at $200k in biotech, beyond director roles.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    > I was recruited pretty heavily relative to my peers, when I finished up my biochem PhD When? Your numbers don't make sense in the late 2010s to present. Even my friends working as Sr Associate Scientists (BS only) for employers like Pfizer or Biogen are earning $100-140k base after barely 2 YoE, and younger friends and family of mine are getting $100-110k base for new grad roles now
    - COGlory 3y ago
      Last year. Take a quick look at Indeed: https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=structural+biologist&l=Boston%2C+MA&from=searchOnHP&vjk=aba81afe2ed957ae https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=structural+biologist&l=Boston%... Amgen, Senior Scientist - $125-$150 UCB, Scientist I - $96-$125 Noblis, Molecular and Cellular Biology Specialist - $109,100 to $190,900 with 8+ years of relevant experience. Actalent, Sr. Engineer of Internal Cell Culture Development and Manufacturing - $80-$115
      - alephnerd 3y ago
        $16k PhD stipend in 2024?!? Which program did you do your PhD at!!!! Even UCSC has a stipend of $24k, BU a stipend of $27k, and UIUC a stipend of $25k. No offense, but it's sounding like you attended a non-target program. At that point it absolutely makes sense to switch to software. Also, you may need some hiring mentorship. Indeed is not the best platform for roles. Also, Assoc to Sr Assoc is just 1.5-2 years so you are absolutely going to break $100k in 2 years
dreamcompiler 3y ago
Lack of research. Most academic research is done by postdocs through grants from e.g. NSF. NSF and other grantors cap postdoc pay at below living wage in expensive cities like Boston. (The professor and university who hire the postdoc have very little flexibility to pay them more.) Add that it's a temp job with no security and fewer people want to sign up. So a lot of cutting-edge research can't get done.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  But is that because a lot of value can be found in these same people producing in industry at the moment? I wonder if there could be a cycle of sometimes discovery being more valuable, because biotech is fairly commoditised, and a cycle of implementation sometimes being more valuable, because we haven't made the most of discoveries.

> Paying postdocs private sector hourly salaries will probably resolve the issue What's the actual issue, though? Is there something bad that this effect is causing?

alephnerd 3y ago

Salaries are basically limited to $50-70k a year with 50-60 hour workweeks. If you did a PhD in Biochemistry, you could make $100-200k a year plus stock working 40-50 hours a week at most working for Pfizer in Cambridge MA instead of earning around $60k working 50-60 hours as a Postdoc at a regional Boston based program like BU or Northeastern - you have to pay the same amount for rent and groceries, but you earn half as much and work much longer hours. At that point, the only reason to be a postdoc is to get your foot in the door if you went to a less recruited program or are from abroad. For example, in the article - “My personal experience is that Americans were always less willing to put up with conditions that foreigners like myself had to put up with,” says McDowell, who moved from the United Kingdom to the United States for a postdoc in biomedicine.

robertlagrant 3y ago
But what's the actual problem that fewer postdocs causes?
- alephnerd 3y ago
  Much less experimental and fundamental research. Companies aren't going to invest in experimental research in the biotech space as the costs are so high. Most compounds end up getting validated in some way shape or form by researchers, then productionized by the private sector. This has a pipeline effect on development in the industry. For example, mRNA Vaccine research was purely experimental research done by postdocs and junior researchers at UPenn in the 1990s, before being commercialized by BioNtech and Moderna in the mid-2000s.
- el_cujo 3y ago
  There really isn't one in my opinion. Academic postdoc positions in many fields are pitched as a stepping stone to professorship, but professor positions are very few so you end up with PHDs continuing the low-pay grind after graduation to prop up academia for a dream that doesn't come true. I think it's good more are recognizing this and just going to industry, maybe eventually this will cause problems and academia can be motivated to fix itself instead of viewing post docs as disposable. Or maybe there's no problem to fix and this is academia just getting correctly recognized as the grind option for people who are actually ok with that
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    > academia can be motivated to fix itself The fundamental issues with postdoc salaries and grantmaking lies with the US Government. It is the grantmakers like the CDC, NIH, CMS, DARPA, etc that essentially set postdoc salaries for grants. And these agencies are completely averse to change. Furthermore, us in industry are NOT going to fund fundamental or experimental research due to relatively low margins.
  - etrautmann 3y ago
    The professor positions themselves aren't particularly cushy at the end of that road. Some postdocs take a look at the prospects of 60-70 hour weeks, very little time to focus on anything scientific or technical, and huge piles of administrative work, and relatively low pay and choose to industry options not out of a lack of the ability to land a professorship.
- COGlory 3y ago
  Postdocs are the single most productive members in a research group. The PI is typically a tenured or tenure track professor, who got the job based on their research ability, but now they are relegated to an office, teaching 1-2 classes/semester, writing grants, reviewing papers for free for for-profit journals, reviewing grants for NIH/NSF, etc. Grad students are not well motivated, not skilled, need lots of training, take classes, need to work on a thesis, and often times also teach. So they are low output and high time investment. Postdocs require little-to-no time investment as they already have most prerequisite skills, have no other obligations beyond research, and sometimes even bring their own funding. They are basically professional researchers and are by far and away the most productive members of any given research group.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
COGlory 3y ago
>If you did a PhD in Biochemistry, you could make $100-200k a year plus stock working 40-50 hours a week at most working for Pfizer in Cambridge MA instead of earning around $60k working 50-60 hours as a Postdoc at a regional Boston based program like BU or Northeastern - you have to pay the same amount for rent and groceries, but you earn half as much and work much longer hours. I was recruited pretty heavily relative to my peers, when I finished up my biochem PhD. Clearing $100k was actually a pretty tall order without a postdoc. There are jobs out there, and I managed to get one of them, but they were very competitive. With a postdoc, $150k was on the low end, but also still competitive. Basically no one is hiring at $200k in biotech, beyond director roles.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  > I was recruited pretty heavily relative to my peers, when I finished up my biochem PhD When? Your numbers don't make sense in the late 2010s to present. Even my friends working as Sr Associate Scientists (BS only) for employers like Pfizer or Biogen are earning $100-140k base after barely 2 YoE, and younger friends and family of mine are getting $100-110k base for new grad roles now
  - COGlory 3y ago
    Last year. Take a quick look at Indeed: https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=structural+biologist&l=Boston%2C+MA&from=searchOnHP&vjk=aba81afe2ed957ae https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=structural+biologist&l=Boston%... Amgen, Senior Scientist - $125-$150 UCB, Scientist I - $96-$125 Noblis, Molecular and Cellular Biology Specialist - $109,100 to $190,900 with 8+ years of relevant experience. Actalent, Sr. Engineer of Internal Cell Culture Development and Manufacturing - $80-$115
    - alephnerd 3y ago
      $16k PhD stipend in 2024?!? Which program did you do your PhD at!!!! Even UCSC has a stipend of $24k, BU a stipend of $27k, and UIUC a stipend of $25k. No offense, but it's sounding like you attended a non-target program. At that point it absolutely makes sense to switch to software. Also, you may need some hiring mentorship. Indeed is not the best platform for roles. Also, Assoc to Sr Assoc is just 1.5-2 years so you are absolutely going to break $100k in 2 years

dreamcompiler 3y ago

Lack of research. Most academic research is done by postdocs through grants from e.g. NSF. NSF and other grantors cap postdoc pay at below living wage in expensive cities like Boston. (The professor and university who hire the postdoc have very little flexibility to pay them more.) Add that it's a temp job with no security and fewer people want to sign up. So a lot of cutting-edge research can't get done.

robertlagrant 3y ago
But is that because a lot of value can be found in these same people producing in industry at the moment? I wonder if there could be a cycle of sometimes discovery being more valuable, because biotech is fairly commoditised, and a cycle of implementation sometimes being more valuable, because we haven't made the most of discoveries.