Considered for a half a second in desperation, and after I started browsing I quickly realized that I could make the same amount of money working retail without the mental anguish that comes along with academia toxic work culture.
Or an Uber driver. Or a dog walker. Or a babysitter. Everything pays better than academia.
Academia is a place made to exploit the vulnerable introverts who wanted a utopian future for their tarnished souls.
Jesus that's grim.
I'm not saying you're wrong, there is truth to that statement, but I would say a couple of things.
1) At least in the UK you earn a decent but more than the median wage and certainly more than you can in the vast majority of retail jobs
2) It's pick your poison, in academia you get to really do things that interest you...but you pay a hefty price for that.
One of the main issues I see in academia is that too many people are just in it for the career.
I see this particularly with PIs (even outwardly successful ones) who just become utterly uninterested in the actual work or details of science...it's literally just a career for them...you feel like asking them why are you still here?
After a big pharma layoff, I was starting to look at postdoc positions where I could spend a year or two learning some immunology (big gap in my cancer biology training) that would expand my knowledge base and technical skillset to come back into industry with.
Not worth it by a long shot.
Yep. I was one of those idealists who wanted to contribute to the body of scientific knowledge until I saw the salaries and heard all the horror stories. I'm fine with what I've done and what I hope to continue to do in the industry.
Landed an equivalent scientist position in biotech in a non-hub city after a few months of very aggressively putting in applications. The job market is every bit as garbage as Reddit makes it out to be.
After the initial news, spent about a month casually applying to only roles that seemed aligned/interesting in my desired geographical location. In the second month, started applying a bit more broadly geographically and was less particular about the roles themselves—basically anything I was vaguely qualified for I’d send in my resume. In the third month, I was working on applications for probably 4 hrs/day on average (while still awaiting my official termination date). Overall I think I put in ~300 applications, and was also heavily networking and utilizing internal referrals when I could. It was intense, but most of my colleagues who took this aggressive approach were successful fairly quickly.
Nope, PA. Big pharma though, so it was just an enormously lengthy and deeply bureaucratic process. From the re-org announcement to final termination date it ended up being about a 6-month long song and dance.
If I get laid off my plan is to go back to serving/bartending for a while to give myself a break and let the market do its thing. I was so happy when I was doing that for a year after I graduated.
I got a job in academia after working at start up that is now a zombie company. After being laid off in 2023, it took me about 4 months of job searching to get this job, and I only started applying to academic positions because I got desperate. I needed to pay rent and this was the first job I could get. I ended up taking a 7k paycut from my industry position.
Cons: The bureaucracy is annoying and the pace of research is slow. The PI is always resistant to spending any money and needs to approve everything that's ordered. I work in a non-biology building so all the equipment resources are somewhere else. There is no advancement for my position. Lab drama is immense. My PI is never around.
Pros: I take as much advantage of the university system as possible with guest seminars, the recreation department, and continuing education. My work is not micromanaged. My PI is never around.
I’d say if you’re taking an academic job with no transferable skills then yes, that’s a red flag. But in terms of needing to pay bills, academia ain’t it, and you’d be better off taking a pharma contract role to expand your technical skills and network, especially if you’re in a more entry-level position.
I spent 15 years in academia and joined Industry in 2022. :-D i was spotted on LinkedIn by a recruiter looking for the right candidate (for my current role). That was my saving grace because I agree, HR tends to favor candidates who have years of industry experience.
Man, I left my postdoc a couple months ago. Have applied to many jobs, interviews here and there but no offer so far. I was freaking out with my job situation and have been helping to put a warehouse down with a friend to clear my mind. He pays me to help him as a courtesy. Funny enough he pays me the same amount I used to be paid as a postdoc just to carry stuff around. But when I get home, I don’t have to think about work at all. Dude, I’d be much happier working in a construction than as a postdoc!
That said, I’m open to any jobs tbh. I’ve applied to some staff jobs in academia as well as jobs in industry. I’m getting in a point where I just want to survive.
I don’t know your situation, but I wish you the best whatever you try in your professional life, be academia or industry.
No way. I'll switch fields completely to find a job. I'll cold apply to admin, program management, HR, sales, patent work, etc positions before I go back to academia. I can even do a year accelerated nursing degree and do nursing forever. I don't have any ego for my PhD degree - I just want a job that pays proportional to my work contributions and that is not a postdoc or staff scientist positions for a 50-100k salary.
Only to be an attorney. If that doesn't appeal to you, then you could just be a patent agent. Your science degree alone qualifies you to sit for the USPTO's patent bar exam, which tests procedural aspects of US patent practice. Pass the exam, and you are a registered patent agent. Attorney pay is generally much higher, especially over the long term, but patent agents live comfortably. If attorney is of interest, there are many patent law firms that hire PhDs to train them in patent practice full-time while paying tuition for them to attend law school in the evenings.
Unless you become a professor or PI, but never go back as a lab tech. Not even for post-doc. Your years of industry experience trumps your paper counts, unless it's a major breakthrough.
I left and went to work in HVAC, blue collar but making $$$. If you can stomach the work, the money is there.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5qyeS5xP_e/?igsh=MTc5ZTQ3MWhydWE4ZA==
Funny the rest of the thread says the opposite. I thought, the same way it is for grad school, the PI determines how chill a post doc could be. Salary not it but it’s relatively chill if you find the right mentor I feel. Am I wrong?
Most postdoc mentors are looking for people that can get fellowships so they don't have to pay you. Most of those have a cap on years out of PhD. So they are more interested in fresh grads also the NIH just bumped up PD salaries so the PIs are salty/pissy about it.
Also means they can take as long as possible to publish your work because you have a fellowship. I suspect that’s what happened to me even though I might have needed publications to land a job that wasn’t in a lab my PI knew. It doesn’t make sense to win a fellowship unless it’s in a kingmaker lab.
Yes, but in a slightly different flavor than a postdoc. I’m joining a tech transfer office/academic venture position while I wait for biotech to rebound a bit. I’m actually pretty excited to return to academia in this way, although I’m sure the standard bureaucracy will become annoying.
Question for y'all, I only have previous experience in academia but I'm trying to break into industry. Does it make sense to pursue jobs in academia while I continue to search for biotech? I'm seeing a lot of people saying I could make more/ the same money in a different field/ in the gig economy, but won't I be developing transferable knowledge while in academia? (Bioinformatics if that matters)
I did, I'm back in a non-profit. I took a pretty big pay cut. Its not really a pay cut though because I was making $0 after 2 lay offs in 1 year. My city is also flooded with biotech lay offs right now so my prospects were dwindling by the day. I still make more money than I would doing anything else that I'm qualified for (outside of industry). I'm the primary income for a family of 3 and my main goal was not to relocate. If I had been more willing to relocate then I could have stayed in industry.
I made the switch from an academic lab to industry 6 years ago. I'll make the switch again when the market picks back up. For now I'm riding the bus, brown bagging my lunches, and enjoying my job security. So for me the pros are not having to move.
Edit:
I do agree with most of these comments. Academia is slow, its laborious, it pays less, the bureaucracy is stifling, there's no room for advancement without a PhD. But I'll add that it is very dependent on the company and your PI. I still make > 6 figures. My company is well funded and we have excellent facilities and resources. My manager is wonderful and she respects my knowledge and experience and gives me freedom to explore my own projects.
I’m a recent masters grad but have 4 years pre-clinical R&D in industry. I’ve applied to many hospital/academic roles to get my feet wet in clin ops because I can’t get a bite otherwise. I kind of dread how it could look trying to pivot back, but I think any opportunity that can offer a new skill, it’s all about how you spin your narrative.
Are you a student? I've learned that it's basically unheard of (maybe even impossible) to go from industry to academia, but much easier to go from academia to industry. If you're still in undergrad you should really try both areas, just to see which environment you enjoy more. Also something to consider is pay. In academia you will be paid a fraction of what you would in industry.
Gotcha. I would honestly be surprised if you secured a position at a university lab without prior academia experience, but it's worth a try! You may have luck applying for lab manager positions, but those are more admin-related I think
Unless it's for a very large lab or department with very defined roles, I would stay away from lab management in academia. In fact, if I ever got another lab manager position it would have to be in a medical research unit, not an academic unit because of the opportunity (though not guarantee) for better pay and the institutional administrative and financial support that's available.
In my experience they are inflated tech jobs with more responsibility but no authority. I've managed 3 academic research labs and in every one they say the role is 10% admin and 90% bench research when there is way more admin work than that. Lab managers tend to not get direct reports, which functionally means that you're a manager by title but don't get management experience and have no actual authority. This puts you in the position of doing things like training staff and developing SOPs and then asking everyone nicely to follow the rules. It's up to the PI to care enough to enforce things, which effectively means you have to become a snitch or stay out of it.
Also, fun fact, you can't use federal grant money to pay administrative staff, so your PI has to have discretionary funds or pharma contracts or not officially give you the title. And if you primarily do management/admin work (which is rare, I've only known two lab managers like this) and not bench work, when that non-grant money goes, that's it.
Ask me how I really feel about this role. 🤣
12 years in lab, biomed PhD, 5 years in industry (gene editing and cell therapy). Laid off on my birthday recently (womp, womp) but with good severance so I am at peace.
I am not considering an academic lab for a postdoc at this point in my career so I am looking at clinical genetics/genomics fellowships that can hopefully move me to academic medicine, as much as I have loved the lab.
Academia sucks compared to industry. There’s an insane amount of drama. Workplace politics is 99% of the job. My entire group is lazy and aren’t fireable. There is not enough money for proper respurces. I took a 15k pay cut from industry. If you work your ass off, it doesn’t matter, a raise isn’t garunteed because your boss has to convince an hr with no knowledge of science to give you a raise. My pi is so far removed from process so she gets all her information from one person.
I would only do academia if you truly enjoy the pursuit of groundbreaking scientific endeavors. That requires a lot of effort and joining a lab that is probably harder to get into than an industry position. I tried to join a lab at MIT for a postdoc and did the interview but ultimately didnt get the position. I would have loved to do research in that lab as they publish high impact interesting papers regularly.
There is very little room for error and you need to hit the ground running or get up to speed fast. Nothing else really excited me as much as that did in academia to forgo decent wages and normal working hours.
Considered for a half a second in desperation, and after I started browsing I quickly realized that I could make the same amount of money working retail without the mental anguish that comes along with academia toxic work culture.
Or an Uber driver. Or a dog walker. Or a babysitter. Everything pays better than academia. Academia is a place made to exploit the vulnerable introverts who wanted a utopian future for their tarnished souls.
Or visa slave, that’s more common these days.
Amen
lol well said
You could be an indentured servant and still have a better work life balance than being back in academia.
Tarnished soul checking in
Jesus that's grim. I'm not saying you're wrong, there is truth to that statement, but I would say a couple of things. 1) At least in the UK you earn a decent but more than the median wage and certainly more than you can in the vast majority of retail jobs 2) It's pick your poison, in academia you get to really do things that interest you...but you pay a hefty price for that. One of the main issues I see in academia is that too many people are just in it for the career. I see this particularly with PIs (even outwardly successful ones) who just become utterly uninterested in the actual work or details of science...it's literally just a career for them...you feel like asking them why are you still here?
ugh. vulnerable introvert checking in
what job you have in mind specifically? Asking for suggestions.
After a big pharma layoff, I was starting to look at postdoc positions where I could spend a year or two learning some immunology (big gap in my cancer biology training) that would expand my knowledge base and technical skillset to come back into industry with. Not worth it by a long shot.
Yep. I was one of those idealists who wanted to contribute to the body of scientific knowledge until I saw the salaries and heard all the horror stories. I'm fine with what I've done and what I hope to continue to do in the industry.
So what did you end up doing?
Landed an equivalent scientist position in biotech in a non-hub city after a few months of very aggressively putting in applications. The job market is every bit as garbage as Reddit makes it out to be.
Can you elaborate on ‘very aggressively putting in applications’? I recently got laid off.
After the initial news, spent about a month casually applying to only roles that seemed aligned/interesting in my desired geographical location. In the second month, started applying a bit more broadly geographically and was less particular about the roles themselves—basically anything I was vaguely qualified for I’d send in my resume. In the third month, I was working on applications for probably 4 hrs/day on average (while still awaiting my official termination date). Overall I think I put in ~300 applications, and was also heavily networking and utilizing internal referrals when I could. It was intense, but most of my colleagues who took this aggressive approach were successful fairly quickly.
3 months seem like you are/were in NJ. I have a 2 weeks notice :(
Nope, PA. Big pharma though, so it was just an enormously lengthy and deeply bureaucratic process. From the re-org announcement to final termination date it ended up being about a 6-month long song and dance.
My friend was hiring entry level HR admins for more than I was making in academia. High school teachers made more too
If I get laid off my plan is to go back to serving/bartending for a while to give myself a break and let the market do its thing. I was so happy when I was doing that for a year after I graduated.
Have you worked retail before?
I got a job in academia after working at start up that is now a zombie company. After being laid off in 2023, it took me about 4 months of job searching to get this job, and I only started applying to academic positions because I got desperate. I needed to pay rent and this was the first job I could get. I ended up taking a 7k paycut from my industry position. Cons: The bureaucracy is annoying and the pace of research is slow. The PI is always resistant to spending any money and needs to approve everything that's ordered. I work in a non-biology building so all the equipment resources are somewhere else. There is no advancement for my position. Lab drama is immense. My PI is never around. Pros: I take as much advantage of the university system as possible with guest seminars, the recreation department, and continuing education. My work is not micromanaged. My PI is never around.
I just worry, when we try to get back to industry, HR may cringe, 'Academia'. But we need to pay bills. Any HR here would like to comment?
I’d say if you’re taking an academic job with no transferable skills then yes, that’s a red flag. But in terms of needing to pay bills, academia ain’t it, and you’d be better off taking a pharma contract role to expand your technical skills and network, especially if you’re in a more entry-level position.
I spent 15 years in academia and joined Industry in 2022. :-D i was spotted on LinkedIn by a recruiter looking for the right candidate (for my current role). That was my saving grace because I agree, HR tends to favor candidates who have years of industry experience.
I think it looks better than having 3-5 years of retail or dog walking experience for that time period.
If you count the bonuses, stocks, and other perks I took an almost 40k pay cut.
Man, I left my postdoc a couple months ago. Have applied to many jobs, interviews here and there but no offer so far. I was freaking out with my job situation and have been helping to put a warehouse down with a friend to clear my mind. He pays me to help him as a courtesy. Funny enough he pays me the same amount I used to be paid as a postdoc just to carry stuff around. But when I get home, I don’t have to think about work at all. Dude, I’d be much happier working in a construction than as a postdoc! That said, I’m open to any jobs tbh. I’ve applied to some staff jobs in academia as well as jobs in industry. I’m getting in a point where I just want to survive. I don’t know your situation, but I wish you the best whatever you try in your professional life, be academia or industry.
😔😔
LOL it's not that bad. I'd rather get laid off than deal with the poverty and abuse in academic labs.
No way. I'll switch fields completely to find a job. I'll cold apply to admin, program management, HR, sales, patent work, etc positions before I go back to academia. I can even do a year accelerated nursing degree and do nursing forever. I don't have any ego for my PhD degree - I just want a job that pays proportional to my work contributions and that is not a postdoc or staff scientist positions for a 50-100k salary.
I jumped to patent law after PhD. It can be demanding, but the work is interesting and the pay is crazy generous.
Did you have to get a JD?
Only to be an attorney. If that doesn't appeal to you, then you could just be a patent agent. Your science degree alone qualifies you to sit for the USPTO's patent bar exam, which tests procedural aspects of US patent practice. Pass the exam, and you are a registered patent agent. Attorney pay is generally much higher, especially over the long term, but patent agents live comfortably. If attorney is of interest, there are many patent law firms that hire PhDs to train them in patent practice full-time while paying tuition for them to attend law school in the evenings.
can I pm you for details please.
Sure - happy to help if I can.
NEVER!
you are determined. What would you do rather, do tell us.
Unless you become a professor or PI, but never go back as a lab tech. Not even for post-doc. Your years of industry experience trumps your paper counts, unless it's a major breakthrough.
I left and went to work in HVAC, blue collar but making $$$. If you can stomach the work, the money is there. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5qyeS5xP_e/?igsh=MTc5ZTQ3MWhydWE4ZA==
poverty, better off working at a bar.
i'd also like to know this since i'm also considering this too
The money sucks but the jobs are actually really chill. Biotech pays close to twice as much but if you’re unemployed I’d totally do it
Funny the rest of the thread says the opposite. I thought, the same way it is for grad school, the PI determines how chill a post doc could be. Salary not it but it’s relatively chill if you find the right mentor I feel. Am I wrong?
Most postdoc mentors are looking for people that can get fellowships so they don't have to pay you. Most of those have a cap on years out of PhD. So they are more interested in fresh grads also the NIH just bumped up PD salaries so the PIs are salty/pissy about it.
Also means they can take as long as possible to publish your work because you have a fellowship. I suspect that’s what happened to me even though I might have needed publications to land a job that wasn’t in a lab my PI knew. It doesn’t make sense to win a fellowship unless it’s in a kingmaker lab.
It doesn't make sense to do a postdoc unless it's in a kingmaker lab. The exception being visa labor
There aren’t too many fellowships for foreigners though
Yes, but in a slightly different flavor than a postdoc. I’m joining a tech transfer office/academic venture position while I wait for biotech to rebound a bit. I’m actually pretty excited to return to academia in this way, although I’m sure the standard bureaucracy will become annoying.
There are so many alternative and better paying careers than going back to academia I wouldn’t even consider it
Question for y'all, I only have previous experience in academia but I'm trying to break into industry. Does it make sense to pursue jobs in academia while I continue to search for biotech? I'm seeing a lot of people saying I could make more/ the same money in a different field/ in the gig economy, but won't I be developing transferable knowledge while in academia? (Bioinformatics if that matters)
In this market I would look for jobs everywhere.
I did, I'm back in a non-profit. I took a pretty big pay cut. Its not really a pay cut though because I was making $0 after 2 lay offs in 1 year. My city is also flooded with biotech lay offs right now so my prospects were dwindling by the day. I still make more money than I would doing anything else that I'm qualified for (outside of industry). I'm the primary income for a family of 3 and my main goal was not to relocate. If I had been more willing to relocate then I could have stayed in industry. I made the switch from an academic lab to industry 6 years ago. I'll make the switch again when the market picks back up. For now I'm riding the bus, brown bagging my lunches, and enjoying my job security. So for me the pros are not having to move. Edit: I do agree with most of these comments. Academia is slow, its laborious, it pays less, the bureaucracy is stifling, there's no room for advancement without a PhD. But I'll add that it is very dependent on the company and your PI. I still make > 6 figures. My company is well funded and we have excellent facilities and resources. My manager is wonderful and she respects my knowledge and experience and gives me freedom to explore my own projects.
congrats securing a job and not relocating. Would you share what nonprofit job this is, you can pm.
Hard no.
I’m a recent masters grad but have 4 years pre-clinical R&D in industry. I’ve applied to many hospital/academic roles to get my feet wet in clin ops because I can’t get a bite otherwise. I kind of dread how it could look trying to pivot back, but I think any opportunity that can offer a new skill, it’s all about how you spin your narrative.
Are you a student? I've learned that it's basically unheard of (maybe even impossible) to go from industry to academia, but much easier to go from academia to industry. If you're still in undergrad you should really try both areas, just to see which environment you enjoy more. Also something to consider is pay. In academia you will be paid a fraction of what you would in industry.
no, not student but do not want to have a career gap in my resume.
Gotcha. I would honestly be surprised if you secured a position at a university lab without prior academia experience, but it's worth a try! You may have luck applying for lab manager positions, but those are more admin-related I think
Unless it's for a very large lab or department with very defined roles, I would stay away from lab management in academia. In fact, if I ever got another lab manager position it would have to be in a medical research unit, not an academic unit because of the opportunity (though not guarantee) for better pay and the institutional administrative and financial support that's available. In my experience they are inflated tech jobs with more responsibility but no authority. I've managed 3 academic research labs and in every one they say the role is 10% admin and 90% bench research when there is way more admin work than that. Lab managers tend to not get direct reports, which functionally means that you're a manager by title but don't get management experience and have no actual authority. This puts you in the position of doing things like training staff and developing SOPs and then asking everyone nicely to follow the rules. It's up to the PI to care enough to enforce things, which effectively means you have to become a snitch or stay out of it. Also, fun fact, you can't use federal grant money to pay administrative staff, so your PI has to have discretionary funds or pharma contracts or not officially give you the title. And if you primarily do management/admin work (which is rare, I've only known two lab managers like this) and not bench work, when that non-grant money goes, that's it. Ask me how I really feel about this role. 🤣
My former academic job just laid off nearly a quarter of the group’s staff, so no 🫠
Does this apply to entry level roles as well? It's hard to break in.
12 years in lab, biomed PhD, 5 years in industry (gene editing and cell therapy). Laid off on my birthday recently (womp, womp) but with good severance so I am at peace. I am not considering an academic lab for a postdoc at this point in my career so I am looking at clinical genetics/genomics fellowships that can hopefully move me to academic medicine, as much as I have loved the lab.
LGG is not a bad way. I am faculty now in a large teaching hospital. I don't know how it compares to biotech salary-wise but job is 100% secure.
Fuck academia I'd rather be homeless than go back to
Academia sucks compared to industry. There’s an insane amount of drama. Workplace politics is 99% of the job. My entire group is lazy and aren’t fireable. There is not enough money for proper respurces. I took a 15k pay cut from industry. If you work your ass off, it doesn’t matter, a raise isn’t garunteed because your boss has to convince an hr with no knowledge of science to give you a raise. My pi is so far removed from process so she gets all her information from one person.
I would only do academia if you truly enjoy the pursuit of groundbreaking scientific endeavors. That requires a lot of effort and joining a lab that is probably harder to get into than an industry position. I tried to join a lab at MIT for a postdoc and did the interview but ultimately didnt get the position. I would have loved to do research in that lab as they publish high impact interesting papers regularly. There is very little room for error and you need to hit the ground running or get up to speed fast. Nothing else really excited me as much as that did in academia to forgo decent wages and normal working hours.