This is a topic I've been thinking about a lot lately. Ideal is what Varmus - one of my most favorite scientist/thinker of our time, said. But all of us who have come to do Science, do we all believe in that? For example, some of us, life and career has taken certain turns and we have ended up in the profession. Among this large group of people, some have found it to be exciting and fulfilling. More like an arranged marriage, where you have gotten married first, loved your spouse later. Those have at least found love. But for a number of unfortunate ones, it becomes a job to maintain livelihood. This actually is not bad considering the parks, like very flexible working hours, occasional free travel to conferences etc. Of course you have to put up with poor pay scale. But as long as the grant money is flowing, it is not a bad life. But to what end? It is believed that the recession does not affect education or health care industries. But, eventually the revenue shortfall is likely to catch up with the research funding and we may end up in an unsustainable situation.
For the unfortunate ones among us caught in this, it would become very painful. Because, this profession does not let you develop a lot of other marketable skills. The only option left is teaching. I personally think it is a very rewarding profession. But, the trick is to land a reasonably stable job. Let's start with the Universities. Big universities generally do not hire people for teaching only positions. For a tenure-track position in any top to mid-level universities, the candidate has to have some research, which means grant. Even for four year collages, they look for teaching experience, and some research experience, which generally is not very compatible with high powered health-sciences research, because the typical health-science research is not compatible with undergraduate research that they are looking for. More appropriate for them is general basic biology research. So, what does that leave us with? My thoughts are following:
For the ones, who really find doing science is the most exciting thing that you can do with your life, go for it. If you are a post-doc or a Ph.D. student, find your area of research and develop your expertise in that small area. Your initial training should be in a lab where you will have plenty of access of your PI. Find a mentor with whom you can find a connection, your mentor should be able to get you excited. Then move to a big name lab in your field, where your PI's name can take you further. Don't change your field during your post-doc, unless you are willing to spend longer in your training. Have a very focused goal to develop your own grant. Because during the job application/interview, you have to have a very well developed fundable research proposal.
If you are like me, who got into science because that’s where life events took you to and later on grew into it and found exciting, you should follow the above advices as soon as possible or it will take you longer than it is needed, like me!! Two things you need to learn, how to be curious and how to pay attention to the detail.
Certain very useful numbers:
- Starting Salary: $ 80,000 to 90,000/yr for medical schools, for all other departments/divisions/schools, at least $ 10,000 less.
- Startup package: Excluding your salary, $400,000 to $600,000 for 3 yr. again for med schools, for others less.
- Complete Salary Support for 3 yr. afterwards, 30-70% depending on the reputation of the school, exceptional ones 0 % !! Rest, you need to cover from your grant.
- In case of dire financial situation, the university has the right to reduce your salary even if you are tenured, but failed to support yourself completely from your grant.
- For state universities these numbers are substantially lower.
Once again, it is not as hard as people say it is.
If you want to be in science to maintain a decent livelihood one very good option is to work in the industry. If you can manage to develop one set of expertise which is valuable to a pharmaceutical company, you would be a high value candidate. A lot of times these are technology oriented. My experience in this is all theoretical. But you should be ready to be very flexible in terms of your project. Another key issue is to develop very good connections and network. It is not very easy to land a big pharma job. More than 90 % of industry recruitment happens through network not via Nature/Science advertisements.
For the ones who happen to have a Ph.D. and doing post-doc, one under-explored possibility is technical writing/grant review/scientific management. NIH hires a lot of people in grant management field. But you have to remember something which I found here. A number of journals hire scientific writer editors which are worth exploring. Once again networking is the main key in theses options, but the pay scales are better or equal to med school levels mentioned above.
Further Resources:
Nature's guide for mentors
HHMI Lab Management
Breaking All the Rules
Follow career advice at Science Careers
