So a while ago, I explained why I'm quite sure I
don't want to be an academic, and then I wrote a bit (ok, a lot) about what I think I
want from a job.
While I have only minimally narrowed down my options, I'm feeling somewhat less overwhelmed at the thought of deciding what to do next, and even have a plausible "front runner." As I'm sure that you really love reading my stream-of-consciousness wandering thoughts, here are some thoughts on various still-in-the-running options.
"Industry" seems to be the most obvious alternative to "academia," however that's still an incredibly broad and vague descriptor. The subcategories that I can see in this (at the moment) include:
- large "manufacturing" companies (stuff like Proctor & Gamble or General Mills)
- large pharmaceutical companies (Merck, Pfizer, etc) or "small" pharmaceutical companies
- chemical and/or chemical equipment companies (Sigma-Aldrich or Fisher Scientific for example)
- bio-tech
I'm sure there are pros and cons to all of these types of companies, and I have to admit I don't have many specific thoughts as to whether or not I'd like working for them.
Lunch with
VeryBC was really quite helpful in getting an idea of what kind of career path and projects I might expect. It didn't leave me super gung-ho to work for that sort of company, but it certainly didn't dissuade me from it. One upside of working for a really huge company could be job stability - if your project gets cut for whatever reason, assuming you don't suck at your job of course, there is much higher likelihood of being able to keep your "job" by transitioning to another team or project. Another bonus in my mind is a large company is more likely to have many locations world-wide...in other words travel opportunities.
Working for a pharmaceutical company (especially a huge one) seems like the epitome of "working for the man" as far as chemistry jobs go, and I'm not really sure why that is. It's not any more profit- or product-driven than almost any other company. One such company sent a recruiter in about a week ago, but unfortunately the "informal Q&A" session he held wasn't very helpful. They only currently have one PhD opening, and he spent most of the time talking about that one specific position (only 2 people out of about 12 were close enough to graduating to apply) and flipping through the corporate slides he had. A pharmaceutical company sounds like a fine option, I have nothing against it. I just don't know much about it and the visiting recruiter didn't give a whole lot of insight into what the pharmaceutical industry is like.
Working for a chemical company frankly sounds rather boring. But to be fair, I have no idea what (if anything) they do besides synthesize/isolate/purify/characterize compounds.
Bio-tech could be very exciting in terms of the most cutting edge developments in Science, but it seems like it could also be quite risky. An awful lot of small bio-tech companies seem to come and go more often than I change the sheets on my bed. At the moment "settling down" somewhere (i.e. moving somewhere with the intention of staying there indefinitely) is really weird and not particularly appealing, I assume that someday that will be a desirable thing, and that I will want/need a stable job to allow that.
Any of those job options could allow me to continue in mass spectrometry, with bio-tech probably being the least likely to specifically want a mass spectrometrist (unless we're talking about a mass spec-based technology). I'd probably have travel opportunities in any of these sorts of companies, least so probably in chemical industry. I think in any of these it would come down to what project(s) I were actually working on, and the people. Big manufacturing or pharma are the most appealing of the "industry" options. The recruiters that have come from
VeryBC and the pharmaceutical company have made annual trips here for several years now (a perk of being in a highly-ranked chemistry program, especially in analytical). I'm hoping more people from different companies and different types of companies will come visit to help me get a better idea of what I want...
As a mass spectrometrist, a somewhat related option would be to work for an instrument company. I honestly think anything except the R&D aspect of this would get boring pretty quickly, so let's go ahead and ignore/eliminate the sales and demo lab type positions. Even something like a field engineer position would probably be boring pretty quickly as most of your users will be of the "black box" variety - i.e. use the instrument exactly as intended, never take the covers off, don't actually know how it works... If I could spend my time helping research/instrumentation labs (like mine), now that would be different. Probably much more interesting. Instrument or application development could be fun. My advisor thinks I'd enjoy working for the company that makes the instruments I currently use for a few years and then be bored. Who knows. I've made lots of good contacts in various divisions and geographic locations with that company to keep that option on the table.
A sort of middle-of-the-road option between industry and academia would be to work in a national lab. I don't know a whole lot about this, although I have a bit of a better feel after talking pretty extensively to one of my former labmates (and current national lab employee). Depending on the lab and the division, it seems like this could be almost like academia minus the teaching and university-related B.S. My labmate's particular position doesn't sound like this, but rather closer to industry (less research- and more figure-this-out-for-us-based). So it seems like there's some variety. I don't think I really want to do pure research anymore (not that what I do now is terribly "pure" science), but this would be a good option should I change my mind. It seems like it could be a somewhat more "industry"-like job in a more "academic"-like setting. One thing that surprised me about this option is that the pay seems to actually be pretty good.
A slightly different option is working for a government agency, like the FDA or EPA. This would likely be less research- and more quality control/problem solving-based. The pay generally isn't as good as private industry or national labs, but the job security and benefits are supposedly excellent.
Another government, but totally unrelated job is one I heard of from one of my committee members via one of my classmates. Apparently all (?) congressmen and senators have "science advisors" - PhD-level scientists whose job it is to be up to speed on relevant science/policy issues in order to advise (duh) politicians how to vote. This is something that I think could be really fascinating to do for a couple of years. Politics have become more interesting (and aggravating) as I pay more attention to what's actually going on. It could be a blast to live in DC for a couple of years and learn about all sorts of different Science. I could also see becoming really disenchanted, but that's why I think I'd only do something like this short-term.
During a recent "what do you want to do with yourself" conversation with my advisor, she asked me (with the faintest hint of exasperation), "What do you have against teaching??!" Nothing actually! I really, really enjoyed TAing in undergrad. There's something incredibly awesome about the moment you see a concept click for somebody. I swear, you can see it in the student's face, and it's just so cool to witness that and know that you had some (small) part in making that happen. The thing is, I don't want to teach, and run a research program, and do all the miscellaneous other B.S. that comes with being a professor at a research university. I'd really rather teach
or do research. NOT both. There are lecturer (or adjunct, depending on the university's current needs) positions, but the pay and job security are mediocre at best as they are non-tenure track positions. A teaching position at a community college would be more stable, but they seem to pay absolute crap. It would be one thing if I had a family and wanted something fairly "low" time-commitment for that reason, but that's certainly not my situation. With a PhD I'd be "over-qualified" to teach at all but the most elite of high schools. Teaching at a small and/or teaching-focused college would be a possibility. However if that's what I want to do I'd need to realize/decide that soonish, and take appropriate steps to actually be qualified to do that - i.e. ask for a teaching assignment (I haven't TA'd at all in grad school as I've been on fellowship the entire time) and possibly take a teaching "post-doc." A variation on this that could really be quite fun would to be a lab coordinator (preferably for upper division labs that use more instrumentation). Many large universities will have lab coordinators for gen chem, organic, and "upper division" (usually analytical and physical chemistry) labs, who oversee and train TAs, manage/maintain/troubleshoot instrumentation, and do a bit of more "traditional" teaching. (I've also considered the possibility of teaching high school full or part time after a career in industry. One of my favorite teachers in high school retired after 30+ years as an engineer, decided retirement was boring, and came to teach math and science at my small, all-girls, Catholic high school. Needless to say he had NO idea what he was getting himself into, but we had fun with him and he was a good teacher.)
One last job option that I'll only mention briefly because I'm pretty sure I don't want to do it (even if it does sound interesting) is to work for a scientific journal. Not as an editor - all the editors (that I know of anyways) are big name professors in their own right, separate from/prior to being an editor. My advisor was recently visited by a PhD chemist who works for an analytical journal essentially as a scout and blogger. She attends conferences, reads, and travels in search of cool science for the journal to feature in print and/or in her blog (through the journal, not a personal science blog). I really don't think I enjoy writing nearly enough to do something like this, but it's a neat, off-the-beaten-track option, and I'm sure there are others like this that I wish I knew existed.
I've rambled long enough. I'll write another post later about post-doc-ing and what I think my currently most-appealing career/job option is.
(These were the early days of my dominating cupcake skills! While this particular decorating job was not my doing, my cake decorating tastes leaned more towards the utterly ridiculous in high school.)
