The Job Hunt Thread

[shanendoah]

So, a full week after pondering it, I finally submitted my resume for the step up job here at the University. Now we'll just see if anything comes of it.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Small world I ran into my friend, the postdoc, from Boys Town in the bathroom a little bit ago.

She's not doing well, not having much luck finding another job.    They really screwed her over big time b/c a postdoc is expected to have their own projects and publish.  She has nothing to show for her duration there which makes finding another job at her level difficult.   It's also hard to go backwards b/c people don't want to pay a PhD salary for a tech.

Apparently I caused a big to do by quitting.  She was there a couple days afterward and it was all the department was talking about.   She figured it must have been something big for me to just not show up.  I filled her in on the details.

It's vindictive of me but after the way they treated me I am glad I f*cked them over big time.   Someone needs to take them down a few pegs.   Unfortunately it will never be enough, I was told for whatever reason the director refuses to fire them.  I guess they were up for termination a couple years ago but somehow weedled their way into being part time till they could find someone to latch onto.

I told her my lab was looking for another tech, IDK if they still are.   If she interviews and they bring her around I'll be sure to plug her.   Unfortunately that's all I can do.

[mojothehelpermonkey]

I feel your friend's pain. Over the last year, I have been occasionally regretting taking my first industry desk job. Five years later, my bench skills are out of date. However, if I didn't take that offer, who knows how long it would have taken to get another one. I was almost two years into a postdoc at the time, and all I had was one 2nd author paper and a project that kept getting put on the back burner. My boss was grumbling about losing his funding, so I know it probably was the right decision to get out of there. One bad boss can really tank your career.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Yeah outside of the misery factor I realized if I kept working with those people it would tank any future job prospects b/c I would have nothing to show for 2 years of work.   All I would have had is a pile of shit control data and obsolete bench skills.

It does reaffirm that I did the right thing taking the job at Creighton back in 2006 even though it only paid me $20k per year.   It screwed me over salary wise for a long time but I had a REALLY good PI and the skills I learned there have pretty much been the reason I've gotten every job since.

This week has SUCKED.  I knew it would go downhill starting with getting rear ended Monday morning (both cars and drivers were fine, no damage).   Sure enough I screwed up the flow cytometry.  Then we had to spend an hour trying to figure out who a tag-less mouse was and why the wrong number was on the card.  

At least I didn't kill anything, I thought for sure I killed two mice yesterday based on their reactions to me bleeding them but they are fine this morning.

I know I am being too hard on myself but I can't help it.  Perfectionism and science do not make good bedfellows.   It's HARD to go back to learning things/starting over.  I want to go back to being the expert who can do her job blindfolded.

Eventually I'll get there. ..

[mojothehelpermonkey]

Nov 24, 2015 16:58:18 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Yeah outside of the misery factor I realized if I kept working with those people it would tank any future job prospects b/c I would have nothing to show for 2 years of work.   All I would have had is a pile of shit control data and obsolete bench skills.

It does reaffirm that I did the right thing taking the job at Creighton back in 2006 even though it only paid me $20k per year.   It screwed me over salary wise for a long time but I had a REALLY good PI and the skills I learned there have pretty much been the reason I've gotten every job since.

This week has SUCKED.  I knew it would go downhill starting with getting rear ended Monday morning (both cars and drivers were fine, no damage).   Sure enough I screwed up the flow cytometry.  Then we had to spend an hour trying to figure out who a tag-less mouse was and why the wrong number was on the card.  

At least I didn't kill anything, I thought for sure I killed two mice yesterday based on their reactions to me bleeding them but they are fine this morning.

I know I am being too hard on myself but I can't help it.  Perfectionism and science do not make good bedfellows.   It's HARD to go back to learning things/starting over.  I want to go back to being the expert who can do her job blindfolded.

Eventually I'll get there. ..

Yet the field of science seems to attract a lot of perfectionists.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

I think it's b/c science feeds perfectionism.    A perfectionist is going to be someone who will sit there for hours/days/months trying to get her co-efficient variation down to 10% or less.   A perfectionist is going to be someone who sits for hours carefully mounting paper thin tissue slices onto a slide.   A perfectionist is one who will spend 8 hours doing a single assay.  A perfectionist is someone who will patiently bleed 30 mice.

The downside is science is never a straight line and shit happens.  I can't turn the perfectionism off so I go crazy when things don't work right.  I used to freak out students with how pissy I'd get during HPLC assay development.  Then I'd be all smiles once we finally achieved our goal and started processing samples.

I was thinking about it in the elevator and it isn't so much learning the technique that frustrates me.  It's the learning to TROUBLESHOOT.   Anyone can follow directions on a sheet, it's another thing to realize what went wrong and how to correct it.   That's the part that takes forever.

At least this time around I have a trainer so that helps to an extent.  However as I used to tell students you will create new f*ck ups and have to learn from it without my assistance.  I created my own f*ck up yesterday with the flow cytometry.

My former boss at Creighton said you aren't learning anything if you do it perfectly right out of the gate.  My response to that screw learning I want my job to be easy.

[mojothehelpermonkey]

I get frustrated (and anxious) too if I don't do everything perfect right away. My grad school adviser was laid back, so my internal critic was my biggest problem back then.
My postdoc adviser was a perfectionist who would hover over me. I would actually made more mistakes when he was around because I would get so nervous. He did give me what I choose to interpret as a compliment one day by saying "You make a lot of mistakes, but you always fix them and never make the same mistake twice".
I also found out later that I was red-flagged as making a lot of mistakes because I was keeping meticulous notes of any slight change to the SOP for each set of data. The other postdoc was too afraid to admit if he made a mistake, even if it was something as minor as increasing an incubation time because he didn't hear a timer.
I wish there was a way to fast forward through trouble shooting and get immediately to the point where you are churning out data.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Owning up can be painful but it sure does make life easier.  I own up and then we can move on to fix whatever it is I screwed up.

My irritation comes from working with people who are constant screw ups.   Since that is their normal nobody blinks an eye. 

However if I make a mistake they come down on me like I am drowning puppies. 

My former boss here pissed me off when I screwed up last summer.   Dude I was pregnant and experiencing some serious morning sickness. It was also partially due to you not making sure I understood pharmacokinetics.  It was first time I had ever really screwed up in five years and I busted my ass (including staying till 7:30 pm for a week) to correct it.

How about I get some understanding?

I can't NOT be responsible, that would be going against my nature.  I just wish that the people who are actually screw ups would get punished while I could get a bit of slack for making ONE mistake in five years.

[mojothehelpermonkey]

Nov 25, 2015 10:06:28 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Owning up can be painful but it sure does make life easier.  I own up and then we can move on to fix whatever it is I screwed up.

My irritation comes from working with people who are constant screw ups.   Since that is their normal nobody blinks an eye. 

However if I make a mistake they come down on me like I am drowning puppies. 

My former boss here pissed me off when I screwed up last summer.   Dude I was pregnant and experiencing some serious morning sickness. It was also partially due to you not making sure I understood pharmacokinetics.  It was first time I had ever really screwed up in five years and I busted my ass (including staying till 7:30 pm for a week) to correct it.

How about I get some understanding?

I can't NOT be responsible, that would be going against my nature.  I just wish that the people who are actually screw ups would get punished while I could get a bit of slack for making ONE mistake in five years.

That was how I felt. I would notice the other postdoc making minor and major mistakes all the time and scrambling to cover them up. Meanwhile, I am getting criticized for something minor that I have already fixed. He would also set other lab members up for failure by not training them at all, and then criticize them for not getting good results right away. That PI wasn't even a terrible scientist, he was just bad at managing employees.

[shanendoah]

Nov 25, 2015 11:29:38 GMT -5 mojothehelpermonkey said:

Nov 25, 2015 10:06:28 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Owning up can be painful but it sure does make life easier.  I own up and then we can move on to fix whatever it is I screwed up.

My irritation comes from working with people who are constant screw ups.   Since that is their normal nobody blinks an eye. 

However if I make a mistake they come down on me like I am drowning puppies. 

My former boss here pissed me off when I screwed up last summer.   Dude I was pregnant and experiencing some serious morning sickness. It was also partially due to you not making sure I understood pharmacokinetics.  It was first time I had ever really screwed up in five years and I busted my ass (including staying till 7:30 pm for a week) to correct it.

How about I get some understanding?

I can't NOT be responsible, that would be going against my nature.  I just wish that the people who are actually screw ups would get punished while I could get a bit of slack for making ONE mistake in five years.

That was how I felt. I would notice the other postdoc making minor and major mistakes all the time and scrambling to cover them up. Meanwhile, I am getting criticized for something minor that I have already fixed. He would also set other lab members up for failure by not training them at all, and then criticize them for not getting good results right away. That PI wasn't even a terrible scientist, he was just bad at managing employees.

And this is where department administrators are supposed to come into the picture. When you work for a PI, yes, that PI is your boss, but MANY PIs are bad at managing people. So if you have a problem, go the department administrator or HR person. They should be more than happy to help. We know our faculty aren't great managers, so we plan for a part of our job to be helping them manage people. (Heck, in our administrator meetings here, at least once a year we have a meeting focused on handling lab HR issues/how to help faculty navigate HR issues/helping faculty understand their role as bosses, etc.)

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

I think that's fine for big things, but I never would have gotten any work done if I was to HR/the department administrator over every shitty management issue with my PIs over the years.

Heck I'd have him checking on me 3 times a day when we'd do embryos asking me if I assayed them yet.   Dude we just perfused them, they have to sit overnight.  Chill before I put a Midol in your coffee.

I find that setting boundaries and doing it quickly is the most effective, especially if you have knowledge/skills they really need. 

And I'll also say that some HR people don't freaking care.  We're techs, we are disposable compared to a PI who brings money to the table.    I know my former bosses at Boys Town have a file 3 feet deep of complaints yet they are still there.

[emma1420]

Nov 25, 2015 10:06:28 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Owning up can be painful but it sure does make life easier.  I own up and then we can move on to fix whatever it is I screwed up.

My irritation comes from working with people who are constant screw ups.   Since that is their normal nobody blinks an eye. 

However if I make a mistake they come down on me like I am drowning puppies. 

My former boss here pissed me off when I screwed up last summer.   Dude I was pregnant and experiencing some serious morning sickness. It was also partially due to you not making sure I understood pharmacokinetics.  It was first time I had ever really screwed up in five years and I busted my ass (including staying till 7:30 pm for a week) to correct it.

How about I get some understanding?

I can't NOT be responsible, that would be going against my nature.  I just wish that the people who are actually screw ups would get punished while I could get a bit of slack for making ONE mistake in five years.

My number one pet peeve in the workplace are people who screw up and make excuses and or shift the blame, especially when it's the "I'm new excuse".  I'm new works for the first few weeks when you are working a job that anyone who can walk and talk at the same time can do, that same excuse doesn't work as well six months later. Now I think about it, it's not my number one pet peeve, it's my number two pet peeve, my number one pet peeve are the supervisors who excuse those kind of people.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

I collaborated with entire LAB full of those kind of people.   They once sent a nasty gram to my boss about how I never gave them the tissue that's why they couldn't do their work.

When my PI went down there they suddenly were able to produce the tissue. 

So then they F-ed up the PCR and tried to blame it on me which I still can't figure out how they came to that logic since it was their system and primers.

I ended up having a HUGE tantrum and swearing in my boss's face while everyone else stood around in shock.  I'd had it by that point.  It was 3 years of non stop bullshit with those people.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Nov 25, 2015 13:44:02 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

I collaborated with entire LAB full of those kind of people.   They once sent a nasty gram to my boss about how I never gave them the tissue that's why they couldn't do their work.

When my PI went down there they suddenly were able to produce the tissue. 

So then they F-ed up the PCR and tried to blame it on me which I still can't figure out how they came to that logic since it was their system and primers.

I ended up having a HUGE tantrum and swearing in my boss's face while everyone else stood around in shock.  I'd had it by that point.  It was 3 years of non stop bullshit with those people.

I worked in a toxic lab like this once.  HR was virtually useless, and when I told them some of the unethical things that I knew about in the lab, I was told that if I was smart I'd keep my mouth shut because it would come back and bite me in the butt if I tried to make a stink.  Actually, it wasn't the lab staff that was a problem but the PIs that we were working for.   I quit, and most of the lab was on their way out the door too.

When you work in a place where there is not honest collaboration, then it just doesn't work.  Period.  At that point, the best you can do is to get the hell out of dodge.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Yeah that's what my boss did and he told me if I was smart I wouldn't accept a job with any other PI at Creighton.

This particular PI hired staff that was just as bad as he was.  I begged my PI to allow me to absorb what little they did for us so I'd never have to deal with them again, but the guy was riding my boss's coattails so we had to give the douche something to justify him being on our grant.

I worked for the bad lab at Boys Town, which was apparently a large part of the reason the department was so unfriendly towards me. 

It's also I was told by my postdoc friend why they kept me isolated and wouldn't let me to talk to anyone, it had to all be thru them.  They didn't want to risk me hearing something and leaving.

That worked out well.

[mojothehelpermonkey]

I have worked in 5 labs at this point, and I feel lucky to only have been in one toxic one. Even in that situation, I never thought about getting administration involved because it was nothing compared to what some of my friends were putting up with. I wish there was better way to weed these bad PIs out.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

The one at Creighton is tenured so there was no way to get rid of him.

The PIs at Boys Town haven't brought in their own funding in years.   My friend said that the director of the research department for whatever reason refuses to get rid of them.  They went several years where nobody would work with them and had no money at all and he still didn't fire them.  He simply made them part time and somehow they managed to wheedle their way back to full time.

They're poised to lose the Navy grant.  They were given it back in 2013 and haven't produced a single result yet.   The ARF people said they got audited not to long ago b/c the Navy naturally wants to know where it's money went.  

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

My first paycheck hit my account. Holy cow! I've never seen that much hit our account at one time.

That is almost enough to cover all our expenses sans daycare. I am excited to start building up a decent chunk of change.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Getting nervous, this is the tech I am replacing's last week.    That means I am going to be flying solo starting next week.

I know the animal stuff, in fact I seem to know quite a bit more about it than most people here.  

I am worried about the flow cytometry. I f*cked up last week's.    Granted that was only the second time I have ever done it but this is a huge part of the job so I feel a lot of pressure to master it a.

Problem is I can't practice, we don't have our own reader.  I'd have to take it all down to the core and be billed every time I want to practice.   So my usual method of mastery by doing it a bazillion times till I get it right isn't an option.

I am taking the 3 hour class offered by the core lab tomorrow, so that should help some.

Plus I am still not over everything that happened at Boys Town, it's been hard to get my groove/confidence back.

I did show people in the lab I have mad dissecting skills.   We dissected a mouse for characterization of this transgene they are trying to get up off the ground.   I found taking out the major organs to be A LOT easier than taking out the inner ear.

[NastyWoman]

Nov 30, 2015 13:17:16 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Getting nervous, this is the tech I am replacing's last week.    That means I am going to be flying solo starting next week.

I know the animal stuff, in fact I seem to know quite a bit more about it than most people here.  

I am worried about the flow cytometry. I f*cked up last week's.    Granted that was only the second time I have ever done it but this is a huge part of the job so I feel a lot of pressure to master it a.

Problem is I can't practice, we don't have our own reader.  I'd have to take it all down to the core and be billed every time I want to practice.   So my usual method of mastery by doing it a bazillion times till I get it right isn't an option.

I am taking the 3 hour class offered by the core lab tomorrow, so that should help some.

Plus I am still not over everything that happened at Boys Town, it's been hard to get my groove/confidence back.

I did show people in the lab I have mad dissecting skills.   We dissected a mouse for characterization of this transgene they are trying to get up off the ground.   I found taking out the major organs to be A LOT easier than taking out the inner ear.

You got this!!! Don't let those idiots at BT get to you! You didn't get to work for your previous PI for as long as you did just because... so don't to worry so much.

[Wisconsin Beth]

I should hear something regarding my coworker's job status. If he's gone, I'll start a conversation about my chances of getting his job.

[andi9899]

Nov 30, 2015 13:17:16 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Getting nervous, this is the tech I am replacing's last week.    That means I am going to be flying solo starting next week.

I know the animal stuff, in fact I seem to know quite a bit more about it than most people here.  

I am worried about the flow cytometry. I f*cked up last week's.    Granted that was only the second time I have ever done it but this is a huge part of the job so I feel a lot of pressure to master it a.

Problem is I can't practice, we don't have our own reader.  I'd have to take it all down to the core and be billed every time I want to practice.   So my usual method of mastery by doing it a bazillion times till I get it right isn't an option.

I am taking the 3 hour class offered by the core lab tomorrow, so that should help some.

Plus I am still not over everything that happened at Boys Town, it's been hard to get my groove/confidence back.

I did show people in the lab I have mad dissecting skills.   We dissected a mouse for characterization of this transgene they are trying to get up off the ground.   I found taking out the major organs to be A LOT easier than taking out the inner ear.

I can't imagine doing your job.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

I don't really think too much about the mouse part.   I am not going to lie, at times it does bother me, but it is what it is if I am going to be able to do the job.  I tend to look at the BIG BIG picture in that what I am doing will eventually contribute to better treatments for HIV and other various diseases. 

A lot of people do end up quitting.   My boss at Creighton had several people decide it was against their religion and expect him to work around them.   My trainer here said she's had several people cry and then quit at the end of the day when asked to poke a mouse for bleeding.

It makes me wonder what people think when the job description says "animal work".  Do they think we cuddle the animals and play all day?  Or do they think they are going to be allowed to be an exception while the rest of us do all the animal work?

I just have new job jitters magnified by a 1000 after everything that has gone on this year.   The person I am replacing has been here for five years so that's some pretty big shoes to fill.   It's rough getting to that point where I feel like I know what I am doing and other people trust that I know what I am doing.  I just have to keep reminding myself I have only been here a month.

[mojothehelpermonkey]

As a tree-hugging pescatarian, my view on animal work is that it is a dirty job, but someone has to do it. I enjoyed some aspects too, like doing treatment studies where you could see marked improvements in appearance and behavior.
However, I didn't like working with lab mates who didn't take animal work seriously. A postdoc I worked with would forget to wean his mice and was terrible at sexing, so he would end up with overcrowded cages all of the time. Since he never went down to the vivarium, I was usually stuck cleaning up the mess.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

I've worked with rats, mice, rabbits and monkeys (both cynomologous and baboons).  Animal work is hard and dirty.  Monkey work is another level of being a royal pain in the butt as there is always the risk of herpes B, which is like herpes in humans to monkeys, but when this jumps species to humans becomes 90% fatal.  Like humans, most monkeys harbor the virus so we have to work with the assumption that all have it.  Also, monkeys are very susceptible to TB, even more than humans, so we had to be TB tested every 3 months.  At $5000+/animal, we could not afford a TB infection in the colony as it was an $800,000 investment.  Those animals got treated very well!  Our LAR bill for those monkeys was greater than the salary of research staff combined....and there were 12 of us!

As a large part of the research I did was animal studies, the lab did take working with animals very seriously and more than one tech got fired for not working well with them.  It just was not tolerated at all.

My boss hired one woman who refused to work with animals.  When funding got tight, she was also the first let go.  I know when she was hired, we were desperate for help in the lab so overlooked her unwillingness to work with animals.  Then we got a large contract from P&G and there was so much animal work that even the PIs were working with animals to help out.  The grant she had been working on was done, but had she been willing to do animal work, she'd have been shifted over. 

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

My boss at Creighton got to the point where the first thing he did was have new personnel perfuse a mouse and dissect out it's brain/ear.  He didn't care how well it was done, he just wanted to make sure we could do it.  He said if we could not then let him know b/c he wasn't going to waste any more of his time training us,  he'd hire a person who could handle working with animals.

I took the same approach with students. I'd find a mouse I was going to kill anyhow and have them do it instead.

Took the flow cytometry class and it was helpful up to a point.  I understand now what it is I am looking at and what all the scribbles on the screen mean.   Didn't really help with figuring out what I did wrong last week.  My best guess is when I dumped I got a little too happy and knocked my cells out of the plate along with everything else.    I need to be more careful or I may aspirate instead so I know that my cells stay at the bottom of the plate.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Too much information in my head!

I need to master Flojo (software), get familiar with all the mice and everything I have to do with them,  they want me to learn histology ASAP b/c apparently a postdoc will have a ton of samples sometime in the future

And NOW I have also been told I am expected to present next Tuesday concerning two of the strains I will be working with.

Nothing like being thrown into the fire.


The person I am replacing told me there are three other techs that can section tissue so put that last on my list until/unless they yell at me.   The highest priority is learning the stuff nobody else can do.

[myrrh]

Drama try to keep calm. They know you are still learning the ropes.

Your previous post made me confused until I realized you were probably talking about losing mouse cells and not your "little grey cells".

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Oh I lost my little grey cells a LONG time ago.   Somewhere around when the first kid was born.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Looks like someone finally snapped and invented a dating site for their colony mice.

mousemingle.com


Okay it's really for Disney fans but when I heard the name of the site the above is what popped into my head.