Still Just a Rat in a Cage - Laboratory Chat!

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That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

john ashpool posted:

Also, my two cents on PhDs vs masters. A PhD can make you more valuable, but it will always restrict your job opportunities. If you can get into an ivy or public ivy, the PhD is worth it. Otherwise, stick with a masters.

I would only say that this isn't true if you published well. In that case it matters far less where your PhD is from and far more where you published and how many times.

# ¿ Mar 13, 2014 20:19

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# ¿ May 8, 2024 16:17

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Farside posted:

I want to to look for a new job, however I have no idea as to what to call myself on my resume. On the company org chart I am listed as 'Filler' which means jack poo poo to anybody outside of my company.

A quick run down of what I do.

I work in a cGMP specialty gas lab. The lab is responsible for the manufacturing of ultra high purity gas and gas mixtures. Testing and certification of those gases following FDA, USP, NF, Food Grade, Milspec, AWS, and internal specialty gas protocols. So basically if there is an industry that needs high grade gases I deal with it. I also deal with client complaints in regards to most gas issues. I use a variety of instruments for testing but gas chromatography has a large roll.

I've been with this company for the last 14 years and have been in the lab for the last 8 years. For the last 4 years I have been trying to get into a management position. However, the company has been eliminating management positions since modernizing our plant. They recently allowed the last position to go unfilled. There is now 1 manager over seeing our entire plant with a lot of pissed off people who were supposed to move into those unfilled positions.

I can give more specifics if it helps, types of instruments, software used etc.

Gases analyst, gas quality control specialist, etc ?

# ¿ May 23, 2014 12:14

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Ezekiel_980 posted:

My supervisor gave me this little jem yesterday, trying to decide how to weight out a volatile sample for a weight percent analysis.

"yes weighing the sample in glass vials will work, I developed the method of weighing samples in glass vials for weight percent analysis!"

That's right I work for the person who invented this technique!

I must have learned from your boss years ago.

# ¿ Jun 10, 2014 13:03

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Dik Hz posted:

Blacksburg graduates 10 people for every job available there. Honestly, everywhere that isn't Thousand Oaks or New Jersey sucks for biotech jobs compared to RTP. Also, I'm in the triad area and we have steady work for scientists, but it's nothing compared to RTP.

New Jersey is good for biotech?

# ¿ Jun 11, 2014 01:31

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

I've seen one case in a moderately high profile lab (the PI thought they were extremely high profile, but another story) where data was generated years ago that had a huge implication. Further confirmation was needed. Graduate students / postdocs who did not recreate the same data were shown the way out of the lab very swiftly. The people who replaced them mysteriously got everything to work after that.

I think that's a part of the problem.

Don't underestimate the ego problem of some of the old grey hairs at the top. I've met far more good ones than bad mind you, but the bad ones I've met can be ridiculous. Been close witness to someone sliding off the rails and go from academic dishonesty to harrasment of employees and now to sexual harrasment.

The ombudsman says to take up the complaints with the dept chair. The dept chair is currently married to a former employee of theirs after a pregnancy and said employee is now a student in the same department.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 02:53

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Vladimir Putin posted:

The Dalibor Sames/Bengu Sezen case recently was a huge controversy for falsified data. It was all done by the grad student and the PI had no knowledge. When other students/postdocs couldn't repeat the results they got fired.

Oh poo poo haha I forgot about that case. Dude fired 2 grad students and pushed another one into quitting because they couldn't repeat the falsified data. Blamed them as being incompetent and the person falsifying the data as a 'star'.

Seen literally the same thing happen recently except no ones been willing to come forward and confront the PI about the falsified data because they hold so much influence over the field.

# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 19:36

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

I had a colleague mention a while back the existence of 600 Da cutoff centrifuge filtering systems. So very low weight cutoff centricons. Looking around Fisher and VWR (as well as googling) so far I haven't been able to find anything smaller than 1 kDa.

Does anyone know of a manufacturer for sub 1000 Da centrifuge filters?

I am trying to separate culture supernatants that may or may not contain a ~880-1200 Da polypeptide pheromone signal from small organic acid / sugar metabolites. (The polypeptides are generally heat stable and resistant to many proteases so not going that route yet).

# ¿ Jul 14, 2014 14:45

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Appachai posted:

Why can't you just order it chemically synthesized from someone like genscript?

We don't even know if that's what's responsible. Being able to separate any potential pheromone signal from standard organic acid metabolites and media components would be a good start though. It's unclear if it's a pheromone signal vs the presence or absence of some other media component.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2014 18:06

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Appachai posted:

I see. It seems like a good case for using chromatography to find active fractions from sec, then using some other types of chromatography to separate active components of those fractions.

That will be what happens after using broad cutoffs most likely. Don't have a great HPLC setup here and before I look into potentially buying columns / trying buffer systems I at least want to have a better idea of what I'm trying to separate. Only thing I know right now is that it's not ethyl acetate extractable.

Edit: And yeah, if we do think it is one of the potential pheromones we might try your 1st suggestion. This is the very beginning steps.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2014 18:12

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Nothing like getting into lab at 6am on a holiday to find out your coworkers used up the last of your Gibson mastermixes and cashed out the enzymes for them so you can't make any more until your institute opens for ordering next week. The frantic emails from your PI asking if the clones made for the grant submission are done yet don't help any either. Hooray for lab mates.

Happy New Year everyone!

# ¿ Dec 29, 2014 13:25

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Eunabomber posted:

Wait, are you purifying your own enzymes for Gibson assembly? (If so, protocol link...)

No but we make our own mastermix for around half the price of the NEB mix by buying the enzymes separately etc.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2015 00:00

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

BouncingBuckyBalls posted:

clean, well stocked, and full of happy friendly people.

How far is the commute from Atlantis or one of the 7 cities of Cibola?

I kid, congrats to you. It's nice being in a fun place to work.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2015 15:45

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

OnceIWasAnOstrich posted:

Everything described in these last posts is blowing my mind.

# ¿ Apr 20, 2015 20:48

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Sundae posted:

C-Euro and I talked over PM.

The latest Rotating Subforum is actually really convenient. I've started posting the old stories from the TPS and Lab Rat thread in diary format. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3718345

I'd like to get these things archived somewhere when I transcribe them all. I may publish them under (yet another) pen name. No idea if there's any appeal to it in any non-scientific audience, but worth a shot.

These are fun. I'm debating if I should post something for my previous academic position.

# ¿ May 10, 2015 20:40

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Stan Lee Jeans posted:

I'm just finishing up a Ph.D. and just got a nice-looking job offer for research at a biotech startup (~30 employees). Everything's looking good, but on the offer the one red flag I noticed was complete transfer of intellectual property rights to the company. Is that sort of clause standard for industry or is it negotiable?

Also IANAL but this sound pretty standard for all the friends I have in industry jobs.

# ¿ May 23, 2015 00:31

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

OnceIWasAnOstrich posted:

Everything that isn't cloning and doesn't rely on hyper-accuracy? I mean it's Taq polymerase and it is dirt cheap, why would I use something that costs way more when all I want to do is amplify a piece of DNA and see if I get a band. I can get 1000u of it from Genscript for $60 without any volume discount, roughly 5-7% of the cost of something like Phusion, Q5, or Kapa HiFi.

On a different topic, I know next to nothing about different brands of HPLC. If I am wanting to buy either a cheap new or decent used HPLC system for basic small-molecule detection and oligonucleotide purification, what are my best options for things that won't be finicky as poo poo and break all the time.

I've used Waters and Hewlett-Packard models in separate labs and both seemed to hold up great and be pretty solid instruments overall. The HP model was old and didn't have many options. The Waters was a very new system and all of the detectors on it worked great except for a refractive index detector that would just never seem to stay stable.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2015 22:30

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Discendo Vox posted:

OK, now I'm more confused. But framing another guilty party would help a lot, I would think.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2015 01:55

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

gninjagnome posted:

You're confusing being responsible and being blamed. Two totally different things.

When it's a large scale pharma informatics thing I'll put my money on incompetence every time. There's a reason I told a consultant the biggest barrier they were going to encounter rolling out a new software platform was trying to overcome people's innate hostility to new software due to a history of poorly conceived and improperly implement IT solutions.

I can imagine this statement being roundly dismissed because it is too sensible to possibly be considered.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2015 14:16

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

DOOP posted:

I got a job at a chemical plant working in the "quality" control lab

There was a literal dumpster fire yesterday. Fun times.

If you were in Massachusetts I'm pretty sure you made the news!

# ¿ Oct 8, 2015 14:17

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

DOOP posted:

Nah. Pennsylvania

Good to know we aren't the only fuckups

I can't remember the particulars as I just skimmed the headline but some hazardous waste / safety-related company had a dumpster catch on fire at their shop because of improperly disposed materials iirc.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2015 17:07

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Any microbiologists finding work?

Stuck in the Boston area for at least a year or two more, postdoc funding is about to run out and the NIH just rejected my latest grant application so it's probably time to hang up the "future academic" part of the career path for good.

At this point I'm not even sure what kind of position I should be shooting for / reasonably expect to land. Cursory looks around only seem to be for more postdoctoral positions or for BS level technicians.

As far as training goes I've got tons, only a bit in high-throughput sequencing stuff but have some experience with it and will publish that work hopefully within the next few weeks.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2015 03:06

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

RadioPassive posted:

Shoot off a resume to Genzyme, Biogen, Takeda, Shire, and whoever else I'm forgetting. Go get drunk in Kendall square, someone will hire you.

Yeah. Been looking around, just starting as the bad news came yesterday. Looks like anything searched under "microbiologist' is very thin but where all of my higher level training lies so am trying to work with that.

I already work in Kendall just in an academic lab. Got a few friends in different industry spots I'll be tapping for contacts/ info but figured this thread is also a good resource. Mainly just still very much out of sorts and in disarray right now as a fairly slam dunk set of things have fallen through over the course of a year with yesterday finally being the linchpin.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2015 00:45

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Appachai posted:

Biotech tuesdays, google it.

Yeah will be going. My wife already has gone a fair amount.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2015 11:53

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

seacat posted:

How the hell did you get by on that little in Boston? I used to live in Boston so I know how expensive poo poo is... I make more than that in DFW and the cost of living is like 1/4 Why did you tolerate it for 5 years??

Ask every postdoc there. :suicide:

# ¿ Jan 13, 2016 21:27

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Dik Hz posted:

Academia is poo poo until you're a full tenured professor with a lifetime achievement grant.

I like to think there's somewhere inbetween but... yeah probably so. Things are looking up for now though despite being unbearably broke all the time compared to my friends.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2016 17:46

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

RadioPassive posted:

I'd do that.

I'd be game.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2016 20:13

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

john ashpool posted:

I'm thinking somewhere around Kendall, maybe 7pm on a work day.

Sounds decent but I'd suggest not Meadhall because if it's even half full it's nearly impossible to hear the person next to you.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2016 13:51

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Johnny Truant posted:

Had a coworker have to google how to convert .96kg into g the other week.

# ¿ Jan 17, 2016 21:46

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

goatse.cx posted:

Hey people, newly minted job-haver and first-time reader here..... Just wanna ask is it at all wise or common to go to grad school after working 5-6 years? Feels weird planning when to ditch the job when I've held it just a month.... But it doesn't pay that well. Is it hard to get into a good grad program without a lot of recommendations? Was too shy to ask for them....

Edit: i'm a microbiology lab tech for the qc dept of a bigpharma corp by the way.

Honestly when I get my own lab I'd prefer to hire people who have worked after undergrad and came back to school.

As for recommendations, find the person you want to work for / who is doing what you want to do, then reach out to them. With your work experience, they'll be interested if they have room. This will be your best advocate at getting into the school.

But, if you're ditching your current job because of low pay, you're committing yourself to ~6 years of low pay and even more than that if you postdoc. Only just this year has my postdoc salary matched what I was being paid as a technician in 2004.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 11:24

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Scientastic posted:

So far its looking good.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2016 16:48

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Scientastic posted:

I'm just bitter because I used to think like that and it didn't work out!

I'm sorry to hear that. I still expect that things can go wrong here but have a few places showing interest where I have very strong personal contacts / advocates. Fingers crossed all the same.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 16:40

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Dik Hz posted:

You successfully avoid the pitfalls of post-doc'ing. You get a tenure-track assistant professorship at one of the top 5 schools in the nation. You win your first grant through a new investigator program. You use the money to buy some state of the art equipment and pay a post-doc and a couple students. But you can't attract top tier people because you're so new. Oh well, you can train them. You start off optimistic. You publish a couple papers, despite your students not being the best. Despite vowing to stay above it, you get embroiled in drama about promotions, shared use facilities, and how much of your grant goes to the department and the school. You make some mistakes in leadership and management because you've never had any formal training. But you carry on. Your first student graduates and gets a sweet post-doc. You're proud. However, your first grant is running out. You push yourself and your students hard to get the data necessary to win another grant. You get a reputation as a slave-driver, which impacts the quality of students you can get. You watch your unethical colleagues fudge data and win grants. You still haven't gotten your second grant, but your data is good and impactful. Unfortunately, you aren't eligible for the new investigator grants and you don't win any more funding. You're denied your promotion and forced to leave. Your students scramble to find new professors to hopefully graduate. Half burn out to depression and you feel like a miserable failure.

Happened to 2/3 assistant professors in my department that started the same time I did (as a PhD student). The third moved to a second tier school to remarry her ex-husband.

I don't miss academia one bit. I love running an industry lab, though.

Trust me, more than well aware of this and have several friends well past me in the process who have gone through most of what you describe above. I've also got several who got the nice industry job, settled down then their company got bought out, their department dissolved and then they had to relocate halfway across the country. Or others who went through similar things and got laid off outright.

I absolutely will not say that industry is worse than academia in that regard, more saying it just to mention that nothing is certain and while the risk is greater in academia, it's something that I am aware of and still continuing with. Teaching and training were my primary motivators when I started the whole thing and I guess I am staying with that now. Somewhere along the way I got good at doing research and writing grants and if academia doesn't work out then I am certain I could transition to industry and still be alright.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2016 18:59

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

I'm in favor of a headphones ban in the lab. Seen multiple accidents happen due to them and also several young graduate students act out passive aggressive vengance on each other by their use.

Would rather have gotten rid of those people than the headphones, but I think encouraging open communication is a better outcome.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2016 01:53

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Dik Hz posted:

You should not be working alone in a lab with dangerous chemicals. Full stop.

Headphones do not belong in a lab with dangerous chemicals, because you need to be alert enough to respond to your colleagues needing help. And you need to be responsive enough to respond to people walking past you/bumping your elbows.

Molecular biology labs, on the the other hand. You're micropipetting non-hazardous poo poo over and back for hours. Anything to numb your mind enough to do those tasks is fine.

I work in molecular bio / microbio labs and have seen more than once incident of solvent spills / someone caught something on fire and half the lab didn't know and either walked right into it or sat there at their bench with headphones in while 2 others in the lab grabbed a fire extinguisher and pulled an alarm. Not a fan of them.

That's not counting dozens of "near misses" where someone is carrying a BSL2 culture and nearly gets knocked over because they can't hear another person walking behind them when they stand up with a sample etc.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2016 13:32

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Johnny Truant posted:

Y'all need to get better trained/coordinated coworkers then. One earbud out is perfectly acceptable.

My old boss used to get on me cause I'd have both in and couldn't hear her... so I took one out. Only issues we've ever had with headphones in lab.

Ah yeah, proper training will teach someone to overcome a voluntary sensory impairment. That'll do it.

Not having em in my lab. Use a speaker.

# ¿ Mar 25, 2016 20:48

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

I had to purify pyocyanin from Pseudomonas aeruginosa. It's a blue pigment and the bacterial cultures themselves are a murky green color so they already look kinda neat. To extract you do an organic phase separation into chloroform and you get a brilliant green organic phase. Next you acidify the organic phase and it turns bright loving red then you repartition it into water a few times, take the same red organic phase and re-neutralize it and it ends up being this brilliant royal blue color.

Looks cool as gently caress and is the only legitimate lab protocol I've ever done that looked like Hollywood science.

# ¿ Jun 29, 2016 13:18

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Maera Sior posted:

I have a few questions I really home someone can answer.

Do institutions usually have a deionized water setup? (Trying my hand at a budget, hope I don't have to estimate the volume.)

I can't follow this procedure, questions below.

I can't get to Milward and Kluckner right now, so I'm not sure of the HCl concentration, but I can probably gain access to it somehow. However, if anyone has access or has done this, can you let me know what the concentration is?
Next, I need K2S204 (?), but I suspect this is a typo. Zhang et al (which I do have) refers to K2S2O8 (the S2O8 oxidizes the Se), which would make more sense, except my chemistry is too rusty to understand what's going on in that paper. Does anyone agree with my typo assessment?

It's more common than not for a research building to have either a deionized or distilled water setup. In the cases where they don't many will already have smaller deionization units in place in shared spaces. If it's an exceptionally old building and/or school without a big budget it might be up to you to buy your own DI system.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2016 23:02

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Appachai posted:

I have to interview someone who has worked in QA QC for theranos for 5 years tomorrow. wtf is this hiring manager thinking

"So I see on your resume you did nothing for 5 years"

Edit: actually that plays better if they were in the compliance office.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2017 16:17

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Development posted:

rofl

The restrooms will be unlocked from 8:00AM � 6:00PM (Monday �Friday) on that date indefinitely.

For your labs that occupy building x please send out separate emails for the male lab occupants and another separate email for the and female lab occupants. We would like to prevent male lab members from having the code for the women�s restroom and we would like for the female lab member to not have the access code to enter the men�s restroom.

this is ridiculous

Are you in North Carolina or something?

# ¿ Mar 29, 2017 21:32

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# ¿ May 8, 2024 16:17

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Discendo Vox posted:

Why would they feel the need to do this? It's apparently a concern about something after hours...

His building is probably right next to the Natatorium.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2017 22:01

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Still Just a Rat in a Cage - Laboratory Chat!

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