Monday, October 22, 2012

DuPont employee: "We’re going to be around for another 200 [years]."

In this week's employment article, Laura Cassiday covers biotech/chemical companies that are highly rated for employee satisfaction. Here's some DuPont Crop Protection chemists sounding hopeful:
“I’m always learning, which keeps my work really stimulating,” says Andrew E. Taggi, a synthetic organic chemist who works on fungicide and herbicide discovery. During his eight years at Crop Protection, he has gained experience in many fields beyond synthetic chemistry, including toxicology, plant pathology, and agronomy. Taggi notes that, should his research interests ever change, the diverse skills he’s learned at Crop Protection would facilitate his transfer to other chemical and biological divisions of DuPont.Crop Protection has a burgeoning pipeline and many scientists reaching retirement age, so [32-year DuPont veteran] Lahm anticipates a large hiring push over the next five years. “We’ll need new Ph.D.-level scientists, but we also need experienced chemists with bachelor’s and master’s degrees,” he says. “Sometimes people bring in skills learned in industry that can’t be picked up quite as well in graduate school or postdoctoral programs.” 
Taggi notes that many DuPont employees choose to remain at the firm for their entire careers. His father, also a synthetic chemist, retired from DuPont in 2010 after 38 years with the company. The large network of DuPont employees and retirees in the area helps foster a sense of community and stability. “DuPont has been here for more than 200 years, and you know we’re going to be around for another 200,” Taggi says.
Nice to know that DuPont might be hiring experienced chemists -- if true, that's welcome news. And that DuPont employees think the company will be around for another 200 years? Boy, for all of our sakes, I sure hope he's right.

14 comments:

  1. I'd like to think that they would be around for another 200 years (certainly they will in some form or another), but I don't know that the technical guys are the ones that make the decisions that impact company longevity.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Parke-Davis - "Seriously, guys, who'd buy us out?"
    Schering - "Are you kidding? We're huge!"
    Wyeth - "All rumors of a buyout are false"
    Bear Sterns - "Here's to 80 more years, guys!"

    ReplyDelete
  3. Let's ask the Polymer Product guys, the Dupont Pharma guys, the DuPont explosives guys and even the Ag guys who were hit with lay-offs several years back about the long-term job commitments of DuPont.

    GE is still here after a century, but tell that to all those former GErs whose jobs parished along the way and see what kind of response comes your way.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Relevant but unrelated news: Scientists convicted of manslaughter in Italy for not predicting an earthquake:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20025626

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This makes me want to cry. Spouse is from Italy and wants to move back. Between xenophobia, difficulty obtaining a work visa, a far worse jobs crisis, and other high-profile trials (including the Amanda Knox trial), I really don't want to make that move. As much as I love visiting I'm equally happy every time I make it back to the States.

      Delete
    2. I know quite well a son of one of the sentenced geophysicists; he used to joke that his dad gets asked for a soundbite on CNN every time Mt. Etna erupts...

      Delete
  5. My colleague/boss used to work for Shell Crop protection division and left later, after the research site was acquired by DuPont - because he disliked the bureaucracy and the heavy handed big management style. From what he described, DuPont has apparently a policy of keeping workplace safe by ostracizing people who had accident at work - even a minor mishap like solvent spill typically brings paperwork-heavy investigation and gets in your HR file. A third reported accident often means dismissal; such "zero tolerance" of safety violation and the hostile investigations only make people cover up accidents at work but it provides alibi to the management.

    From what he described, designing new pesticides is very much a small molecule medchem work - he loved it and found it very easy to move to Pharma afterwards.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Milkshake, I was in that same group and exited in the same manner (your colleague/ boss is a friend). It was actually worse. The discoverer of the sulfonyl urea herbicides (George Levitt) left a flask on a rotovap with a diazonium salt in it. No one was hurt. The director of research later said "I came this close to firing him". He was sent to work in the greenhouse as punishment.

      Delete
  6. I worked for DuPont for almost 14 years back near the start of my working live... I thought I would be there my whole career.... and then got laid off in the mid 90s.

    ReplyDelete
  7. It is unfortunate that the author of this CE & News article didn't google 'DuPont Layoff Crop Protection". It took me about 2 minutes to come upon the notice of a 2006 layoff of 1500 people in this division:
    http://articles.philly.com/2006-12-12/business/25398521_1_corn-seed-corn-seed-doyle-karr

    and the 1999 layoff of 800 people:
    http://business.highbeam.com/3563/article-1G1-55080150/dupont-cut-800-jobs-its-cropprotection-business

    In DuPont, once a division starts having 2-3 years in a row of less-than-stellar performance, the upper management starts in on 'strategic restructuring', which inevitably means layoffs, which more often than not affect the R & D labs. For every chemist who has spent 38 years at the company, there is at least one who was forced into early retirement, or laid off. In fact, when I was there in the mid-late 1990's, the CEO came out and said people should not expect to spend their entire careers with the company.

    So, it's not a entirely bad place to work, and it sounds like some divisions right now are doing fine, and Crop Protection appears to be one of them. For now. The chemist who was profiled in this story has the right to her happy-go-lucky world view, but it simply does not jive with the history of this division.

    ReplyDelete
  8. If this is all true, then why did Vladimir Grushin leave? And I heard he complained about not being allowed to do as much interesting research as back when he joined.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Today's headlines: DuPont to Cut 1,500 Jobs as Earnings Miss Estimates.

    So much for lifetime employment and gold watches for 1500 people.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ugh, for real: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-23/dupont-profit-trails-analyst-estimates-as-pigment-sales-decline

      I had been hoping you were joking. :-/

      Delete
  10. And now more job news from another former gold watch chemical company:

    Dow Chemical, the largest chemical maker in the United States, said on Tuesday it plans to cut 5 percent of its workforce and shutter 20 plants as part of a restructuring program aimed at countering a slowing global economy.

    Isn't this the company whose CEO was complaining about the lack of supply of qualified scientists and the need to train more?

    I wonder how many Dow scientists will be wacked in this go around?

    ReplyDelete