1. HELPING CHEMISTS FIND JOBS IN A TOUGH MARKET. 2. TOWARDS A QUANTITATIVE UNDERSTANDING OF THE QUALITY OF THE CHEMISTRY JOB MARKET.
What's the job market like for chemists? Dude -- it's always bad.*
How bad is it? How the heck should I know? Quantifying the chemistry job market is what this blog is about. That, and helping chemists find jobs.
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(*For the literal-minded, this is a joke. Mostly.)
Dude, I'm just hoping to be working in the industry in my 50s!
ReplyDeleteDude, what kind of self-respecting industrial chemist still lives into their 90s
ReplyDeleteWhat, we're all supposed to curl up and die before then?
DeleteI for one plan on sticking around just so I can bore the young'uns with tales of paper notebooks and manually-shimmed NMRs....
Always great to see that C&EN is providing hard-hitting research directed towards the critical employment issues faced by its members! (at least 0.00001% of them).
ReplyDeleteThe guy from Lorenzo's Oil
ReplyDeleteThe oldest industrial chemist I've ever known, kept working till he was 70, by his own choice. Of course, this was 20 years ago, when companies would allow people to do this. Nowadays, an industrial chemist is lucky if they are still employed till age 60. At the same company, I know someone who recently struggled to make it to 57, just so he would qualify for a full pension.
ReplyDeleteThe only 90+ year old chemists I would think, are those who own their own small companies.
Certainly when you read the obituaries in C & E News, the recently deceases are often in their 80s and 90s. But then almost always, if they were industrial chemists, it says that they retired 20-30 years earlier.
It's common at small companies to keep a semiretired 70-something year old chemist around part-time; I know of several cases.
ReplyDeletethe only chemist i know of working in his or her 90's (industrial or academia) is stork.
ReplyDeleteGeorge Just at McGill was definitely at least in his mid-70's when he fell over from a heart attack (I think) in the lab.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, the shitty and inconsistent job market will probably result in a similar outcome (eventually) for yours truly. Pension? Retirement? haha
Well, if most faculty want to, er, "work" until they drop dead, why not you?
ReplyDelete