Thursday, December 15, 2016

Daily Pump Trap: 12/15/16 edition

A few of the industrial positions posted at C&EN Jobs:

Wilmington, DE: Incyte, looking for entry-level Ph.D. medicinal chemists.

Neenah, WI: Georgia Pacific looking for a chemist to join their analytical R&D team. M.S., 3 years experience desired, Ph.D. preferred.

You'll be able to go to Gators games?: Interesting Ph.D. biochemist position from Firebird Biomolecular Sciences:
Senior Scientist, Firebird Biomolecular Sciences, LLC, Alachua, FL.  $48,000 per yr. Research using laboratory in vitro evolution (LIVE or SELEX) with unnatural DNA and RNA analog.  Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Genetics or rel field; 2 yrs exp as Biomolecular Scientist.  Must have peer-reviewed publications in nucleic acid chemistry, molecular biology, and LIVE-SELEX. 
One presumes this is a H1b-related ad, but who knows?

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov show (respectively) "1000+", 380, 9,246 and 30 positions for the search term "chemist."

LinkedIn shows 2,219 positions for the search term "chemist" and 14,037 for the search term "chemistry." Job titles from LinkedIn - first with quotes, and the second without: Analytical chemist: 178/245 . Research chemist: 32/41. Synthetic chemist: 13/387. Medicinal chemist: 13/34. Organic chemist: 59/40. Process chemist: 12/40. Process development chemist: 6/7. Formulation chemist: 53/49. 

8 comments:

  1. 48K for a Ph.D with 2 years experience . . . is that a joke? How 'bout that STEM shortage?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. but but but....

      GATORS GAMES!!!!

      Seriously though, if someone came at me with a low offer and a sweeten-the-pot deal with irrelevant college athletics tickets, I would laugh in their face. Maybe if it were Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson, etc.

      Delete
    2. Nope....rather be paid reasonably. You can scalp the tickets a whole lot cheaper than the $50K you'd effectively be paying for them.

      Perhaps someone is trying to explain why they had to move their jobs elsewhere? ("Well, you see, I couldn't find anyone with a professor's pub record and education willing to work for a technician's salary, and so I had to move the jobs elsewhere where I could.")

      Delete
    3. So Trump's election as President should be good for chemists, then. No more moving jobs off shore, it's finished, done....grave consequences for companies that move jobs from America, grave.....

      Delete
    4. A reminder that there are plenty of other places on the internet to talk electoral politics.

      Delete
  2. better paid than a dead-end postdoc, and you likely have normal hours... not the worst option out there

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I wouldn't guess that this would be normal hours, though - the position sounds like an intensive one from the title, and the companies likely to be offering such wages are probably already short on people and working them hard to make up. In theory, in a postdoc, you'd be learning something new (hence why you are't getting paid), and it ends at some point (hopefully with the promise of making more money later).

      In addition, if you take this position, I wonder if future employers will feel free to pay you less based on this job. My first worry was that this would be sort of an attempt to reset domestic scientist wages, but it might work out badly more quickly than that.

      This may be better than a dead-end postdoc, but it might actually not be. That's not a good endorsement for the job.

      Delete
  3. Red flag for a terrible, troubled company.

    ReplyDelete

looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20