A retired pilot un-retires in Japan

I enjoyed this New York Times article about older workers in Japan: 

NAGASAKI, Japan — Shigekazu Miyazaki is spending what should have been his retirement 25,000 feet in the air. 

Mr. Miyazaki, a pilot with nearly four decades’ experience at All Nippon Airways, Japan’s largest airline, left the carrier last year at its mandatory retirement age of 65. But rather than take up golf or fishing, Mr. Miyazaki since April has been piloting 39-seat propeller planes for Oriental Air Bridge, a tiny airline that connects the southwestern city of Nagasaki to a group of remote islands. 

“I never would have thought I’d still be flying at 65,” Mr. Miyazaki, who is trim and has a deep voice and a full head of gray hair, said before a recent flight. “But I’m still healthy, and I love to fly, so why not do it as long as I can?” 

A man in his seventh decade extending his commercial flying career still qualifies as a novelty in Japan — but maybe not for long. 

...Oriental Air Bridge had never hired a pilot Mr. Miyazaki’s age before, but, with skilled pilots in short supply nationwide, it has been expanding its recruiting.... Oriental Air Bridge pays him only about a third of his peak salary, but he says he does not mind.

This seems to me to be pretty textbook labor economics: if the labor pool is small and demand is high, employers start changing their hiring standards to select those workers they are willing to take on. In this particular case, it appears that Mr. Miyazaki is willing to take a pretty significant pay cut to keep flying (although I suspect that pilot pay has something to do with the size of the plane the pilot flies as well...)

Something tells me, though, that this sort of situation is relatively rare in chemistry, and the number of bench-level scientists who have been recruited back into the lab after their retirement is quite low. I know the story is different in academia, but I guess I am willing to be proven wrong in the comments. Readers, know of any cases where long-time bench-level scientists have been tempted back into the lab?  

"[T]here is absolutely no routine here"

Here is our second story of a chemist working (and changing jobs) after 50, from Larry F.:

I worked at a large research center for a large chemical/oil company for 12 years (130 employees) right out of my post-doc. One of the advantages for working at a large company  was that I was exposed to a lot of different areas of the business, from the commodity side (we had groups that went down to Houston and Louisiana to troubleshoot our production facilities) to basic research developing a line of specialty chemicals, so I developed a lot of process/scale-up expertise.

In 2001 or so, headquarters decided to get out of the specialty chemical business (despite spending $250MM in the previous 5 years, but that is another story), laid off the entire research staff and closed the building. Three of the senior employees bought the building and all the equipment for a song and started a small custom manufacturing business with about 15-20 former employees.

Flash forward to today: we have about 50 employees and I am still in the lab most days (I am 57 years old). With a small company, there are no real titles, everyone pitches in as needed (including the owners). Being a contract lab, what comes through our door on a regular basis spans all of chemical research. Despite my formal training in organic chemistry, I have tackled projects for our customers spanning inorganic, organometallic and polymer chemistry as well as the occasional organic target compound. I have made quantum dots, metal oxide nano crystals, catalysts, and the like.

Our company works with a range of clients: small startups that don't have facilities to generate larger quantities of material, up to some of the largest chemical companies in the world that for some reason do not want to do kilo lab or pilot work on the materials they develop! I also help with any production problems that may come up in our scale up facility. My tenure (and trust of the owners) has afforded me the ability to work more or less independent; that is, when a customer calls in a request to do something, I talk to them, generate a price quote, do the lab work and be the key contact person during the lifetime of the project.

I think I was pretty lucky, in that the owners liked me from my time dealing with them at the larger company and thus bought me on when we went private. I am also lucky in that the variability of the work coming in keeps me interested in what I do, there is absolutely no routine here. I joke that I plan to work until I'm 90, but I see a 10 year horizon for at least being in the lab.

Thanks to Larry F. for his contribution.

Readers, have a story of staying a chemist after 50 to contribute? Write in to chemjobber@gmail.com; confidentiality and final publication decision is yours. 

"I was doing the science I wanted to do with more or less no boss(es)."

Last week, I asked for stories of chemists who managed to stay employed after middle-age. Here is our first story, by Anon:

My short response to "how chemists keep their jobs past 50" is to go "academic".  Let me briefly explain.  As part of a corporate acquisition several decades ago, I along with several hundred other drug discovery scientists were laid off (aka fired).  I was 49 at the time and wanted my next job to be such that I had some control of when I retired. 

I decided the only way to keep doing science and retire under more or less my terms was to go the academic route.  There is no question that getting grants, tenure and good students was challenging at the beginning but after a few years, I was doing the science I wanted to do with more or less no boss(es). 

After several decades of doing the job of my dreams, I got sick of the cold wintry weather and being far away from my kids/grandkids and decided to retire at 70+.  At my exit interview, a high-level HR representative asked me why on earth I am retiring. How's that for feeling "loved"? 

If my university employer were in, for example, Florida or Arizona and my kids/grandkids lived close by, I would still be employed.

Thanks to Anon for their contribution. Readers, have a story of staying a chemist after 50 to contribute? Write in to chemjobber@gmail.com; confidentiality and final publication decision is yours. 

Are you a chemist and over 50? Write in!

A phenomenal request from Logan's Run:

I would be much more interested to read "how chemists keep their jobs past 50," but I think that getting enough anecdotes to write a story would be challenging. 

Are you a chemist, still a chemist, not a "boss of bosses" and over 50? I would love to publish your story. Please write in to chemjobber@gmail.com, and I would be happy to publish your story. Anonymous or not, that's up to you.

(My father, whom I love, spent the last ~15 years or so of his engineering career basically working his heart out, running completely scared of being laid off from his employer before he could reach retirement age. He woke up every day determined to be a great asset to his company, thinking about his job pretty much every waking moment that he was not thinking about his family or his other (few) responsibilities. I'm not sure that's attainable for most folks.) 

A very interesting alternative career in chemistry: Doug Taber, literature searcher

Doug Taber is a well-known chemistry professor at the University of Delaware -- he writes the Organic Chemistry Highlights series (with Tristan Lambert.) You can get it e-mailed to you, which I do; I suspect that it is some of the earliest academic chemblogging online. Anyway, this was an interesting e-mail that I got in my inbox this week titled "Organic Search Service" (emphasis mine):

Need a recipe for an organic transformation? Aldehyde to oxime to nitrile not working?  Need to add three carbons to an acid to make the 1,4-keto aldehyde? Since the mid-1970’s, I have been building a database of organic transformations, from reducing a ketone in the presence of an aldehyde (and vice versa) to methods for isoxazole synthesis.  Now that I have retired from teaching, I can offer an inexpensive search service. Just email me the search, we will discuss back and forth until it is clear exactly what is wanted, and I will send you brief descriptions with references.  The cost?  $100 search, or $2000/25 searches in a year, $10,000/150 searches in a year, payable ahead of time.  I will only charge for the search if the customer is satisfied. This is more economical than SciFinder, and more efficient, since the results are intelligently filtered.

What about those two searches?

Aldehyde to nitrile, other than oxime dehydration:
Dimethylhydrazine + propylene oxide: Synthesis 1979: 301
Ammonia + iodine: JOC 68: 1158; TL 42: 1103; 49: 2213
Ammonia + other oxidant: Syn Comm 1979: 529; Synlett 2003: 143; 2003: 262
Oxidation of hydrazone: JACS 122: 4526; JOC 61: 1159; TL 29: 811; 34: 141; 39: 2009; 47: 8969
With NaN3/SiCl4: TL 36: 2639
From lactol, via azide: ACIE 33: 751
By free radical fragmentation/cyanation: JOC 65: 3961

Acid chloride to 1,4-keto aldehyde:  a-silyloxy allyltrimethyl silane/TiCl4, JOC 53: 2551 (1978)

If you would like to know more, send me an email (CJ's note: taberdf -at- udel/dot/edu), or give me a call.

He then gives his cell phone number, which I was a little bit surprised at.

I can't say that I'm completely shocked at the existence of such a service, but I think that it is interesting that he is monetizing his personal list of references - not a terrible idea, really. Also, I think that he says that it's more economical than SciFinder (true!) and more intelligently filtered (definitely true.) I wonder what other literature searchers/consultants charge, and how it compares.

I am interested to see if his price point is reasonable and who will use it -- industrial researchers? I might use it for work, but it'll be one-off sorts of things. I wonder if his prices will be negotiable? Hmmmm. 

Age discrimination in Silicon Valley

I don't really know very much about age discrimination, but I assume that it does happen. (My short experience observing large pharma layoffs tells me it might, in its weird legal fashion.) The San Jose Mercury News has an interesting article about it, with plenty of quotes about investors and executives ideas that young software developers are more knowledgeable about modern software protocols and have more time on their hands:

Some technology recruiters say unequivocally they see bias at work. Marta Fuentealba, a principal at start-up specialist Talent Farm, says she's encountered it many times. 

She recalls a meeting at a software company a few years ago, when the human-resources executive told her he would like to find somebody "around age 26 or so" to fill a job. An age requirement along those lines would violate both state and federal laws on discrimination, California labor lawyers say. 

"You mean, somebody less jaded?" Fuentealba recalls asking, hoping to jolt the executive back into legal territory. "And he said, 'No, I mean somebody young, probably no older than 26.'" Back at the office, she sent the executive resumes from a variety of candidates. 

..."I am just an incredibly enthusiastic fan of very talented 20-somethings starting companies," Sequoia Capital's Mike Moritz, 58 years old and a top VC, once said at a conference, echoing similar comments he has made over the years. "They have great passion. They don't have distractions like families and children and other things that get in the way of business." He was 49 at the time.

Yikes. Remind me not to try to become a Silicon Valley entrepreneur anytime soon; seems like being a husband and a father could be a liability.

I've never really worked with older chemists as peers for an extended amount of time; I've mostly had them as bosses. I don't really think there's a significant creativity difference between younger and older chemists.*

This bit in the article about certain cosmetic changes during job hunting I found particularly distasteful:

Silicon Valley veterans try to adapt as best they can. Adams of Socialdial ticks off a list of faux pas that he believes peg older jobseekers as outsiders. "You can't have an AOL email," he says. "That's horrible. A Gmail address is okay. What's really cool is an email with your name on it," as part of the domain. 

In person, older job applicants should carry a backpack, not a briefcase, he says. Avoid Blackberries and Dell laptops in favor of Android phones and Apple products. And above all, steer clear of wristwatches, which most younger people have replaced with the clocks on their phones. "The worst would be a gold Rolex," he says. "Tacky, and old."

I wonder if similar (and stupid) age-related cosmetic issues are at work in the chemistry world -- I tend to think not, but I dunno. It seems that we have a culture that values wisdom and experience (relative to Silicon Valley, anyway). But I haven't been in the big world of the pharma/chemical industry very long. Readers, please feel free to correct me.

*I have, on occasion, found older chemists who have failed to keep up with the chemical literature in any serious fashion. (Around the time of Suzuki's Nobel prize, I was amused to talk to one manager who found palladium-catalyzed chemistry to be a cute academic oddity, as opposed to a technology that should be seriously considered.) I don't think that's really age-related, so much as it is about failing to exercise an important prerogative of a Ph.D. chemist's life: to keep current with important, job-relevant literature. I assume that these mental discipline issues are found in both the young and the old.