Sad stories about life as a UK chemist in last week's C&EN (by Vanessa Zainzinger):
Nessa Carson, a synthetic organic chemist, says she is “extremely lucky” to be working for a big pharmaceutical company in southeast England. Since she moved back to the UK in 2017, after completing a master’s degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Carson says she has seen many friends and colleagues leave chemistry because of a job market that offers young chemists fewer opportunities for exciting science or financial gain than they had hoped for....
...The mood in the UK among early-career chemists who actually want to do chemistry is somber. Disappointed by the roles the job market has to offer, chemistry graduates say they are feeling undervalued and underpaid. Many are threatening to leave the country for better opportunities elsewhere.
Some researchers, however, say they find little passion in working for a CRO. “It’s safe to say that where I am working, nobody at the junior level is particularly happy with their jobs,” says [Redacted], a medicinal chemist who, to protect her job, asked that her full name not be used.
[Redacted] works for a large CRO in east England that hires chemists on fixed-term contracts. This means job security is low for everybody, she says. “Half the people I work with are [University of] Cambridge graduates, fantastic chemists, but that doesn’t matter. The company offers them no help with career progression.” Earlier this year, the company laid off 15 chemists, then hired another 15 a few months later, she says.
Another young chemist, [Redacted2], moved to England from Spain for grad school at a public university in the northwest. Like [Redacted], he asked that, to protect his job, his full name not be used. [Redacted2] picked up plenty of job offers in the UK after completing his PhD, but he rejected them all because of the low salaries on offer.
“Perhaps my expectations were high because I did my PhD on a Marie Curie scholarship, which is roughly double the normal PhD salary in the UK,” [Redacted2] says, referring to a scholarship granted by the European Commission. “But in any case, the offers I got in the UK were about 40% lower than the ones I received in [continental] Europe.”Sad to hear things aren't going so well for younger UK chemists. Regarding CROs, it's not a surprise to me that people don't find the work particularly enjoyable - "owning" a project is one of the reasons that people get into research, and the CRO model really messes with that in a fundamental way. Here's hoping things improve.
"nobody at the junior level is particularly happy with their jobs" because they're starting in jobs that used to be filled by technicians with high school diplomas. What would have been an interesting, challenging job for a person promoted from the plant floor is a boring job for a B.S. or M.S. chemist.
ReplyDeleteI saw this at a former employer. Grandboss insisted on a B.S. chemist for a QC tech job over my boss's and my vehement objections. The kid was bored silly and left after several months.
I used to work at an analytical lab that did the same thing. The senior techs all had high school diplomas. The younger employees all had B.S. degrees and used the job as a stepping stool because it paid $13/hr.
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ReplyDeleteAnon9:54: Answer: yes, and thank you for noting my error. Much appreciated. - CJ
ReplyDeleteI'm always very shocked to hear how low PhD chemists salaries are compared to the US. Even considering the slightly longer vacation, and health care situation in the UK, the pay is still unjustifiably low.
ReplyDeleteI feel the situation in bench chemistry is similar in Switzerland. There is a glut of people specialized in synthetic organic chemistry. Supply way exceeds demand. Ergo people have a lot of trouble finding jobs in that field and wages are comparably low, given the candidates' level of education. Every once in a while, one or two spots open up in Big Pharma and HR will invariably have to wade through 300+ applications. Jobs on offer are more likely to be found in the numerous CROs and CMOs (where command of the German language might be a requirement), but with a fair bit less pay (sometimes postdocish). However, as soon as people are more open-minded and willing to move away from core research and enter into associated activities like RA, QM, QA, product management or whatnot, the quest becomes much easier and pay is most likely a fair bit higher. No surprise that people want to escape.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is exceptionally bad in Australia. Aside from a few positions doing formulation for companies like Pfizer and some of the local bespoke chemical supply firms, the employment opportunities for a synthetic organist chemist in industry are next to nil.
ReplyDeleteI graduated with a PhD in Chem, mostly doing organic synth with a heavy medicinal focus, and there was nothing I was obviously suited for at the other end. I ended up having to take a lab technician position (~$55 k AUD pa) whilst looking for something more appropriate, and so far... no success. I can't move overseas because I have family and other commitments here already.
Like many other developed countries, we have very little in the way of manufacturing left, an amount shrinking year by year. With that, all of the local RnD has gone down the toilet - previously we'd be employed by Kodak, BHP Research Laboratories, even Telstra (national telecoms company) had a few organic chemists on staff in their research labs... but finding a job where I as a PhD graduate have an obvious advantage (to the employer) over a Bachelors grad has been a very difficult task.
Companies pay the minimum wage that they can to get people that managers think will fit the need. I worked for decades at a company that paid US employees as the midpoint of the pay scale of the benchmarks for similar companies in the US. My European counterparts - from Universities like Cambridge - were paid lower because their market paid lower. Later, in the hope to cut costs, the company off-shored many of the jobs to China and the US workers had the choice to train their replacement or forgo what was a reasonable severance package. This was not well received by the staff but was legal... As expected, staff morale fell...
ReplyDeleteThis kind of thing happened once at a former employer. A site was closed down and its products were merged into my division. They flew my grandboss out for a meeting with their chemists, who pretty much acted like hostile witnesses at a trial - they answered the questions that were asked, but did not volunteer any information or go out of their way to be helpful.
DeleteObviously, the whole thing was a disaster when my grandboss failed to become an expert on their chemistry and product history in a daylong meeting / cross-examination. That wouldn't have been nearly enough time even if the laid-off chemists had been honestly trying to teach him - the product chemistry was in a different area than ours, and my grandboss understood it just enough to be dangerous. We ended up running what was left of their product line into the ground, and I personally made some decisions that turned out to be spectacularly wrong because our tribal knowledge of these products had been lost.