NYT: "Pay for Lawyers is So High People Are Comparing It to the N.B.A."

Via the New York Times: 

Hotshot Wall Street lawyers are now so in demand that bidding wars between firms for their services can resemble the frenzy among teams to sign star athletes.

Eight-figure pay packages — rare a decade ago — are increasingly common for corporate lawyers at the top of their game, and many of these new heavy hitters have one thing in common: private equity...

...Lawyers have earned multimillion-dollar pay packages for more than a decade. When Scott A. Barshay, one of the industry’s pre-eminent mergers-and-acquisitions lawyers, left Cravath, Swaine & Moore to join Paul, Weiss in 2016, his pay package of $9.5 million created a stir in the industry. (Mr. Barshay’s compensation has risen significantly since then, two people with knowledge of the contract said.)

But the recent jump in pay has happened at a dizzying pace and for many more lawyers. Coupled with the fierce poaching, it is swiftly reshaping the economics of major law firms. Kirkland has even guaranteed some hires fixed shares in the partnership for several years, according to several people with knowledge of the contracts. In some instances, it has extended forgivable loans as sweeteners.

I think it is relatively rare to hear about million-dollar type packages for academic chemists, and I presume that very senior pharma managers might make high-six-figure/low million salaries. I'm guessing none of them make $20,000,000/year, but I'm guessing that those chemists are also not generating tens of millions of dollars of fees either. Towards a day of million-dollar chemist salaries, I guess. 

C&EN: EV tires wear faster than normal ones

 Via Chemical and Engineering News, this really cool article on EV tire wear (article by Alex Tullo): 

...It turns out that the connection is strong. Issues of weight, torque, and lack of coasting mean that tires on EVs are subject to more stress than the ones on gasoline-powered vehicles and wear out sooner. In response, tire makers and suppliers of polymers and other ingredients are developing new elastomers and introducing new materials so that tire wear doesn’t become a drawback to EV ownership.

One reason for wear is gravity. Because of those bulky batteries, EVs are heavier than conventional cars. For example, a gasoline-powered Toyota Camry weighs 1,500 kg; a Tesla Model 3 comes in at 1,800 kg.

Another is torque. As anyone who has seen videos of Teslas beating Lamborghinis in drag races knows, electric motors apply more force to the wheels than conventional cars do.

And finally, explains Dale Harrigle, chief engineer for consumer replacement tires at Bridgestone Americas, EVs don’t coast—or roll freely—like conventional cars do. Force is almost always being applied to the wheels, either through the car’s electric motors or its regenerative braking system.

“So there’s very little coasting that occurs in an electric vehicle, and that’s part of the reason why the wear life is reduced,” Harrigle says. Between the weight, torque, and lack of coasting, tires on an EV wear 20–30% faster than they would on a conventional car, he estimates....

I love these kinds of articles in C&EN that explain a pretty common yet undercovered aspect of life and chemistry. Read the whole thing! 

The 2025 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List: 17 research/teaching positions and 2 teaching positions

The 2025 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List (curated by Andrew Spaeth and myself) has 17 research/teaching positions and 2 teaching positions. 

Want to help out? Here's a Google Form to enter positions.

To see trending, go to Andrew Spaeth's visualization of previous years' list.

On July 3, 2023, the 2024 Chemistry Faculty Jobs List had 17 research/teaching positions.

Want to talk anonymously? Have an update on the status of a job search? Go to the first open thread. 

Don't forget to click on "load more" below the comment box for the full thread. 

Supplement formulators are experimenting with new carbs

Also in this week's C&EN, this cool article (article by Robin Dooovan)

Triathlete Gwen Jorgensen fueled her 2016 Olympic gold with Red Bull, a potent, fizzy mix of sugar, taurine, and caffeine that tastes a bit like cherry cough syrup. Perhaps surprising to non-Olympians, sugar is the most important fuel in that concoction. Athletes rely on carbohydrates, often in the form of sugars, to provide energy and prevent them from “bonking”—or hitting a wall of exhaustion. Glucose is the body’s primary energy source, so athletes look for drinks and gels that will impart a lot of this simple sugar.

Red Bull provides simple sugars like sucrose, which contains a single unit each of glucose and fructose. While that was enough to power Jorgensen to an Olympic medal, she later switched from triathlon to running full time, and longer run sessions meant she needed even more mid-workout carbs. Simply gulping down sweet drinks made Jorgensen’s stomach cramp—she needed something that would give her more glucose without upping the concentration of sugary carbs she was taking in.

It is really fascinating to read about the various chemicals that go into supplements - it makes sense that the highly branched cyclic dextrins take longer to metabolize, but I am genuinely curious about their bioavailability over time. (Isn't this something that could be pretty straightforwardly tested in a lab somewhere?) 

C&EN: "US trade group sees chemical growth"

In this week's C&EN, this good news (article by Alexander H. Tullo): 

On the back of a US economy on “solid footing,” the American Chemistry Council (ACC), a trade group, expects the US chemical sector to post upbeat results in 2024 and 2025. After a 1.3% decline in 2023 due largely to inventory destocking, the ACC forecasts that chemical output volumes will rise by 2.2% in 2024 and 1.9% in 2025. The group expects economic growth of 2.4% this year and 1.7% in 2025 as inflation calms and recession fears ebb. “Looking ahead, the U.S. economy will drive up demand across many key chemistry end-use industries, which should tee up a healthy increase in chemical output,” Martha Moore, ACC’s chief economist, says in the report. The council expects US automotive sales to increase slightly, to 15.7 million units, in 2024 and to 16.3 million units next year. It also says that, despite higher borrowing costs, demand for new homes in the US will maintain housing starts at 1.4 million units.

Here's hoping this will be good news for the employment market.