Chemist versus plumber

Lots more chemists in the past; lots more plumbers overall. Thanks to Job Voyager for the comparison. 

Daily Pump Trap: 5/17/11 edition

Good morning! Between May 12 and May 16, there were 23 new positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 4 (17%) are academically connected.

Slowing down a lot: I suspect that we're in the summer 'fallow' period. Things will probably pick up again in mid-July.

Oh, you again: Neurocrine Biosciences is a biotech in San Diego; as I recall, they laid off a good portion of their medicinal chemistry staff some years ago. That being said, they're looking for an experienced Ph.D. chemist to be their director of chemical development. Eight years experience in the pharmaceutical field desired. Hopefully, this is good news for them.

And you, too: Intrexon is still looking for that position for a M.S./Ph.D. chemist to perform scale-ups of internal R&D compounds. Why the resubmit?

Breathe free: Assay Technologies (Boardman, OH) manufactures personal monitoring badges for chemicals. They're looking for a B.S./M.S./Ph.D. chemist to perform analysis; method development experience desired. "Company benefits include liberal vacation"; there's a joke in there somewhere. No relocation offered.

You gotta love this: In the middle of this paltry assortment of ads, there's an advertisement from the Singapore Economic Development Board, suggesting that chemists or chemical engineers with "passion for academic or industrial research" visit contactsingapore.sg for ads for work there. Following the links will lead you to 11 positions for working chemists, some for quite senior ones. (I've always wanted to see Singapore; I'll have to give up my love of Big League Chew, though.)

Chemists: Not such great geographers

A wonderful little scene unfolded on LinkedIn recently, when a consultant for a San Francisco-based biotech asked:

Can anybody recommend some good Bay Area synthetic chemistry CROs?

Of course, there were four or five people who chimed in with useful suggestions for Bay Area CROs.

At the same time, there has been a wonderful collection of people from around the world throwing their hats in the proverbial ring. So far, we have people suggesting companies located in Seattle, two from Shanghai, the UK, Winnepeg, New Jersey, Delaware, Ontario, two from Bangalore, the Netherlands, Massachusetts, Edmonton (Canada), Milan (Italy), Germany and Kolkata.

While I can't really blame people for trying, I think it speaks to 1) the rather fierce competition for synthetic chemistry business around the world and 2) people's complete inability to police themselves when it comes to making suggestions on internet forums. 'Twas ever thus. 

Grrrrrrrr

Blogger is down, and it ate some posts. Grunt. More soon. 

MMMMEEEEERRRRRCCCCKKKKKK!

Yeah... you don't seem very Empowered...
Photo credit: brillianceinc.com

Are you a chemist? Do you like doing chemistry? Merck, the pharmaceutical company, would like to know if you want to be a materials handler in Ireland, a command center technician, a statistics intern or a pipefitter. No?

How about an operations coach? What's that, you say? Well, I'm glad you asked. You will:

• Coach production employees in an Empowered Culture
• Assist the team with development of objectives and ensures alignment with site goals
• Assess employee training and development needs, assesses the maturity of the team, and adjusts leadership style to enhance team performance

"Assess the maturity of the team" -- hmmm. If you read between the lines, I think you'll be a (assistant?) manufacturing plant manager. But why in the world couldn't they just call it that? (h/t See Arr Oh)

Daily Pump Trap: 5/12/11 edition

Good morning! Between May 10 and 11, there were 82 new positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 4 (5%) are academically connected.

Hmmm: Not much here, other than tinned meat from our friends in Rahway (73 position, 89%). Except for...

Fresh! Foods!: BASF is looking for 5 positions, including a B.S. chemist with 5 to 10 years experience in agricultural chemical formulations experience. Also, two positions (one marketing and one solving technical problems) with fresh food solutions.

A broader look: Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com and Indeed.com show (respectively) 308, 728 and 4,324 positions posted for the search term "chemist." USAjobs.gov shows 91 positions for the search term chemist. 

Your favorite grad school analytical lab

Original photo credit: Hey Paul

Outsourcing: The good, the bad and the ugly

I think it's the bottom one that wants to
send your job to Bangalore.
Photo credit: AJC1

Susan Ainsworth's article in today's C&EN on chemistry outsourcing managers is worth a read. She talks to a lot of knowledgeable people about the process and sheds some light on a relatively mysterious topic.

The Good: There is some small room for knowledgeable, experienced chemists to do some good:

Although the client asked the CRO to follow a synthetic route outlined in the literature, Levy explains, “the contract organization took the liberty of modifying the chemistry to increase the efficiency of the synthesis by minimizing the number of steps and, in the process, ended up reversing where substituents were attached to the structural core.” The CRO made a molecule with exactly the same molecular weight as the desired product and a similar nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum. “That’s the kind of problem that an outsourcing manager without a strong chemistry background will miss,” he warns.

The bad: Sometimes, the things they have to be aware of is just a little basic:

Crystal-clear communication is especially critical when someone “is 12 time zones away,” Kimball says. “When you are in the lab next door, you can walk in and talk to people, and you can touch and feel the process and better understand why a reaction doesn’t work, but when that work is being done remotely, it is much more difficult. Many of the assumptions that we make, having been trained in the U.S., may not be valid. The quality of reagents, laboratory conditions, and the care with which reactions are carried out may not be the same.” 

Kimball recalls an instance when a straightforward Friedel-Crafts acylation reaction following a literature procedure failed repeatedly as it was being carried out by a CRO partner. “Finally, it was determined that the high humidity in the lab and poor storage conditions of the aluminum chloride reagent were at fault. Once those were corrected, the chemistry worked as planned.”

Aaaand the ugly: I'm glad that Kerry Spear (of Sunovion Pharmaceuticals) was willing to be fairly upfront about his thoughts on synthetic chemistry. This is a set of statements that every 1st year graduate student that contemplates a career in synthetic chemistry should think about:

When orchestrating a corporate outsourcing effort, leaders must have a clear understanding of the company’s strategic outsourcing goals and how the drivers—quality, speed, and cost—impact those goals, Spear says. They also need “to recognize what chemistry is best to keep in-house and what could be outsourced,” he adds. For example, “all the things a classical medicinal chemist does we consider core, at least for now, which means we keep them in-house,” he says. “However, we consider synthetic chemistry to be very outsourceable. Frankly, we don’t do any of it in-house anymore.”

I don't really know what do say about that; I mean, sure, I don't make my own TBSCl -- I outsource it to Aldrich (Oakwood, actually, if I have anything to say about it.) But I'd be really interested to hear what Dr. Spear considers 'core' and 'not core'. I'll tell you what -- the 'core' part was probably gotten smaller over the past ten years, as opposed to getting bigger.

Good news / bad news

It is always difficult to tell which way the economy is going -- if I knew, I wouldn't be a bench chemist, that's for sure. I'm instituting a new post series that will combine a piece of undoubtedly good news with something that's potentially bad news. So, without further ado:

Good news from Biospace!: Doubtless, you got the same e-mail from them that I did 3 days ago, stating: 

BioSpace job postings hit the highest volume since December 2008 -- a sure sign of great new opportunities waiting for you. 

Considering that was near the depths of the Great Recession, that's not saying much. But there you are. Good news. How big? No one knows.

Bad news (?) from Paul Hodges: Paul Hodges of the incomparable "Chemicals and the Economy" blog launched "Downturn Alert" last week, noting that commodity chemical prices are beginning to fall, as manufacturers are purchasing less and looking for lower prices. 

Daily Pump Trap: 5/10/11 edition

Good morning! Between May 5 and May 9, there have been 31 new positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 13 (42%) are academically connected and 1 (3%) is from Kelly Scientific Resources.

Well, that's bracing: "DuPont is a science company. Science is our heritage and our future." In their crop protection labs in Newark, DE, they're looking for a M.S. chemist to become an associate investigator in their analytical chemistry division.

More from the Blue Hen: JAS Inc. is an Agilent subsidiary; they're looking for Ph.D. analytical chemists to work on GC and GC/MS systems. 2 positions; no relocation offered.

Movie villain names: Clontech Laboratories Inc. is looking for a Ph.D. organic chemist with experience in chemical biology. "The candidates will lead the Chemistry Group on the development of chemical compounds (chemical design, synthesis and analysis) for research tool development in life science area." Doesn't the name suggest a secret secret laboratory?

More for the analysts: Honeywell's UOP subsidiary is looking for a senior analytical organic chemist; they desire a Ph.D. chemist with experience in organic reaction mechanisms, GC/MS and LC/MS. 5+ years experience desired (?).

And another one (sort of): The Shepherd Chemical Company is looking for a Ph.D. chemist to run their research laboratories; "[d]emonstrated expertise in inorganic chemistry, solid-state chemistry, small molecule synthesis and/or organometallic chemistry is desirable." Experience with a variety of instrumentation desirable. 

Voices from Wall Street

From last week's C&EN, an article on Amgen's strategies by Lisa Jarvis:

Another area where Amgen draws a line between itself and its peers is its commitment to R&D. Although many competitors have made significant cuts to their research budgets, Sharer said the company will continue to invest 18 to 20% of sales in R&D. “This is not an activity where you cost cut your way to success,” he said. 

Investors, meanwhile, had been hoping to see Amgen focus on cost efficiency in its R&D operations and potentially drop some of its less promising discovery programs. 

Prior to the meeting, Leerink Swann analyst Joshua Schimmer had conducted an in-depth analysis of Amgen’s new drug pipeline and identified compounds that he views as too similar to other drugs in development or too risky. “While we were not disappointed that high R&D spend continues, we were disappointed that there was not a clearer message that more low-value pipeline products we previously identified would be culled and replaced with higher-quality in-licensed and acquired late-stage programs,” he wrote to investors. 

Amgen, however, underscored its success in R&D compared with its competitors and said it is committed to partnering and to making tough decisions about its pipeline. To be successful, Sharer said, Amgen needs to “stop projects when they won’t work, have a risk appetite, … and go outside the company nearly as often as you go inside.”

It's all here, folks, which is kinda fun. You want business types (a MBA, even!) from Wall Street telling CEOs where to spend drug company dollars? You got it. You got CEOs saying that they're not going to cut R&D? You got that, too. Best of luck to Amgen, which does really seem to be one of the few companies that hasn't been swinging the ax recently (although maybe that's just my poor memory.)

I've always wondered: what must it be like to be a stock analyst on the pharmaceutical beat? Does Ian Read quake every time Barbara Ryan opens her mouth to speak on Pfizer stock? I would.

One final, weird note on the major pharmaceutical companies and personal finance and Wall Street: who does Dr. Schimmer and Barbara Ryan represent? Well, to a very minor extent, "future" me. I don't directly own any pharmaceutical stock, but I have a reasonable amount of retirement-oriented money in various index and mutual funds. All of their directors (and employed business analysts, etc.), I'm sure, are breathing down the necks of CEOs of companies that I (directly or indirectly) work for, pushing them to increase profits and cut costs. I am sure this is not the only time that the interests of "Present CJ" and "Future CJ" will conflict.  

The boss is always right, right?

I'm sure everyone is familiar with the 2 rules of dealing with the boss:

Rule 1: The boss is always right.
Rule 2: If the boss is wrong, check Rule 1.

I suggest a few more rules:

Rule 3: If the boss is wrong, you should check again.
Rule 4: If the boss is wrong, the instrument should be recalibrated.
Rule 5: If the boss is wrong, perhaps you can't find his cell phone number to tell him.
Rule 6: If the boss is wrong, maybe you heard wrong.
Rule 7: If the boss is wrong, perhaps the literature is wrong.
Rule 8: If the boss is wrong, we should all look at our shoes.
Rule 9: If the boss is wrong, we should admire the boss' creativity in aligning energetic paradigms!
Rule 10: (Use with great care) If the boss is wrong, we should tell the boss.

Reader question: how to use LinkedIn?

An astute reader writes:

In the comments of your recent consulting post, a commenter mentioned "If you learn some of the ins and outs of LinkedIn it can be a huge help (no, you don't need to buy the gold membership either). My job search has been enormously more productive because of it." 

Any advice (or perhaps a post) on the best ways to use LinkedIn. I'm a recent graduate. I haven't played with the site much but I have my profile as current as possible. 

What else should one be doing? Joining groups? Joining discussions?

I'll be really honest and say I don't really know. I think it's helpful in a job search to have a fairly informative (but not overly detailed) profile and it is a good idea to update it regularly.

I think joining discussions where you might display relevant technical knowledge would be useful, but to be frank, I've really not seen any discussions of chemistry on LinkedIn where this might be the case.

I have found LinkedIn to be a quite useful repository of information about other people; that's helpful, but I don't really know what good it does, outside of being able to know who works at companies that you want to work at. (I think that's the idea, actually.) This parody video on LinkedIn, by the way, is mildly funny.

Outside of that, I'm pretty much out of ideas. Readers, what say you?

An unusual answer

Pfizer CEO Ian Read, in the Wall Street Journal about his moves with Pfizer research sites:

WSJ: Cutting costs is also part of your growth strategy. You're shutting down Pfizer's laboratory in Sandwich, U.K. Was it inefficient? 

Mr. Read: Sandwich was working in areas where I don't think we were competitive enough. It was in areas of allergy and respiratory and urology, and other areas where I didn't think we had the science, or the competition was ahead of us. And it was better to redirect those resources. 

WSJ: You're also moving scientists from Pfizer's long-time research and development center, in Groton, Conn., up to Cambridge, Mass. Why? 

Mr. Read: Historically, Big Pharma was driven by manufacturing, and very often they put manufacturing sites up on rivers because there was fermentation involved and they needed access [to water]. Now, I think you need to be in centers of innovation and hubs of innovation that are represented by La Jolla, Calif; Boston, Mass; and also in the U.K. in Cambridge.

Rivers? I'm really flummoxed by this answer, even though I (sort of) understand what he is getting at: Groton is where it is (historically) because of now-irrelevant geographical features. That being said, I'm afraid this sort of "we need to be there" logic isn't really historically supported. While geographical isolation isn't good, I'm unconvinced that Pfizer chemists from Groton will somehow be magically more productive or innovative in Boston. Color me unconvinced.

Daily Pump Trap: 5/5/11 edition

Good morning! Between May 3 and May 4, there have been 7 new positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 1 (14%) position is academically connected and 1 (14%) position is from Kelly Scientific Resources.

Ooof: Not very many positions at all. Sigh.

It's something: Total Petrochemicals is looking for a B.S. chemist to be a senior chromatographer in its La Porte, Texas facility. GC experience desired.

And something more: Kelly Scientific is looking for a B.S. chemist with 5-10 years experience in R&D to perform LC and GPC analysis.

Hey, you kids, get outta here: Bangs Laboratories (a wonderful name, if there was one) is looking for a M.S. or Ph.D. polymer or organic chemist. Desired skills: "Experience in emulsion polymerization, inverse emulsion, oil in water dispersion of polymers, and other related microparticle process technologies." Oh, and "Industry work experience beyond the university setting -- this is a must!!!"

A better bandaid: Adhesives Research, Inc. is looking for a Ph.D. polymer chemist with experience in adhesives research, materials science or wound care adhesives work. How many of those are there?

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder and Indeed show 329, 719 and 4,317 positions (respectively) for the search term "chemist." USAjobs.gov show 96 results for the search term "chemist." 

14 ways to improve morale

No, really. Sometimes I feel a little bad about the blog and the pall it might cast on folks. (Seriously, I should print T-shirts that say "I stopped reading Chemjobber because it's depressing.")

Try these tips and see if you can put a smile on a coworker's face.

• Donuts always make people happy (or me, anyway). 
• The "Never Give Up!" picture is worth a chuckle (sometimes.)
• A sincere word of encouragement never hurt anyone. 
• Also, a ready supply of bad jokes helps, too. 
• Organizing group lunches that allow people to vent is great. 
• Take responsibility and clean some undesirably messy part of the lab. Don't ask for thanks. 
• A Friday morning breakfast tradition can be fun. 
• Owning up to screwing up can really break tension a lot, I think. 
• Ask people how they are -- and listen. (Don't do this, if you're creepy.)
• Safe and gentle and very, very rare pranks in the lab are enjoyable.  
• The "Hang In There" kitten is useful, too. 
• Taking about your young kids can refocus a tough conversation, sometimes. 
• Volunteer to do someone else's dishes. That'll make 'em wonder. 
• A candy dish on your desk helps. 
• BEER. (Thanks A1227p.)

Now go out there and take on the day!*

*Back to your regularly-scheduled depressingness tomorrow. ;-)

Process Wednesday: drying

In the final set of questions from Kilomentor on scaling up, he asks:

Is there a drying step in the process? If so:

• Can the drying be done by azeotropic distillation or passing through a molecular sieve plug to avoid solid drying agents? Is there an IPC to determine completion of drying?

It seems like there's ALWAYS a drying step in the process. I've seen the powers of azeotropic drying and I believe (I believe!) that there is mostly likely some way of avoiding drying agents. But what that might entail, of course, is a different matter altogether.

Having a rotary dryer of some sort (or rigging one up) seems to be a cheap solution to the problem of drying powders, but I've suspect that they're scale- or cost-limited as well. Readers, please educate me.  

A taste of the good ol' days: ancient CAS Online

Goodness, it's just that easy.
Photo credit: chembase.com

I was flipping through some older literature today, and found a wonderful reminder from March's "Advanced Organic Chemistry" (2001, 5th edition) of the torture pain sheer agony effort it took to search through SciFinder before the graphical interface arrived.

• "The procedure for building a structure can be long and complex, if the structure is large and complex, but the commands are simple. We will illustrate by building the structure for 3-ethylpiperidine, which uses the most important commands.
• We begin with the command STRUCTURE. [snip]
• We will then get the prompt ENTER (DIS), GRA, NOD, BON OR ?
• GRA is used for putting in rings or chains. We enter GRA R6, DIS [snip]
• We wish to introduct a two-atom side chain (the Et group), so we enter GRA 3 C2, DIS [snip]
• [a bunch of clarifying text]
• To get 3-ethylpiperidine, the atom in the 5 position must be nitrogen. A C can be changed to another element by using NOD (for node), so we now type NOD 5 N, DIS. This changes C-5 to N-5, giving all the atoms in their final positions. 
• However, the structure is still not complete because the bonds have not been specified [snip], so we type BON ALL SE, DIS and we get our final structure in Figure A.1. 
• At this point we type END, and get L1 STRUCTURE CREATED. 

Oh, you want to search this structure? Forget it. My fingers are cramping. 

Young ones (myself included), if you ever get tired of older chemists railing about how hard they had it back in the day, think to yourself "they didn't have a structure editor in their SciFinder" and cut 'em a break. (a little one) 

Daily Pump Trap: 5/3/11 edition

Good morning! Between April 26 and May 2, there were 39 new positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 14 (36%) are academically connected and 1 (3%) is from our friends at Kelly Scientific Resources.

Hmmm: A definite slowdown in the number of positions being posted, if I can go close to a week without posting a DPT and only come up with 39 new positions. (None Merck, though. Thank goodness for small blessings.)

Well, that's nice: A nice slug of US-based positions from our friends at DuPont, six in less than a week. Good news for someone.

Rock, chalk: PROSOCO (of Lawrence, Kansas) is looking for a B.S. chemist with experience or training in cleaning surface chemistry for a position as a formulator. Pays close to or better than the median household income for the county!

Heeeeeey: Ensemble Therapeutics has a position for a M.S/Ph.D. computational chemist. There has GOT to be a laid-off computational chemist with these qualifications: "Experience in supporting medicinal chemists in drug discovery programs and experience of commonly used commercial software and leading academic applications including Pipeline Pilot, Discovery Studio, CHARMM and Catalyst."

And for this one, too: SAIC is the contractor for the NCI's "NCI Experimental Therapeutics (NExT) Program." They wish for a Ph.D. medicinal chemist with "ten (10) years of post-graduate experience, including at least 7 years focusing on discovery and optimization of small molecule New Molecular Entities (NMEs) in pharmaceutical or biotechnology organizations; and minimum 5 years managing complex programs that include outsourcing activities. Extensive medicinal chemistry experience in structure-based drug discovery and iterative drug design." Good luck out there -- I suspect that this is a good one. (I mean, it's a defense contractor -- when was the last time you heard of a defense contractor losing a contract?!?!)

Hey, wait a minute: Kelly Scientific is looking for a Ph.D. medicinal chemist to work on the NCI's "NCI Experimental Therapeutics NExT Program." Hey, that sounds familiar... I think this position is the boss of the last one -- or is it the other way around? I dunno -- I don't speak governmentese. OK, I think I'm going to devote a post in the next week to figuring out all of these recent NIH/NCI positions.

You kids -- get back in line!: Polysciences wants a M.S./Ph.D. synthetic chemist for bench work; "this is a must, we are not interested in candidates who only have university experience." OK, OK, I get it.

An interesting business model

I'm surprised this article by Michael McCoy from last week's Chemical and Engineering News wasn't better covered in the chemblogosphere. Okay, so it's tomorrow's edition. It's a fairly interesting take on the "building block" business for small quantities of pharmaceutical starting materials. There was this little tidbit about a small Chinese company:

Ming Qi is all too aware of this perception. As president of Accela ChemBio, a Shanghai-based building-block supplier, Qi says he struggles to distinguish his company from fly-by-night Chinese competitors. [snip] 

Accela employs more than 90 people, Qi says, 40 of whom are chemists. The company lists about 6,000 compounds, roughly 4,000 of which are in stock at any given time. Accela chemists synthesize almost all of the compounds, Qi adds. 

Although himself a newcomer to the building-block business, Qi is amazed at the stream of new players in China and elsewhere that continue to enter the business. Qi says he used to make his catalog freely available, but after seeing competitors start listing the same compounds he became more selective about posting information online. “We don’t want to make it too easy,” he says.

I've never worked in a situation with compounds that are in stock or out of stock, but it seems to me that 40 chemists to work on 2000 out-of-stock compounds is cutting it a little close. When the customer comes a callin' and it's not in stock, I'll bet it's too late.