Daily Pump Trap: 12/1/11 edition

Good morning! Between November 29 and November 30, there were 12 new positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 5 (42%) are academically connected.

Slowing down?: With Christmas coming, I'll bet the jobs start trickling down in number.

Emeryville, CA: Amyris, long a stalwart of ACS Careers, is looking for a Ph.D. analytical chemist with 3+ years of supervisory experience. Sounds like a QA advisory role is embedded within, as well.

Zeroes!: BASF is hiring a B.S./M.S./Ph.D. chemist for a plastic additives position. 0-5 years experience for a Ph.D., with ascending experience requirements for B.S. and M.S. chemists. The position is in Tarrytown, NY.

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov show 266, 698, 3003 and 41 positions (respectively) for the search term "chemist." 

8 stupid things I've done with money

That's right, CJ. You paid money to see me,
The Big Aristotle. (credit: carltonjordan.com)

Adam is blogging about higher education and he talks a little about his personal story with student loan debt. Having been there before, I thought I'd lighten the mood and list a few stupid things I've done with money around the time I was a grad student:

1. Paid for subscriptions to J. Org. Chem. and Org. Lett. as a recently graduated B.S. chemist. Didn't read them much. (OK, this was long before online access was widespread.) 
2. Weekend trip to Boston to see an old friend. It was cool and all, but the neatest thing I saw was Shaq's head floating above a crowd of onlookers. Did I mention I hate the Lakers? 
3. Blasted through my cell phone minutes and paid $200+ in overage fees. Ooops. 
4. Missed credit card payments early on -- you know, that's a really good way to get your APR raised on you. 
5. Paid for many, many, many forgettable restaurant meals by putting them on my credit card balance. 
6. Bought many intended-to-be-read-but-never-quite books on my credit card balance. 
7. Not having a roommate early on in grad school. Dude, cut your rent in half? 
8. Speeding tickets. Short-term expensive, long-term expensive. 

That said, after I graduated, a lot of things changed about life and it wasn't very hard to rebalance my/our lives to pay off the student loans that I took out to cover my dumb credit card debt. We were very fortunate in this regard -- a bad illness or accident could have made things much, much worse. 

Undergrads, grad students and postdocs, be careful with your money. 

Process Wednesday: arylboronic acids might be genotoxic?

In linking to Neal Anderson yesterday, I see that he has a new post up and it's a bit of a doozy:

Arylboronic acids, but not the corresponding deboronated arenes, recently have been found to be weakly mutagenic in microbial assays [1].  Hence arylboronic acids may be considered potentially genotoxic impurities, and controlling the levels of residual arylboronic acids in APIs could become a regulatory requirement.  The issues should be decided by toxicology studies for the specific arylboronic acids in question.

Wait, what? Arylboronic acids might be genotoxic? Uh-oh. He then launches into a long discussion of how to cause protodeboronation of boronic acids to remove them from your API: (I think if you printed out his blogpost and sent it to Boron Molecular in North Carolina, either the envelope or the building would self-destruct.)

The Snieckus group found that deboronation occurred readily when pinacol was added to 4-pyridylboronic acid [12].  Percec and co-workers found that deboronation of neopentylglycol boronates, especially an ortho-substituted arylboronic acid ester, was catalyzed by nickel species [13].  Kuivila and co-workers found that CuCl2 catalyzed the deboronation of 2,6-dimethoxybenzeneboronic acid and other arylboronic acids, with formation of the corresponding aryl chlorides [14].  Unfortunately, adding reagents to a reaction mixture increases the burdens of analysis and impurity removal, but additives such as these may accelerate deboronation in difficult cases.  Simply extending the reaction conditions, which are generally basic for efficient Suzuki coupling, or heating with some amount of aqueous hydroxide are probably the preferred treatments to decompose an arylboronic acid.  By knowing the kinetics of the decomposition of the arylboronic acid it may be possible to show by QbD that analyses for the residual arylboronic acid in an API are not necessary.

 Read the whole thing.

Seniority and bench chemistry: why the inverse relationship?

So I was perusing one of my favorite blogs (that of writer and amateur pilot James Fallows) and he posted this video, which I found pretty remarkable. But what I found even more remarkable was the linked posting about this "crab into crosswind" technique on a professional pilots website:

We must remember that the Airbus Flight Control system is based on "rate inputs". The wing will always look at the last bank angle and will try to return to that point, you may not see the input by the flight controls, but it is being provided. So, if you are rocking down on final due to gusty winds, or for that reason on the final portion of the flare. Should you apply correction in the opposite direction of where the wing is coming up, because of the gust, then you are adding more input to the Flight Controls computer's, reacting to bring the wing to the last known position with a bigger input increment (you have just Augmented that input), which will then force you to react in the opposite direction with more sidestick deflection. Hence, the feeling that you are running out of control deflections in the sidestick, you are just inducing a P-CIO (Pilot-Computer Induced Oscillations).

If you were to have a direct right crosswind of 29 knots, fly the aircraft, don't mind the gust (unless it is hurricane David), around 50 feet, start kicking your left rudder (and power as necessary), and as the left wing tries to come up (due to the Aerodynamics of the rudder inputs attempting to bring the right wing up), put the necessary right joystick (squirts) input and let go, squirt and let go, as necessary to keep the nose of the aircraft tracking down the centerline while adding rudder as necessary, then once the aircraft is tracking where you want him to, relax the bank inputs on the joystick, just work with the pitch for the flare and round out.

Touch down with the right main gear, right spoilers deflect, fly the left wing down nice and easy, while relaxing ruder input and squirting the bank inputs as needed. It is exhilarating and a great aircraft. 

Of course, these are very experienced, well-paid pilots talking to one another about technique. Senior medicinal chemists talking about fragment-based drug discovery or very experienced process chemists chatting amongst themselves presumably would sound the same.

Or would they? One doubts that very senior chemists would actually be the ones injecting the reagents, pumping the solvents or running the NMRs. Why does it seem that bench technique is mostly left to those who have less than 20 years at the bench, while passenger jet flying, in particular, is in the province of people have hair color similar to Chesley Sullenberger?

Certainly airline union seniority rules have some part to play in this. I'd argue that bench chemistry (and perhaps molecular biology techniques even more so) rely on enough fine motor dexterity that the aged might hold a disadvantage. Perhaps it is that flying (like surgery) is special; patients and the flying public are willing to pay for the best, most experienced hands to be at the helm.

Readers, have an opinion on this?

Daily Pump Trap: 11/29/11 edition

Good morning! (almost, to you on the East Coast) Between November 22 and November 28, there were 82 new positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 32 (38%) are academically connected. 1 (1%) is from our friends at Kelly Scientific.

Lexington, MA: Cubist is (once again) looking to hire a B.S./M.S. research associate for medicinal chemistry. Really, a plum for somebody out there.

The Arabian Peninsula: SABIC is hiring a raft of folks for work at their Riyadh center. 31 positions (38%), to be exact. Lots of engineering positions, but a number of chemistry positions as well. Unfortunately, many seem to require more than 3+ years experience, but I suspect they're more desperate than they let on. (Let me know?)

Lausanne, Switzerland: Nestle is hiring an analytical chemist and a flavor chemist (Ph.D. + postdoc) for their facility in Switzerland. Experienced desired.

Spruce Pine, NC: Unimin Corporation is a leading manufacturer of high quality quartz products; they're looking for a B.S./M.S. chemist who wishes to perform product development and process improvement. Recent grads OK, 2+ years exp. desired.

USA!?!: 4 Shimadzu field sales positions posted all over the US; boy, either they're making a push or their team got cleared out! 

This is just to say...

I have an
incredibly
busy morning

and you were
probably
expecting the
Daily Pump Trap

Forgive me
Excuses are stinky
Just like the baby poop I cleaned up

with apologies to William Carlos Williams

(DPT + blogpost in T-3 hours) 

Reform in the Hope-Weeks lab?

As probably the most prominent critic of the professors involved in the Texas Tech case, I should note Jyllian Kemsley's article in this week's issue of C&EN:

An explosion in a Texas Tech University laboratory last year resulted in a chemistry graduate student losing three fingers on one hand and injuring his eyes. The incident was one of several in recent years that have put a spotlight on lab safety; it also resulted in an investigation by the federal Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board (C&EN, Oct. 24, page 25). The explosion and its aftermath led the project’s principal investigators, Texas Tech chemistry professor Louisa J. Hope-Weeks and her spouse, chemical engineering professor Brandon L. Weeks, to find ways to more closely supervise and document their interactions with their lab groups.

“After the accident, what became clear to me was that oral communication with students was never enough to ensure they understood” what they were supposed to do or not do, Hope-Weeks says. Now, both Hope-Weeks and Weeks require anyone working in their labs to discuss experiments with their adviser and then write protocols for what they will do. Having a literature protocol in hand is not enough, though: Students must rewrite it in their own words. They must also write their own instrument-use protocols rather than referring to a lab document. The professors review the protocols before work can proceed in the lab.

[snip] As she reads the documents, Hope-Weeks also tries to be conscious of the line between appropriate oversight and allowing her students room to learn in the lab. If she reads a protocol that says a reaction will reflux for two hours and she thinks it will need 24, she’ll let the student proceed as long as there’s not a safety concern. “As long as it’s not unsafe, I’ll let them try it their way,” she says. “I think that’s the only way they can learn.”

[snip] And members of both labs now have to sign a contract agreeing to follow the lab rules and report any unsafe practices or unauthorized workers in the lab. The penalty for not following the rules is dismissal from the lab, a punishment that makes Weeks somewhat uncomfortable. “I don’t know that that’s the best way to deal with safety,” he says, noting that the threat of dismissal may encourage people to hide things. At the same time, Weeks doesn’t know of a better way to promote safe laboratory behavior. He’d like to see more of a dialogue in the academic community about positive ways to encourage safe conduct. 

Trying to walk the line between appropriate supervision and micromanagement of their lab members is tough, both professors say. On the one hand, the people working in the labs are all adults, and “there has to be some trust in the lab because you can’t be in there all the time,” Weeks says. He notes that trust is not just a safety issue; faculty also have to trust that students aren’t fabricating data, for example. 

On the other hand, Hope-Weeks adds, “if you think you’re providing enough vigilance and oversight, double it, because it is amazing what students will do when your back is turned.”

In one sense, I'm encouraged by their increased oversight of their students. That said, it is (was?) an energetic materials laboratory. Increased oversight, one would think, would be the norm. (The professors mention making random visits to the lab to ensure good laboratory practices.)

In another sense, I'm terribly curious to know if any of the issues I found obvious (lack of specialized training in best practices in energetic materials, lack of proper safety equipment (blast shields, etc)) have been addressed.

Finally, there's an obvious elephant in the room: Preston Brown, the student who had the accident. I note that there is no offer of any sort of direct culpability on the part of the professors for the incident or the environment that allowed it. Obviously, part of that is whatever legal machinations are taking place behind the scenes. I'd be interested in whatever they'd have to say about him, but that's not happening any time soon. Too bad.

Wow! Bimodal distribution in lawyer salaries

Adam is blogging a series on the possibility of a higher education bubble; he posts this graph of lawyer salary distributions. 

That is remarkable. I don't think a graph of industrial chemist salaries would have such a bimodal distribution, but I can't say for sure. Readers? 

Better times, better times...

A sweet letter from this week's Chemical and Engineering News:

I was 17 years old and canoeing down the Suwannee River in north Florida with my Boy Scout troop. My scoutmaster was a chief chemist at a quality-control lab in an International Minerals & Chemical’s phosphate facility in central Florida. While sitting around a campfire one night with another adult chaperone—who happened also to be a chemist working for IMC—my scoutmaster asked me the typical question an adult asks of a teenager: “So, Joe, what are you going to study in college?” I responded in a typical teenager-like way: “I don’t know. I’ll probably study biology and go to medical school like my father.” 

Both chemists sitting with me around the campfire that night simultaneously responded: “Well, you should study chemistry instead of biology if you’re thinking about going to medical school. If things don’t pan out, chemistry is a much better degree to fall back on.” I thought about it for a second. It certainly made sense. I decided then and there to study chemistry and never looked back, and I never applied to medical school. Fate is a funny thing. 

By Joseph E. Coury
Houston

I'd still say that chemistry is a better fallback choice than biology, but I'd be much more hesitant about recommending it as a career choice. Sigh.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I'm a dark meat guy, myself. (Credit: myrecipes)

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone (and if you're not in the US, happy Thursday!)

As always, I'm thankful for:

• a job and a healthy, happy family. 
• being part of a great blogging/tweeting community
• each and every one you readers. 

Thanks so much for reading (and being willing to challenge me!) 

Best wishes to each of you and your families. See you on Monday (unless, of course, I get bored.) 

Print this off and send it to your parents now.

I can't help but rerun this old chestnut on the Wednesday before a Thanksgiving. Happy travels everyone. (Hopefully, a holiday post tomorrow.) 

Process Wednesday: R.B. Woodward on scale-up

From my wanderings online, I found a hilarious story about a grad student burning all of his material on a 200X scale-up of a successful 50 milligram reaction:

Wasserman's project concerned the synthesis of artificial penicillin, and at one juncture he needed to convert S-benzylpenicillamine, an incredibly precious compound of which Eli Lilly had given Woodward 25 g, into a 5,5 fused-ring thiazolidinelactam. Wasserman had tried the reaction on a 50 mg sample, and it worked like a charm. So Woodward suggested that Wasserman scale the reaction up over the weekend. On Saturday he confidently scaled up by a factor of 200, reacting 10 g of the S-benzylpenicillamine, almost half of the remaining supply. Instead of colorless crystals, he recovered only a deep yellow, intractable oil. 

He was devastated and conflicted. Should he wait until Woodward came to lab, or should he bite the bullet and telephone to announce that his naive blunder in using so much material had resulted in a catastrophe? No one who has known Prof. Wasserman would be surprised that he chose the proper course and decided to telephone. 

Reaching Prof. Woodward at home, Wasserman reported that he had attempted the reaction on a larger scale, but that it was an utter failure, and that precious starting material had been destroyed.
Woodward asked, "How much of the S-benzylpenicillamine did you use?" Wasserman gulped and answered, "10 grams." 

There was a pause. Then Woodward admonished, "Ten grams! Harry! Even I don't know all the things that could go wrong in that kind of reaction."

 I feel Wasserman's pain. I guess he managed to do all right by himself.

P.S. You gotta love the Woodward line "Even I."

Would you trade a Ph.D. for money?

That's a lot of Benjamins. (Credit: graphicmania.net)

Two Yale law professors suggest an innovative way of cutting down the number of law students:

Consider the innovative employment policy of the Internet shoe seller Zappos. At the end of a four-week training course, Zappos offers new employees a one-time offer of $3,000 to quit. In part, the company uses the offer as a screening device. If you’re the type who prefers a quick three grand to the opportunity to work at a great company, then Zappos isn’t the place for you. 

Law schools might analogously offer to rebate half of a student’s first-year tuition if the student opts to quit school at the end of the first year. (If the student has taken out government loans, this rebate would first go to repay this debt.)  A half-tuition rebate splits the loss of an aborted legal career between the school and the student. Each has skin in the game, so students will not go to law school lightly, and law schools will have better incentives not to admit students likely to fail.

I think this would be an excellent way of reducing the number of potential Ph.D. chemists. You can imagine saying at the end of a passed candidacy exam (or whatever examination you prefer):

Congratulations -- you're on your way to get a Ph.D.! Oh, by the way -- we are prepared to offer you a check for $20,000. If you take the money, you will leave this program with a master's degree and our thanks for reducing the supply of Ph.D. chemists. You have 1 week to consider the offer. 

What do you think you would do? I certainly would have considered it, but I probably would have turned it down. (Obviously, this would be subject to wild amounts of gaming; you'd have to practically set up roadblocks to make sure that people wouldn't be death-marching their way to candidacy to get the big payday.)

Daily Pump Trap: 11/22/11 edition

Good morning! Between November 17 and November 22, there were 42 new positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 25 (60%) are academically connected.

Miracles of Science!: DuPont has 3 positions posted, including a Ph.D. chemist position with 3+ years experience with industrial use of gas chromatography. 

Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos National Laboratories is looking for a Ph.D. synthetic chemist for a postdoctoral position; experience with polymer synthesis would be helpful. Also, an inorganic Ph.D. postdoctoral position is available. 

Lincoln, NE: LNK Chemsolutions is hiring a B.S./M.S./Ph.D. biochemist for a "junior biochemist" position. 3 years experience required for a bachelors, descending to zero for the Ph.D. 

New York, NY: MSKCC is looking for a Ph.D. synthetic chemist for a "full time" position in a multidisciplinary group looking at chaperone molecules. I'm curious if this is a real position or a gussied-up postdoc. Heterocyclic synthesis experience desired. 

Birmingham, AL: Southern Research Institute is looking for a Ph.D. synthetic chemist for a postdoctoral position in a metastasis biology laboratory. 

Huh: Tutor.com is looking for online math and science tutors; 100 (!) openings, $10-15/hour (ugh.) 

The Layoff Project: "It was very hard to shake off the sense of anger and betrayal."

TK is a PhD chemist who worked for (and was separated from) a major CRO. Their story is below:

What should you do the first week? Should you take a break? Jump right in to finding a new job?  
It depends. I found I was too depressed/shell-shocked/angry to do any useful job-hunting the next day. I didn’t start seriously applying until a week later, by which time I had calmed down a bit, and was sufficiently positive to start looking for work again. I’ve seen some articles which advise taking up to three weeks before launching into your job search. I think most people might find that a bit long.

How can your family and friends help? 
Family and friends were, on the whole very supportive. My ex-boss-but-one (not the one who had laid me off) took me out for a meal and was very sympathetic/encouraging. My wife, who had been working part-time, was able to get full time work with her employer, and this helped enormously. On the other hand, there were a couple of ex-colleagues who I had thought I could count on for references who simply ignored my e-mails – not even a polite refusal. I found this quite hurtful, and still don’t understand it.

My advice to family and friends is to try to be sensitive. For example, a fellow foreign national told me he didn’t think I would be eligible for unemployment benefit as I wasn’t a citizen, which caused me considerable distress until I was able to find out that I was, in fact, entitled. One’s perspective on life changes drastically just after being made redundant, and unless you’ve been in the same situation yourself, you might not realize the impact of what under other circumstances would be harmless remarks.

Was the help the company offered you (outplacement, etc.) useful?
I didn’t get any help whatever from my former employer finding new work. They didn’t even advise me of my rights regarding unemployment benefit. As a foreign national, this advice would have been useful to me. I received 6 weeks severance (I’d been with the company about 8 years so considered this a little ungenerous, but severance pay is entirely at the company’s discretion), and 18 months health insurance through COBRA, though in the event I opted for coverage through my wife’s employer.

They made me sign a form agreeing not to seek employment with them again, which I thought was quite unnecessary. My lay-off was tied in with the appraisal system, which I also thought was a particularly cruel way of doing things, as it made it needlessly personal. My previous 7 years’ evaluations had been satisfactory or better, and my first poor evaluation led to my dismissal. I felt the evaluation had been rigged in order to legitimize my termination. None of my achievements for the year were mentioned, only things I had done wrong. I was not the only employee to be treated this way.

What financial advice can you offer? What should/did you do? What should you NOT do?
Apply for unemployment benefit as soon as you can. As long as you have a green card, and meet certain minimum specifications regarding length of employment and wages earned (your state department of employment will have a website with this information), then you are entitled to unemployment benefit.
I panicked when I lost my job, and accepted a very poorly paid position with an unscrupulous employment agency 3 weeks after being laid off, thinking I would be able to quit once my severance pay ran out, and claim unemployment benefit. In the event, I found that voluntarily quitting this position had disqualified me from claiming benefit, so file this under something NOT to do. Fortunately I was able to find a temporary position to tide me over, and was able to claim benefit once this ended.

One of the very first things we did was sit down and work out our monthly outgoings, to see what could be reduced. We cut our cable bill substantially, cancelled any non-essential subscriptions, and started drinking Franzia boxed wine, thereby cutting our monthly alcohol bill by 75%. It certainly helped that we didn’t have school-age children. Life would have been much harder, financially and emotionally if we had.

When did you start looking for another position? 
One week after being laid off.

How painful was finding another position? What should someone be emotionally prepared for?
It was difficult. I ended up making 400 applications before getting another permanent (I hesitate to use that word these days) position. I had 23 phone interviews, and 9 on-site interviews. I had to relocate, but did not have to take a pay cut.

Emotionally, it was a real roller-coaster. I experienced a whole range of emotions: a mixture of shock and relief at being laid off (I had not been happy in my last 18 months with the company), guilt (could I have tried harder not to be laid off?) depression (is this the end of my career as a chemist? Will I ever work again?) anger (why did I get laid off, when there were other people who I thought deserved it more than I did?) Fortunately, when I was down, my wife was usually up-beat, and vice-versa. The worst phase was nine months after my lay-off, in the winter of 2009, still not having found work although many of my ex-colleagues had been able to do so. It really started to feel personal by this stage. I decided to visit my parents in the UK for five weeks, and this helped.

Also, it was very hard to shake off the sense of anger and betrayal. I still haven’t completely managed this. My advice to anyone else in this situation is to try to let go of the past as soon as you can (though be prepared for the fact that this may not be easy).

How did you spend your typical day? What behaviors do you think were helpful or not helpful?
During my first period claiming benefit, I did voluntary unpaid research work at the local university. On the plus side, it kept me doing organic chemistry, and got me out of the house. On the minus side, I relied on other members of the department to order basic materials (such as dry-ice) for me, as I didn’t have my own account. I was alone in the lab most of the time, and this was not good for me at that stage, as it gave me too much opportunity to dwell on my precarious economic position. During this time, I applied for jobs on a Friday and at weekends. The ACS website, monsterjobs and indeed.com were probably my three main sources.

Helpful behaviours: maintain a routine. Try to keep the same hours as you did when you were working. Applying for jobs is not a full-time job, so keep yourself occupied with anything you can to maintain a positive frame of mind. I helped out more around the house with cooking and gardening. I did some reading.

Have you found new work? What was helpful there?
I have finally found work. We moved states, and have just moved into our new house. Whilst I was looking for work, I frequently heard the advice that networking was the way to find your next job (personally the term makes me cringe, but I know many people swear by it). Many of my friends found work this way, but it didn’t work for me. With me it turned out to be simply a combination of perseverance and luck.

I got the job here because I had the right combination of experience and qualifications, and I got on well with the people who interviewed me. In several of my previous interviews, I knew pretty early on that things were not going well: I didn’t “hit it off” with my interviewers. That relationship is just as important as your qualifications and experience, and is something that can’t be forced. You either get along or you don’t.

CJ here again. Thanks for TK for their story and best wishes to all of us.

The Layoff Project is an attempt to collect the oral histories of chemists who have been affected by the changes in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. The explanatory post is here; stories can be left in the comments or e-mailed to chemjobber -at- gmail/dot/com. Confidentiality and anonymity is guaranteed. 

Old scientific equipment never dies...

Doctor, this HP1100 is not an aged man-o-war. Credit: ugo

...it just gets moved upstairs.

I'm reminded of a favorite quote from Master and Commander whenever I'm faced with an aged piece of equipment:

Dr. Stephen Maturin: By comparison, the Surprise is a somewhat aged man-o-war. Am I not correct? 

Capt. Jack Aubrey: Would you call me an aged man-o-war, doctor? The Surprise is not old; no one would call her old. She has a bluff bow, lovely lines. She's a fine seabird: weatherly, stiff and fast... very fast, if she's well handled. No, she's not old; she's in her prime. 

Some equipment, years and years on, is still just fine. I trained on a Varian 300 MHz NMR all throughout undergrad and graduate school. I'm really not convinced that a typical synthetic organic chemist needs anything more, but I'm sure that's just a sign of mental age more than anything else.

I love new equipment -- who doesn't? Lord knows, most labs these days need new stuff. But old Buchi rotovaps work just as well as the new ones.

Readers, what's your favorite piece of old equipment?

Wrestling with the problem of alternative careers

Getting on or off the chemistry train? Credit: bakersfieldqdc

Anon1117110916a has a really fair point regarding alternative careers:

It drives me batty when people suggest that the true value of a scientific education is critical thinking and problem solving. If that were so, why do we waste billions of dollars and man-years on equipment and specialized training when we just need a "Ph.D. in Problem-Solving" program with work done with paper and pencil. Was it all just a mental exercise? 

Put another way...The first paragraph could apply to anyone...physicists, engineers, biologists, physicians, real-estate agents, plumbers...they all solve problems and use the scientific method to some degree. I was under the impression that the discipline of chemistry is valuable because it is specialized. Apparently, I could have saved a lot of time and money becoming a plumber. 

I appreciate that Dr. Balbes is helping folks escape a train that's coming off the tracks. But let's be honest here: Most of us like riding that train. There's a lot of inertia keeping us on...and it's a helluva ride! 

I think Anon has a good point in that if you know what you really want to do, you should go do it. Right now. Without delay. Quit doing that thing you're doing right now (chemistry?) and go do something else that you like better.

But that's not how life works. Most of the time, it takes a while to figure out what you like (and what you don't like.) It takes exposure to jobs that you like better than the one that you have now, or the prodding of the market that tells you (sadly) that your degree is now worth 5% less in annual income than it was ten years ago. Or the market tells you that your skills aren't what they need to be to be hired and/or keep a job -- that's a terrifying possibility (to me, anyway).

But I think the problem solving/critical thinking thing is signaling; it tells future non-chemistry employers that you understand a difficult subject, that you've mastered that difficult subject and actually found something new to say about it. It typically means that you're intelligent enough to communicate that difficult subject to the layperson, and you might be able to do it with other equally difficult subjects. Hopefully, a chemistry degree (or an advanced degree) is a better signaling mechanism that that of a real-estate agent or a plumber, even though I believe there's no guarantee that chemists are smarter than plumbers.

All of this to say that alternative careers aren't typically the goal that's directly in front of the chemistry train -- it's a different, equally interesting and (hopefully) equally honorable track.

Alternative careers in chemistry: conclusion and index

In the final chapter of "Nontraditional Careers in Chemistry", Lisa Balbes sketches a road map for chemists who are thinking about different careers to consider:

As chemists, we are taught how to solve problems and how to find and critically evaluate data. We start by doing background research, identifying a problem, conducting an experiment, then analyzing the results and pplying what we learned to the next question. You can applly those same steps to the question of what career path will best suit your personal skills, knowledge, interests and values. You need to figure out not only what is available but what you want. Ask yourself questions such as:

What kinds of problems do I solve well? What do I most enjoy talking about? What do other people say I do well? What characteristics truly define me? What accomplishments am I most proud of?

Some specific steps she suggests:

• "Like most things in life, the only way to really understand what a particular job is like is to experience it firsthand. ...Those just entering the work world should seek out positions that let them try many different types of tasks. Seek out internships, co-op programs, and summer and part-time work as valuable sources of real-world experience. Later in your career, you can take on additional responsibilities at your current company to move in a new direction."
• "The second-best way to understand something is to talk to people who have done it. Use your network! Ask questions of people already working in jobs you find intriguing, and find out what they do on a daily basis."
• "Find out not only what skills and knowledge are required but what personality traits are needed to be successful in that field."
• "Investigate not only what you;d like to do but where you'd like to do it." [re: small company or large company.] 
• "Always be on the lookout for opportunities to try something new -- seek them out, and consider them serious when they are offered, especially if the risk is low. It's never too late to try something new, and in the worst case you'll find something you don't want to do again."

She leaves off with a cautionary (but hopeful) note: 

This is not a process that can be rushed. If you admit you're discontented and start investigating your options for something better, you're already a step ahead of those who just accept where they are. Changing your career direction requires soul-searching, research, planning and courage. But in the end, getting to spend your time doing something you love is worth it. 

A final, effusive thanks to Dr. Lisa Balbes, who supplied her book for this 4 month series. The interest from chemists in alternative careers is strong and her work towards helping chemists towards their career goals should be recognized. 

The posts (and careers!) based on her book's chapters are as follows: technical writer, information science, patent attorney, sales and marketing, business development, regulatory affairs, public policy, EH&S, human resources, computational chemistry, secondary education. 

I intend to return to Dr. Balbes' book on a regular basis, but I'm looking for alternate ways to discuss this topic. Readers, what do you want? 

Daily Pump Trap: 11/17/11 edition

Good morning! Between November 15 and November 16, there were 12 new positions posted on the ACS Careers website. Of these, 4 (33%) were academically connected.

Axis, AL: DuPont is hiring a M.S./Ph.D. analytical chemist for work at their Crop Protection plant in Alabama. Looks like a pretty standard methods development position.

Fort Collins, CO: TOLMAR is a pharmaceutical manufacturing concern in northern Colorado; they're looking for a B.S. QC chemist with 4+ years experience in pharmaceutical analytical testing.

Postdoc paradise: The Hawaii Natural Energy Institute is hiring a postdoc to work on biofuels development; Ph.D. in biochemistry desired for this position in Honolulu. GSK is hiring a postdoc to work at their Hamilton, Montana vaccines facility; Ph.D. in chemistry or pharmacy desired. The Bitterroot Valley is apparently "surrounded by some of the most spectacular scenery in the world."

Santa Fe, NM: OpenEye Scientific Software is hiring for a senior scientific software developer; Ph.D. in computational chemistry and 3+ years as a software developer desired.

Denver, CO: A confidential company (located in south Denver (?)) is looking for an M.S./Ph.D. analytical chemist to be their director of analytical services and implement QA/QC in a plant environment. 5+ years experience desired.

A broader look: Monster, Careerbuilder, Indeed and USAjobs.gov show (respectively) 362, 790, 3231 and 33 positions for the search term "chemist." 

Now here are some real skills

That's more like it.