Labcels cope about their choices
Low pay, long hours, no advancement. Job market is absolutely terrible. Can barely find a job opportunity and when I do the pay is almost always $22/hr or below. I graduated in 2019 and have been working since. Still don't make more than 45K a year and I'm pretty sure I'm about to get laid off...again, and will probably have to take an even lower paying job to make ends meet. I don't live anywhere near a hub and don't intend to because this is where my family is and those areas are not somewhere I want to live and raise a family. I wish I would've known this when I was younger and didn't listen to the people around me telling me to follow my dreams and all that bullshit. This career path feels like a dead end. About to leave science altogether and pursue something useful like a trade. Any other middle America biologists out there that can sympathize? I wish I would've got a useful degree. Can't even work in a hospital lab because I need a medical science cert. What a piece of shit career. I feel duped by the college system but at the end of the day it's my fault for falling for it. This whole field relies on other people's money to fund it and produces very little in return. Frick biology.
And academia rants
https://old.reddit.com/r/labrats/comments/xvervj/a_single_tweet_explaining_in_full_why_im_leaving/
To PhD or not Phd? That is the question
https://old.reddit.com/r/labrats/comments/11rgqi2/i_will_not_defend_my_phd/
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Biology, ironically, is filled with young women. However the people who thrive in high throughput lab jobs are generally young men who's only hobbies are videogames and drinking alone. It's a tough field and you're never going to make money because the job is all expense. There's a high burnout rate too. There's no incentive to change because the colleges dump out a new crop every year, so if you leave, no worries we can get another body pretty easy. I think a chunk of this lies in academia, they tell these kids their gonna make $100k starting plating E. coli, but in reality, you will be a rat and tend to the machine because you have 1000 tests to run. I talked to our third party recruiter about this last time I had an opening. The internal candidates wanted supervisor money. No, you're 22 with 6 months of machine tending, you aren't worth $25/hr.
t. Labcel of 15 years
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
I couldn't disagree more, at least if you're hiring young people. Young moids are fricking worthless and can't even be trusted to manage a lab notebook
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
You're right if the lab is not automated/high throughput. My lab is paper traced and my My team is almost exclusively young women with one guy. All the men I've hired with the exception of two have been garbage. But when I worked in a high throughput labs where everything was basically barcodes and scanners, young men were the only ones who were dejected enough to stick around. I think the worst people on the planet are 23 year old moids who went to college.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Yeah, fair, all my experience so far is non-automated labs, so that's my perspective.
That does sound truly awful lol
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
It is, but I thrived in that environment at the time. Couldn't do it now. But it gave me the experience to do what I'm doing today. My team rules, they have an esprit de corps like no other in the facility. So we're in a good spot now.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
A lot of universities lie like crazy about prospects to get you and keep you in the program.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
If you're not a total neurodivergent you can do lab equipment sales and other similar stuff. That kind of job boosts biology grad earnings beyond pipette b-word
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
Definitely, however I did have an advisor in college who told me I was going to be a worker bee. For the most part I had some idea what I was getting into. Lots of kids don't.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
Everyone has to be the spectroscopy bword at some point starting out
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
I should be a supervisor making $200k right out of school with my BS in gen bio.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Final blackpill is starting a "bespoke" lab that sells "BIO-HACKING BRO" test kits for hipsters.
(Seriously considering this tbqh 
)
https://www.the-odin.com/ge-yeast/
!chemistry !chuds
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
I just want of you labcels to finally leak some of them bio-engineered yeast that produces Psilocybin
Come on bros, all I need is enough for a starter!
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context
I suppose I, too, shall eventually end up on this path in my Bach in Biochem...
...eh, I'm at peace with it tho lol. Will probably only stick with quality assurance and/or pharm tech (gonna try to get certified the moment I graduate) for a while before pursuing postgrad or something...my chem professors understood this too, and were fine with it, but my pops wants me to aim higher (naturally)...hopefully I can...
...either way, at least I do not intend to go the way of a certain rdrama user anytime along that path...
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Lol i forgot about this angle. My parents will be so depressed for me when they find out ill be going from high paying internships on high profile projects to making 15$ an hour pipetting stuff and running illumnia machines. It took alot of teeth pulling to convince them i had a future in research because I didn't wanna be a doctor. In all honesty i dont have the work ethic for med school and my gre math section was legit abysmal (49% percentile). For my on paper iq level im a fricking r-slur at math and i cant speak English right.
This is even assuming im on the light path of making 15 an hour for lab work and not 15 an hour at starbucks. Im the oldest child i cannot be the failson who works at fast food or retail his whole life.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
More options
Context
More options
Context
More options
Context