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/
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RE: Biology degree.
What college did this person attend? Did they talk to anyone else in any of their classes? No one gets a BS in bio and stops there. Your cohorts are all also in a pre-med track of some kind OR they are insane and "want to get a PhD," which doesn't pay much better but literally no one tells anyone, 'yeah get a bach in bio and you'll be set!" It's the STEM degree for people who just need a bach to do something else and don't want to frick with math.
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Phd and masters in bio are basically worthless. If you want to make money, it's basically doctor or nothing.
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In Brazil (and South American countries for the matter) pre-med doesn't exist and you just go straight to med-school which is longer (6 years in Brazil or a minimum of 7200 hours) if you wanna become a doctor.
So people here who study biology and chemistry do it because they want said degrees.
Most biochem graduates (undergrads in the US) will work on healthcare doing clinical analysis. If they do a post-grad then they can work on academia, I'm not sure about the requisites for industry.
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That's what most in the US do to. You typically have to get an MLT certificate if you want to do medical. The pay is better, but not amazing. The hours and the environment are brutal and there's rarely any room for advancement.
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Your best chance here as a biochem if you're not on Big-pharma or some large industry is to open your own lab in a small or mid-sized city but that requires a certain investment as lab equipment ain't cheap.
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Do you also live in middle America?
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Ironically yes. But good luck waltzing into RTP with your BS in genetics and getting more than $60k in a HCOL area.
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There's 3 chemistry "majors" in Brazil.
They differ in which attributions your state's chemist counsel grant you
Lincenciatura which grants you the license to teach public HS, Bacharel/bachelor's which grant you most of the atributions and I forgot the last one name, but it's Industrial or Technological something like that that grant you all the possible attributions.
Since I wanted to go into academia I never really cared about industry jobs nor looked around but it's usually some sort of boring lab tech that makes you want to keep yourself safe like the bio OP.
It's not a horrible path compared to the average
wagie but it's not particulaly good either. With only a bachelor's degree a really good job pretty much is only possible through a concurso I think.
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Esqueci que tem bacharelado em química, então a licenciatura é só pra ser professor de ensino médio? Lol
Que tão necessário é o doutorado pra trabalhar como químico no âmbito acadêmico?
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Se você quiser trabalhar numa universidade boa é basicamente obrigatório. Nosso departamento os professores eram 100% doutores.
Em universidades menores dá pra tentar se virar com um mestrado.
A grade da licenciatura tem menos química pra acomodar as matérias de pedagogia. O final dos cursos é diferente também.
Licenciatura é estágio em escola, bacharel é TCC e tecnológico é estágio em empresa.
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Eu quiz dizer os pesquisadores em geral, não só os professores, mas faz sentido que todos sejam doutores. Você terminou o doutorado?
Ué, faz pouco eu vi na matriz da UNILA que é uma federal que eles incluem TCC na licenciatura
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Acho que em geral não existem "pesquisadores" nas universidades publicas brasileiras. Todo mundo é necessariamente professor e a maioria faz pesquisa também. Eu tava terminando meu mestrado quando os chineses decidiram comer morcegos e destruir a minha vida.
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I mean kind of true? There are a lot of weird niche bio-related jobs for industries I didn't even think to look at that pay handsomely but at a certain point you hit a wall and are forced into corporate management or director level positions which at that point you're not really using your degree, you're just a glorified people handler that knows all the names of the muscles in your hand.
It is amusing though how many people I went to school with thought they'd be studying grass in antarctica or saving the bees or some shit right out of school. Like, no b-word, your butt is taking lizards to elementary schools so the kids can pet them and you're getting paid 13 dollars an hour to do it.
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That's where my step is probably going to be. Right now I run a lab, I have techs that do the dirty work. I also really lucked out where I am at and my circumstances are definitely the exception and not the rule. But there were definitely kids who thought they were going to study turtles or some bullshit, no, you're gonna run pcr tests on dogfood for $16/hr 60hr/week, and if you don't like it, tough shit.
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Dis neighbor forgot pharma was a thing
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The only reason I could think of is they started doing their bio labs and for some super neurodivergent reason, they just loved doing the menial work and making graphs and running tests and taking intricate notes. Even then, surely you could find someway to make more than 45k a year. That's embarrassing
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Entry level should be around 55k. 45k seems impossiblely low unless he's literally a lab tech
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45k is standard for entry level tech.
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tbh 45k-50k is a common entry even in HCOL areas like Boston, although that was before COVID. if you're doing research with a college, it's more like 36k. field is just that saturated and there are plenty of people who will take the low pay for a year or two while they work on getting into med school.
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darn bio is dark
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