Having had just over one year outside of academia – I am at a point where I’m starting to heal from the trauma. At a place of reflection, I am going to write about the number of jobs that I undertook in my hunt for My-Job-TM.
Basically the takeaway from this post is that I’m still not 100% happy with my job. And I think I am, at least now anyway, stable enough to admit that I will probably never be in love with my job.
I applied for around 200-300 jobs in my crazy search for the perfect job. I put myself under immense amount of pressure to show my bitch of a HoD that I could do well without her help/advice/reference/leverage. The fact that I had so assuredly announced that I’d rather eat glass than continue a career in academia meant that I felt I had to prove to everyone around me in my old organisation that it is possible to land on your feet, without having to use a PI/HoD/Powerful senior academic’s name to get there. This was more so important to me because all my ex-peers had gotten to where they did because of copious use of brown-nosing, and they didn’t believe it was possible to get ahead without help.
The problem: I didn’t know what I wanted to do/wasn’t aware of what I was good at.
So as all professional experimentalists do, I experimented. I had one year left on my academic contract; 12 months to look for a role I liked and wanted to keep. Having made the decision to take a back seat as an academic – and the fact that I was my own boss – meant I could cruise by and do other jobs while I found one for me. I already told the module coordinator at my organisation I wasn’t about to teach for free anymore, so teaching responsibilities wasn’t a problem – nor did I care.
So job number 2: Project Manager at a start-up biotech. Why this job: Researchers tend to be excellent budget, timeline, work package, and all round project managers. Not all researchers know how to deliver their promises, though. So if you’re one of those sit back and think type of scientists, you’re not going to do well here. How long I lasted there: 3 days. Why so short, Sienna? Because the red-flags shot right up after end of day 2. It was a remote on-boarding for a company started by scientists-turned-entrepreneurs. Sounds good, right? Unfortunately they know nothing about business and had a very “academic” way of working. Comments such as, “don’t ask too many questions” or, “don’t make this person feel stupid by asking them too many questions, you’ll make them feel like they don’t understand the technology” or, “trust the process” when I did ask questions, made me nervous. Having observed some of the client-faced meetings I realised the company members didn’t know what they were talking about and were lying to their clients about their capabilities to deliver on their promises. I also didn’t like how daily 2-hour meetings post 5.30pm were placed in my calendar, without asking me for my availability. The answer to this was, “well, if you’re going to do well here, you have to sacrifice your personal time.” I emailed in my resignation letter the following morning. They didn’t pay me for the three days I worked there.
Job number 3: Medical Writer. Why this job? Research scientists spend their every waking hour writing, editing, reviewing manuscripts. This job was an easy no-brainer option for me. It sounded like it might be interesting; getting to dabble in scientific work that other people do and I get to work on it, critique it, tweak it. How long I lasted there: 4 months. Ok, longer than the last, but what happened? I got bored. I momentarily had forgotten that the worst part of an academic job was the writing. The promise of working on “cutting-edge” science where you contribute to “saving lives” was grossly over sold. As a medical writer, you do not save lives. Far, far from it. And even if you were, it would be ending mine in the process. You edit the slide decks for people who don’t want to/are too big and important to do it themselves. As a medical writer, you are the i-dotter and t-crosser, you make sure the full-stops are in the right places and the references say what the author says it does. It’s really boring. It was for me anyway. Often times, more senior medical writers will palm off crappier projects that they don’t want to do, on to more junior starters. A lot of people in medical writing do not have PhDs. This was a struggle for me, because the conversations were not interesting or engaging. I found that people with PhDs were coming to medical writers to do things that essentially they didn’t want to. Additionally, this route to “industry” isn’t really industry. You are still working with people from academia, on academic projects (manuscripts for publishing, slide decks for conferences etc etc). It isn’t far away enough from academia for me. I started to look for another role 2 months in. Being remote allowed me to search while I worked. I also kept this role on until I started my 4th job, so an extra pay package worked well for me.
Job number 4: Project Manager (again). Why this job, again? Because it was at a far more mature company, with lots of functions and departments. It wasn’t run by some rookie scientists-turned-business-people. And because this company is a huge world-wide name. I was also working with some high-profile stakeholders. How long I lasted here? 7 months. I’ve written a post on Insidious colleagues and on why I left this job already. But for more detail, I struggle with having a line manager and colleagues who don’t have a PhD. The conversation just isn’t there for me. I’m not engaged by the work or the relationship. I also found that there was a distinct lack in seeing people’s abilities and people would get promotion based on a proximity basis – because they had been there for a very long time. Unfortunately, my job number 1’s contract rolled to a close 4 months after I started job number 4 – I started to look for another job around that time too. Mostly because I felt that the salary wasn’t great, and without having another full time salary supplementing my piss-poor excuse for one at this role, I was no longer willing to over look the shortcomings of this project manager role anymore.
Job number 5: Big big corporate. Why this job? £££££££££. Also because having the name of this massive global corporate is a great look on my CV How long do you think you’ll last here, Sienna? I’m already starting to feel the cracks in my patience. The people here all have PhDs, so my experience, education and qualifications matter. The conversations are infinitely better, my line manager and everyone around me has a PhD, it’s great, and it’s wholly corporate, even better. Clean cut from academia forever. The money is fantastic, and I feel like that should be enough. Downsides? Corporate makes the rules and everyone has to adhere – this is definitely not a democracy. You still get the throw you under the bus types, and because they have a PhD they’re very academic about it – insidious and meticulous. I’m not sure how long I’ll be here. What I know is, if I get offered a better pay package somewhere else I will leave for that new job.
I have become extremely jaded towards employment in general. I think I know now that I will never find a job that I will love as much as I used to love experimenting in the lab. I will never love a job as much as being paid to effectively play around with science, answering questions that I created. Corporate jobs are not fun, and the pay is something I am willing to take to overlook the lack of fun. Because of the experiences I have had, I distinctly lack any form of loyalty towards any employer – they would drop you in a heartbeat if it made business sense. I am simply returning the favour.
I read a comic that had a panel that asked “what is your dream job?”, the next panel said “why would I dream about working…?” – that hit me harder than I care to admit.
So, what is my dream job? Don’t know. But I know what my dream job isn’t.
Love & Laissez-faire x