Hi guys, I graduated with a degree in chem a little over a year ago and I wanted to share my experiences with job searches and exploitation by employers in higher Ed with people who are thinking about a chem degree.
I graduated with a bachelors December 2021 and quickly landed a job at one of the best public research schools in Atlanta. This experience taught me that being a lab tech sucks and here’s why: The starting pay was $15 an hour for 40 hours a week and not more. As someone with little experience in the “real world” this seemed like a good bit of money starting off but I quickly realized it was not enough to live off of. I loved the research I was doing and was learning pretty quickly. However, the PI was giving me more work than I could handle. On top of designing my own research, I was event coordinator, procurement specialist, and of course lab assistant. Most of the tasks I was given were expected to be completed within the week. I think I could have completed all tasks within the week if I worked at least 60-80 hours. However, the pi wouldn’t let me log in more than 40 hours but he encouraged me to work more if I wanted to. He also promised to add me as co author and write great letters of recommendation to grad schools if I did this. This was his method of trying to get me to work under him for free without directly telling me to work for free. When I made it clear I wasn’t able to work more than 40 hours for free he became passive aggressive for the remainder of the months I was there. He would that I was not excited enough about the research we were doing and it made him question whether or not I wanted this job.
At month three he gave me a list of things to improve on. If I did not improve then he would let me go. This list included showing up on time to meetings, creating a list of everything I do in lab, and learning to perform experiments on my own. This was easy enough. And I thought I was doing great because he would tell me how greatly I was improving. Then one day he called me into his office and told me I was not in fact improving and let me go on the spot.