Why I might quit the research sector as a molecular biologist
When I started studying biotechnology at university in 2011 I roughly knew what to expect from the subjects in the curriculum. But not what comes after that. I don´t if this was a good or bad thing, as now I learn that the science (employment) system is so broken that I don´t know if I want to work in science anymore.
I love the subjects, especially molecular biology, and bioinformatics, but the system is just a mess, so I live with the constant struggle of either accepting a lower position with less money but higher job safety, something the other way around, or trying the lateral entry into a completely new industry. Here are my reasons for these struggles:
- Less and fewer research projects are founded. That means fewer jobs overall. I live in a city with 500k inhabitants, apply for almost everything which is roughly in my field of expertise, and still: need up to one or one and a half years, and writing 100ish job applications is normal if moving isn´t an option for you.
- Getting a job without a Ph.D. is hard. I learned during my master‘s thesis and the first jobs that I don´t want to have the 60h+ weeks for approx. 4 years straight without any real vacation and for the salary of a technical assistant or less. Theoretically, these working conditions for getting a Ph.D. are illegal, but in reality, all legal loopholes are used. So officially it means that you are working 20ish hours overtime per week because you want it. Nobody tells about the pressure and the deadline. Thus, I decided not to get a Ph.D., even if it means that I´ll earn approx. 500€ /month less for the majority of my life, if I stay in the public sector. And like 80% of research is done in the public sector.
- In some institutions the group leader doesn´t even greet people who don´t have a Ph.D. or are employed as Ph.D. students. This was the case when I worked at an institute related to the ministry of health. This arrogance drove me nuts back then.
- Being a scientist, no matter if you have a Ph.D. or not, isn´t seen as something beneficial in society, no matter what your interest in research is. Working in diagnostics is accepted as a “suitable job”, but doing research is seen as obscure and as something disrespectful for the majority of people
- The scientific work time law was meant nice, but it had the opposite effect: People want to continue working on a project, are fully incorporated in the project, and then have to leave for some unexplainable law reasons. And if the project was in the public sector it´s nearly impossible to employ them for this project again. I´m pretty annoyed by this because I lost a job for such reasons. It was the first job I loved.
- A regular scientist who isn´t directly employed for working in the lab usually spends one-half of their working hours on bureaucracy which barely has to do anything with the research topic itself.
- Getting a research project founded requires an estimated 300 pages of documents. Working through that stuff means at least one month‘s worth of work without doing anything else.
- Flexible working hours are great and normal in most science institutions. But when your boss sets a deadline I saw several times that the scientist was insulted if she slept 4h (too long, not necessary) or admitted to going grocery shopping by themself. As a result, such 90–100h work weeks for up to one month became normal for one or two periods of the year. Sure, they can take time for their additional working hours (normal employments are 38–40h/week full time), but during these stressful weeks, I saw several people crushing and never coming back to work again. And in reality, they are too busy to take more than one week off from overtime, because they are busy catching up with their everyday work
- I didn´t like scientific conferences at all. The format, listening to presentations all day, no sunlight... The forced conversation about all the negative sides of science or just socializing for getting collaboration to improve your CV… It´s not my world. As somebody who doesn´t drink coffee regularly, I need like ten cups or more to survive a conference day no matter how interesting the topic is. And then I don´t sleep well for like two weeks because my body needs this time to fully degrade this unhealthy amount of caffeine.
The majority of this article was written out of frustration in November 2022. Now it´s early March 2023 and I don´t see myself in science in the future. I have started attending full-time online training to get a job in the pharmaceutical or medical industry. I rarely apply for science jobs these days, as the new chances are better, especially concerning job safety, and are better paid. So it´s very likely that I´ll say goodbye to science, as it became more important to me to get a job at my current location for private reasons. Maybe I´ll end up as a software tester in the computer industry… I don´t know yet.
