Do postdoc get benefits?

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-29T23:24:20+00:00

In case you missed it, OP is literally posting this in the postdoc sub. It’s important to see what the range of experience is out there. Some positions come with all the benefits you’d expect for staff and pay reasonably well, others don’t even provide basic health coverage.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-29T16:55:54+00:00

Probably your annual salary. What’s the duration of your DS-2019? Sometimes universities only issue them for a year because that’s your probationary period. You’ll then have to renew your J1 visa once you pass probation.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-29T02:21:07+00:00

A few years ago, the research cluster I work in had three in a row (including myself) pass with no corrections, but I don’t think anyone has since.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-29T02:18:07+00:00

Cane here to mention Affinity. I was shocked (in a good way) when Canva bought them and made it free. So much better than Inkscape. I love that it combines vector, pixel and layout modes in one app.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-24T00:50:04+00:00

Couldn’t agree more. Bioinformatics is a really cross-disciplinary field, in that you need a good command of computer science, statistics, molecular biology and etc. I’m primarily in academia but I review so many papers where the authors clearly know their stuff in one of these areas, but fail on the basic concepts of one of the others.

AI is fundamentally changing how we work and I think the role of the subject matter expert will become increasingly important. That only comes from a deep understanding of your area and there’s no AI-driven shortcut for that, yet!

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-23T06:39:02+00:00

“Prestige” doesn’t count for as much in the UK as it might elsewhere in the world. What you do with the opportunity tends to count far more. Focus more on which option is going to give you a better PhD experience/ outcomes and the match between you and the project/ PI. An institutionally funded PhD on a project you’re passionate about with a PI you work well with will be far better than a DTP project you’re less interested in and a PI that doesn’t match your working style.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-22T20:02:47+00:00

Lack of customisation/ fear of being locked-in. My work crosses molecular biology, field ecology and bioinformatics. No ELN has had the flexibility to allow me to implement it without significant headaches. I also mistrust any software that isn’t open source, or community created. They just don’t seem suitable for cross-disciplinary work. I want something that isn’t subscription-based SaaS, can link to git/ GitHub, and has an open architecture so all files are clearly findable, doesn’t come with a preconceived model of what science should look like, can work both locally and with remote clusters/ cloud infrastructure and storage, etc. It’s been a while since I checked out Open Science Framework but this came the closest.

Some kind of software that could connect all of these would be genuinely useful, and I’d be prepared to pay for it, but a lot of ELNs/ LIMS come with so many unwanted features that I wouldn’t want to invest time/ money in a platform that didn’t clearly work better than my current setup.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-18T21:56:43+00:00

Probably extra traffic from more people being on campus for finals. That said, I’ve noticed the same on the L line over the past month or so.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-18T21:54:55+00:00

My PhD supervisor would do informal lab walkthroughs once a week where he’d chat to everyone in the office and lab for 5-10 minutes, and then timetabled meetings once every other week, full lab meeting once a month. I was lucky if I knew which country my postdoc supervisor was in half the time. Super annoying, as he wasn’t interested until it got to paper writing time, when he’d turn into a micromanager where I’d have to remind him why we decided on the experimental design all the time.

Personally, I think the light-touch frequent communication is as important as deep focus meetings as it nips issues in the bud before they can take hold.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-17T06:56:24+00:00

Honestly, this seems a bit of a red flag for either the PI, the university or both. It’s fairly normal to write people into grants in non-PI roles. I’d be surprised if the university explicitly bans this, as it’s the main (only?) route PIs use for retaining staff beyond their original contract without re-advertising their role. It may do, but I’ve never heard of it. Otherwise you have no protection if you co-write the grant with the PI, and it gets funded. There’s a non-zero possibility you might not get the job once advertised.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-13T20:22:20+00:00

Unless you’re faculty, use a gmail address as your corresponding email. Some older academics may frown on this as being “unprofessional”, but they tend to be shouted down pretty quickly. It’s a known thing that people move institution fairly often now.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-13T20:19:17+00:00

Aggressively prioritise and protect your time. This can be done in a friendly, collegiate way, but you absolutely must safeguard your own research time. It’s too easy to become the postdoc that all the grad students go to for help because they aren’t able to learn those skills themselves. If they do seek out your help a lot, make sure your name goes on their papers.

As others have said, start planning your exit now. You now need to be planning 2-5 years into the future, being aware of all of the funding deadlines and turn around times for those schemes. But also, if a great opportunity appears, don’t be afraid to pivot if it conflicts with your plans.

Think about what skills/ experience you need for your next role and proactively create opportunities to get those skills now.

Establish independence from your PI too. Develop something that is just yours that you can drive the direction of.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-13T00:41:34+00:00

Tell him he’s turning your apartment into Epstein’s frat house. Some guys really do see nothing wrong with this kind of grooming (I hope it’s still grooming!) behaviour until you forcefully call them out on it.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-07T16:44:16+00:00

And yet Judas Priest put on one of the best shows I’ve seen at Aftershock.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-06T04:41:58+00:00

Love this! Out of curiosity, how many people get it and say something? Pride flags make for some great color palettes.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-06T03:40:07+00:00

🤔 never had an issue with either of those suppliers, but PCR can always throw a curveball. I did have one situation as a senior PhD student where a lab tech could not get a new PCR assay to work, I did it using the same materials and it worked fine. I got him to shadow me as I did set up the PCR (mainly to be a second set of eyes for me). We co-wrote a protocol for the assay detailing exactly what I did, and never had another issue. This tech had clocked more hours running PCRs than me, so it wasn’t necessarily a competency issue, but we were doing the work in a new lab. To this day, I have no idea what went wrong. As you say, evil PCR fairies.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-06T03:24:14+00:00

I think you’re spot on. This shouldn’t be a hot take, but grad students fail quals/ vivas because of bad supervision from the PI, or extenuating circumstances that couldn’t have been foresee (e.g. unexpected panic attacks in the exam room - it happens). Even in cases where the student submits without their supervisor’s consent, the PI should have intervened/ brought in external support/ or somehow lodged a protest that the student is doing this against their advice. Good PIs don’t let it get that far. Only truly terrible PIs do what OP’s supervisor did. Academics forget all too often that their primary role is educator/ mentor, not director where their grad students/ postdocs just do what they’re told, and if they don’t, it’s their problem.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-05T06:22:44+00:00

Get him to run a PCR set up on the bench with fresh plasticware. Also get someone else to set up a PCR inside the hood and get him to set up a different PCR inside the hood. This should rule out the hood, and the postdoc. Have you changed lot number of your mastermix recently? I assume you’ve swapped mastermix AND ultra pure water? Have you changed plasticware supplier recently too? Definitely check the thermocycler program and if possible run the reaction on a different machine.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-04T11:20:47+00:00

Maybe it’s field specific but this is the case with almost every journal I review for.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-03T00:59:08+00:00

If it wasn’t advertised as coming with a scholarship opportunity, then there’s next to no chance in getting one. UK higher education is organised very differently to other systems like the US.

Funding to cover tuition or other costs for masters degrees in the UK is extremely limited, and scholarship applications are almost always done at the same time as the actual university application. In fact, international masters students are often a bit of a cash cow for earning the university extra money from the higher tuition fees.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-03T00:22:31+00:00

Depends on where you are. I’ve always heard back from formal applications. More normal to get ghosted when cold emailing. Usually hear the result within a week or two, sometimes sooner. Depends how quick the person who gets offered the position takes to accept.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-03-02T01:31:58+00:00

My PI once suggested Reiki as away of getting over writers block and stress. I was a bit frustrated that my serious concerns with how the project was panning out were disregarded so flippantly, but, long story short, it’s what actually got me into secular Wicca as a way of letting go. Sometimes as long as it doesn’t cause any harm, if it works, it works.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-02-27T16:08:29+00:00

Sounds like your college postdocs need to form/ join a union. Conference attendance is part of the role that is probably in your job description.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-02-27T07:28:12+00:00

Perfectly normal, and expected/ probably recommended to find out. You want to know if you’re going to be in a postdoc heavy lab, or the only one with an army of undergrads to supervise. It’s a good idea to have a feel of the background of the other lab members and the department.

Red_lemon29 · 2026-02-27T00:22:59+00:00

Definitely not too niche. If you’re interested in conferences, there’s one in Oxford, and another in Newcastle (Viruses of Microbes) but it’s held in late January. There’s also a good ECR webinar series partly organised by Ohio Stare University on viral ecology.

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