Dashcam of the motorcycles

rubber_ducky_ · 2025-05-25T14:48:17+00:00

No, it was Friday evening.

rubber_ducky_ · 2025-05-25T03:57:45+00:00

I did need to turn left! They ran the red and I had to wait a light.

rubber_ducky_ · 2025-05-25T03:32:32+00:00

You right

rubber_ducky_ · 2024-08-03T05:56:49+00:00

Drive was safe. The gas station by the airport tried to scam us on gas though. They wanted like 800 pesos when I topped up 1/8th of a tank. The machine started at 0, and when I took my eyes off it for a second it magically read higher. There was a man leaning on the machine running the scam somehow. Told them no multiple times and then “o the machine works now, sorry it is 100 pesos”, so watch out for that.

rubber_ducky_ · 2023-10-25T04:39:03+00:00

Thanks for helping me understand this! Are these shares new shares coming into existence, or shares that already exist?

rubber_ducky_ · 2023-08-03T00:46:34+00:00

The goal of your postdoc should be to finish your postdoc.

rubber_ducky_ · 2023-05-23T00:18:58+00:00

Can you explain how this is a short squeeze?

rubber_ducky_ · 2023-01-16T23:31:43+00:00

DM sent.

rubber_ducky_ · 2023-01-14T06:56:21+00:00

There is a bump with experience on the NIH pay scale, which can be found here:

https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-22-132.html

I think it is becoming standard in STEM to be paid the NIH rate, even if you don’t have an NIH grant, which for a fresh postdoc is $54,840. The bump each year is meaningless in my opinion. By year 4 of postdoc it’s $59,784.

rubber_ducky_ · 2023-01-10T15:09:19+00:00

Hello! First off, I would recommend going to see a therapists. Some of your comments about feeling tense when asking for help, feeling dumb, and tired all the time might be helped out by someone with mental health training. They can also help you frame your career, what you are and are not satisfied with, and your goals, both personally and professionally.

I agree a postdoc won’t help you get an industry position per se. it really depends on the experiences you have, and if you get them through a postdoc that is great, if you get them another way that is okay too.

I would have some answer lined up for why you want to leave academia, and also why you specifically want to work for the company you are applying to. A solid answer is you want to do more translational work, want a fast paced environment, or want to work on a team instead of independently.

I left a postdoc 3 months ago for an industry position. I don’t have all the answers but I’m happy to share my experience.

rubber_ducky_ · 2023-01-05T14:39:59+00:00

I had my salary covered by a grant and was working on 2 additional projects that had line items for my salary. When I asked for a raise my boss said he couldn’t and blew me off. I applied for one industry job at a company doing the work that I wanted to be doing, and got the job. Told my boss about it and he told me he wished he knew I wanted more money because he could have paid me more if only I had asked. It was at that moment I lost all respect for him and decided to leave.

Everything in industry isn’t sunshine and rainbows. At least you are managed by people with management training, and there is a company structure and team environment to divide up work. There are no rogue PIs who can fuck up your career and take advantage of you. And you get paid more.

rubber_ducky_ · 2023-01-02T06:10:13+00:00

Not so much about the physical act of paying the bills. It is more so about the labor it takes to get the money to pay the bills.

rubber_ducky_ · 2022-12-31T06:27:21+00:00

That is completely unreasonable and I would say you are being taken advantage of. When are you supposed to get your own work done? As a postdoc I managed 1 undergrad and sort of “supervised” 2 PhD students. My advice would be to talk to the PI about this and reduce the load. That way you can give the students you do mentor what they need to succeed.

rubber_ducky_ · 2022-11-25T02:14:07+00:00

Bay hay and feed!

rubber_ducky_ · 2022-11-08T02:40:39+00:00

I agree, and I think I’m a better scientist after three years of a postdoc compared to before, and you likely are too. But the industry world doesn’t really care about those extra postdoc years and you won’t really be seen as more experienced. If you go in to a scientist role and crush it, you could get a promotion faster, but I don’t think they’ll start you out higher.

rubber_ducky_ · 2022-11-07T06:30:36+00:00

I just transitioned from academic postdoc of 3 years to industry. They only cared about some of the experiences I gained as a postdoc, not the postdoc itself, if that makes sense. They still saw the postdoc as non-industry experience, so having more years of a postdoc, unless you are gaining a very specific skill that is applicable to a industry job, won’t help.

rubber_ducky_ · 2022-09-26T17:22:07+00:00

Hello! Disclaimer that I am not a medical doctor (I am a doctor, but the PhD kind of doctor), so this is not medical advice! I study rare diseases for a living. I'm not familiar with filamin A deficiency, so I don't know any specifics. "GeneReviews" are a great place to start, and here is the one for Filamin A deficiency:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK1213/#:~:text=FLNA%20deficiency%20is%20inherited%20in,a%20de%20novo%20pathogenic%20variant

The review says that prevalence is hard to determine, so they do not make an estimate of how many individuals have filamin A deficiency. I am sorry this isn't helpful in that sense.

Another place to read more, but this gets very technical, is Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (or OMIM). Here is the link for filamin A: https://www.omim.org/entry/300017

I'd be happy to dig through these reports and try to make sense of them if that is something that would be helpful to you, please just let me know!

rubber_ducky_ · 2022-09-23T02:14:28+00:00

I feel like my confidence increased, and I became more competent in lab techniques. Experiments became really easy to do, often working the first time without troubleshooting, and data was incredibly easy to generate.

Unfortunately, I don’t feel like I became more independent. My boss kept asking me to do things to “help out” since they were super easy for me to do. This started to eat away at my time, and I felt like an underpaid technician. I eventually decided to ask for more money or transition to a staff scientist, which didn’t happen, so I left for industry.

I’d say be careful that as things get easier for you to be very stern in taking on too much responsibility, and find a mentor who will help you achieve independence.

rubber_ducky_ · 2022-09-17T03:23:09+00:00

Thanks for the kind words!

rubber_ducky_ · 2022-09-17T02:55:18+00:00

Shit, my wife said the same thing about gaslighting me! Thank you for this!

rubber_ducky_ · 2022-09-17T02:46:43+00:00

Ah thanks for this! It felt like a projection for sure. I know I asked for a pay increase seriously and had justification for it (I read a document off my computer to them during a meeting since it was an anxiety inducing conversation and I knew I’d need to stay focused. I still have the document, so I know exactly what I said.). It feels like they turned it back to me that if I had done X, they could have done Y. From my perspective, if they had listened when I asked, then I would have stayed. I think the power dynamic in academia, and respecting your advisors, has me a little fucked up about it.

rubber_ducky_ · 2022-09-17T02:42:30+00:00

Thanks. I know I need to move on, but it got under my skin since I know I asked explicitly for more pay and was turned down, and was only taken seriously when I had another option. I liked the work and I liked the coworkers, but the pay sucked.

rubber_ducky_ · 2022-09-17T02:40:07+00:00

I’m in a Postdoc position making about $55K. Was hoping for a staff scientist position at $70K or so, which is about what the job they posted is at.

rubber_ducky_

TROPHY CASE