A postdoc's perspective to every level - Recensione dipendente - Postdoctoral Fellow presso Calibr

This institution should not be allowed to have postdocs, period. Calibr technically can employ postdocs under the guise of a non-profit with academic roots, but in practice, it has become unethical. My support for this perspective... Postdocs are universally paid a relatively low salary (at least half of what industry pays Ph.D.s). This has historically been a fair trade in academia, because new Ph.D.s are not quite independent and experienced enough to be hired as new faculty, nor do they have any industry experience. So in exchange for lower wages, a postdoc USUALLY gets the chance to: 1) Enhance their skill sets through special training (learn new techniques) 2) Beef up their publication record (getting paid in academic currency) 3) Develop their independence as a researcher by working on their own project ideas and making them grow, largely unsupervised. 4) In the case of industry postdocs, you have the benefit of working in a legitimate pharma environment that will help you get jobs in industry if that is your path. Postdocs at Calibr however are paid the lowest legal postdoc wage possible (actually dipped to NIH year-0 and DOES NOT increase each year like the NIH mandates). Benefits are not equivalent to what most R-1 institutions provide. Then postdocs are usually told to do exactly what to do. Projects are solely determined by senior project managers. Postdocs become basically glorified technicians, BUT ARE ACTUALLY PAID LESS than technicians. It is brilliant economy. So you get stiffed with your salary, and in exchange for your financial sacrifice at Calibr you get: 1) No (or few) new skill sets. If you learn something, it is not intentional, simply incidental. 2) No publications are written while working here. Pubs do creep out of Calibr every now and then, but they are not the focus, and are becoming rarer and rarer - Don't expect it. 3) No sense of independence, because most are being told what to do at every turn. Also, you have no sense of belonging to a project that you are working on, because management feels it is not necessary for postdocs to participate in project meetings (This was not the case in the beginning, but has become the ugly standard). 4) You don't get REAL pharmaceutical industry grade experience working here. In the beginning, it seemed like a perfect move for those who want to transition from academia (with no drug-discovery experience) into industry (who by the way strangely expect you to have already acquired 5 years of drug-discovery experience to hire you). However, many have a hard time getting an industry job even after years spent at Calibr, unless you are working on the very specific project that a company is hiring for. Calibr is not always regarded as a full-scale pharma outfit by industry at large. I was told at a Pharma interview, "Well here (not like at Calibr), you will actually be doing true drug discovery reasearch" Calibr's recent merger with Scripps Research Institute will make their pharma identity even more ambiguous in the future. If you want to separate yourself from academia, go for a postdoc in a legit industry setting if possible. A quick note about leadership... Most of the Project managers (P.I.'s) at Calibr are very smart and talented, but most were very green (inexperienced) when it started. Many had to adjust by expanding their knowledge base to completely different disease systems far beyond what they ever studied in the years before Calibr. No one is a specialist. A lot of pressure is put on P.I.'s to deliver, and since they can't leave Calibr for the same level position in another company with their limited experience, they became loyal through obligation - They have to stay, or take a serious hit in their career trajectory, or might even have their careers ruined if they are not careful. This invariably affects the postdocs and techs working under them. If you are lucky, the P.I. will be able to modulate this pressure well enough to not immediately route the time-demands and frustration directly into your life. No P.I. however, could keep the story completely straight, and it was typical to have streams of inconsistent communication between P.I. and postdocs/tech. I was a lucky one. I had a good relationship with my boss and got to do independent work. I felt bad for most of my colleagues who were not so lucky. Bottom line, many are being exploited at Calibr, and it can't yield good results. Yes people get jobs based on their experience here, but many had to rely on previous experience before Calibr to get hired, and some have a personal contact that was more valuable getting them a job than the Calibr line on their C.V. Internal promotions do happen for postdocs, but it is a SMALL percentage. Promotions are usually because they need to fill a position of symbolic know-how, and they therefore choose someone from the right project - not because they have the most impressive work output. Many at Calibr work long hard hours and impress their colleagues with results, yet don't get promoted, because their project is not at a monetary flashpoint, or their boss is not liked or that person is not a personality fit into the club. One hardworking individualistic person did recently get promoted, so their is some justice in the jungle. * All my disapproval would be less if Calibr were a poor little institution trying to survive. However, money is so often wasted on whimsical reagent purchases, unnecessarily expensive equipment (some of which was already bought years before, but stored and forgotten), and then there is a whole wing of Vice Presidents hired over a year ago, who I'm sure are competent, but I have no idea what they could possibly be doing for their executive wage costs, or what they are needed for at THIS moment, given the current stage of Calibr's project development. That same wing and its neighboring lab wing by the way, are largely empty/unoccupied, and therefore wasted $/sqft. rent. Let's not leave out the several times Calibr has paid MANY tens of thousands of dollars per single cohort of an animal study farmed out to SROs just to legitimize early data, which Calibr could do better, more reliably and much cheaper themselves if they could only coordinate with the animal facility they are now tied with at Scripps. **Additional note: The biology early-discovery programs are currently being cut back in a push for clinical trial entry, and this review may not apply to Chemistry postdocs as much who are now in higher demand, but rest assured they have their own issues to deal with.