Jobs
mikethemadbiologist | October 4, 2010You might have, by now, seen that obnoxious article by Scott Kern bemoaning the sorry state of the cancer research facility at which he works. Apparently, the building is nearly empty on weekends, so people aren't working hard enough, and thereby killing cancer patients. Rebecca sums up the tone of the article:
There have been a few responses (updated: Janet has one also) to this chuckleheaded essay by Scott Kern (pdf) chiding, well, basically anyone who isn't in the lab 60+ hours every week about how they lack passion about their research, and are essentially letting sick people die…
sastyk | September 20, 2010I'm really excited about the ways that ASPO-USA is evolving. ASPO's role has been to raise awareness about Peak Oil, and it is serving to expose the issue in new ways. I joined the board of an organization that I'd once criticized publically for being elitist and dominated by old white guys because those same gentlemen challenged me to help fix the situation - and we are. Peak oil is emerging as the site of alliances that simply can't be achieved in climate change or on the economy - but because the peak oil community is diverse and crosses ideological lines so powerfully, those…
drorzel | August 18, 2010Daniel Lemire has a new blog post arguing that working long hours is stupid. This collided with Bee's Backreaction post on what keeps physicists up at night, included in this morning's Links Dump.
This got me to thinking about academic work habits, which led to the following poll:
How long will you keep working, continuously, on a difficult problem?Market Research
A bonus follow-up question, that I won't bother putting in poll form, is: How long should your subordinates spend working, continuously, on a difficult problem?
mikethemadbiologist | August 5, 2010A phrase that has entered the political lexicon recently is 'structural unemployment', which means that the unemployment were seeing is not due to a recessionary (or depressionary*) downturn, but represents job loss due to a fundamental restructuring of the economy. In the NY Times, we find an article about wage cuts (italics mine):
Local and state governments, as well as some companies, are squeezing their employees to work the same amount for less money in cost-saving measures that are often described as a last-ditch effort to avoid layoffs....
Pay cuts are appearing most frequently among…
grrlscientist | July 18, 2010tags: Late For Work, jobs, employment, humor, funny, comedy, fucking hilarious, social observation, streaming video
It's hot, you were up late drinking with your friends and now it's Monday morning -- again! Unlike some videos that I share with you, this one gets straight to the point -- a point that we've all achieved at some time during our lives.
grrlscientist | July 12, 2010tags: Happiest DJ On Earth, jobs, employment, humor, funny, comedy, disc jockey, David Guetta, streaming video
Some people have jobs they love, and then there's this guy ... he's burning off more calories doing his job than most people burn at the gym!
mikethemadbiologist | July 9, 2010Just like I don't think Peter Peterson is stupid enough to believe his anti-Social Security propaganda, President Obama can't actually believe this:
"Now, government can't create jobs, but it can help create the conditions for small businesses to grow and thrive and hire more workers," President Barack Obama said yesterday as he urged Congress to take up new jobs legislation at an event honoring Small Business Owners of the Year. "Government can't guarantee a company's success, but it can knock down the barriers that prevent small-business owners from getting loans or investing in the future…
grrlscientist | May 26, 2010tags: Stevie the Professional Regurgitator, jobs, hobbies, passtimes, offbeat, strange, funny, people, The Tonight Show, streaming video
This man makes a living by swallowing strange objects, like light bulbs, and then vomiting them back up. I think at least a few of these stunts are illusions -- how did he do the sugar trick, for example? -- while other stunts (the fish trick) are really just gross.
Okay, how the heck did he do the sugar trick? And the fish trick? [and tell me, what does HSUS say about this fish trick?? or are they too busy writing legislation to outlaw people's pets to…
razib | March 16, 2010A few weeks ago I had dinner and drinks with an old friend who works for the firm which invented the x86 series of microprocessors. He's doing well financially right now, and was very bullish on his firm. More specifically it seems that they're on a hiring binge (he knows because he's been on hiring committees). So a while back he forwarded a resume of a graduate school acquaintance to human resources. His boss came up to him later and told him that there were remunerative benefits to forwarding resumes. If the individual gets hired:
- There is a entry-level $2,000 bonus to the referrer
- But…
catdynamics | February 23, 2010to answer a question: hiring of senior faculty is a lot like middle school dating.
There's the "if I would, what would you answer?"
followed by the "well, if you were to ask, and I were to answer, what would you do?"
Delicate, tiresome, and occasionally effective.
Sometimes it becomes a non-terminating descending loop.
And sometimes it is a total headfake.
sastyk | February 12, 2010Everyone needs to read Don Peck's superb Atlantic Magazine piece on why the jobs aren't coming back anytime soon. It confirms what I began writing back in late 2008 - that most often economic crises of the kind we have been seeing last a decade or more.
Most recessions end when people start spending again, but for the foreseeable future, U.S. consumer demand is unlikely to propel strong economic growth. As of November, one in seven mortgages was delinquent, up from one in 10 a year earlier. As many as one in four houses may now be underwater, and the ratio of household debt to GDP, about 65…
grrlscientist | February 12, 2010tags: employment, creative thinking, motivation, career, rewards, inspiration, science, psychology, Daniel Pink, TEDTalks, streaming video
Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. If you think about it, the rewards described in this video are the very things that motivate blog writer to provide their content for free.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading…
sastyk | February 5, 2010Every news media I looked at it is trumpeting good news - while unemployment increased in January, we're thrilled that it was only be 20,000 jobs. Because of this, the unemployment rate fell to 9.7% amid, as we learn on CNN "hope the economy will add jobs soon."
What's buried in the middle of the report is the real news - that revisions in employment estimates show that we lost 1.2 million jobs more than the previously estimated 7.2 million. This was higher than predictions, which expected an additional million lost jobs. That means that one in every seven jobs lost since December '07 went…
drorzel | January 18, 2010The always interesting Timothy Burke has a post on the economics of conference attendance, inspired by Brian Croxall's essay about why he didn't attend the MLA. The key problem for both of them is that the way the academic job market is structured inn the humanities forces job seekers to attend the MLA for "screening interviews," used to cut a long list of applicants down to the three or so who will be invited to campus.
This is almost a two cultures moment, because this isn't the situation in my part of academia. It's not that the job market is any better, but there isn't the same automatic…
grrlscientist | December 18, 2009tags: Hamburger Make Up Artistry, food porn, Buy Me That, streaming video
This is another video in the Buy Me That series, which is designed to teach kids how to think critically about the television commercials they are constantly bombarded with. In this episode, we see some kids playing with a toy that turns out to be the opposite of what it is advertised to be.
Perhaps this video should be required viewing for all kids in the weeks before Christmas?
grrlscientist | December 11, 2009tags: Hamburger Make Up Artistry, food porn, Buy Me That, streaming video
This video is a segment from the popular series "Buy Me That." Featured is a "makeup artist for food," who provides us with this behind-the-scenes look at how burgers (and fries) are made to look their best for television.
This just makes you want to run out to buy and eat some fast food, doesn't it?
grrlscientist | November 2, 2009tags: forklift accident, jobs, humor, funny, oh SHIT!, streaming video
This video is one of those where you find yourself laughing while you secretly hope that this will never be you. This fork lift operator backs up a little too fast and bumps into the edge of large pallet rack. He hits it just hard enough to start a domino effect bringing down all the shelving in the entire warehouse.
drorzel | October 21, 2009As mentioned on Twitter, I spent much of yesterday reading and rating a huge number of grant proposals. As such, I've looked at a lot of CV's and resumes, and the contrast is striking. People who work in industry tend to use a resume format that is mostly just a list of jobs and degrees, while academics... well, we do go on.
"CV" stands for "curriculum vitae" which is Latin for "every damn thing I've done in my life." It's a much more comprehensive listing than you find on a corporate resume, including not just the important events and publications of a person's career, but everything. Where…
grrlscientist | September 7, 2009tags: science, research, postdoctoral fellowship, academic life, unemployment
[Reprise: originally published in 2004]
New York City (AP) - After an unsuccessful two-year-long search for funds to support two more years of research and living expenses, a scientist and freelance writer has offered to fund her research by selling access to her internationally televised death by electrocution and by auctioning all body parts on ebay.
GrrlScientist, an evolutionary biologist and ornithologist, uses DNA to research the evolution and historical geographic movements of parrots among the islands of…
drorzel | August 11, 2009(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This post is one of those interviews, giving the responses of Julie Myers-Irvin, who helps scientists put together grants.)
1) What is your non-academic job?
I work at the University of Pittsburgh as a "Scientist Administrator" (a terribly nondescript title that I will…