I don't think that a post that contains at least three smileys and even a sentence that it is good that they try to make things finally equal (because there are inequalities, no arguing about that) is all negative or aggressive.

The stats usually show the overall gender ratio. They could start hiring exclusively women for a decade and the ratio would still not be 50/50 because the all-male-dinosaur-professors are not yet retired. How can one not get this? Once they are gone the stats will look different. It is like comparing the average what men earn and the average what women earn and conclude that there has to be a huge inequality. This makes no sense if you don't compare female engineer with male engineer or male admin with female admin. If you do, you will still find a wage gap, but suddenly it is 5-7% and not 20-30% like some people claim. Still something we have to work on but these exaggerations all the time are not helping anyone.

If I would have wrote passages like jojo as a man about women I would have been immediately told how I should not make unfair generalizations. For me this is typical double standard and the fact that now all female users try to defend this, without acknowledging that there might be some generalization, borders on cliche.

But it is just impossible to discuss this. Of course men have simply no idea of women in the workplace and therefore are automatically wrong. Period :D

I am apologizing in advance for every position I might get in the future as it will probably mean that a way more qualified working mom does not get the position, mostly because she has to do household and raise kids, while I outsource these tasks to my wife and continue to work or alternatively have a cold beer and watch the game. Whoever finds sarcasm can keep it :)

Makes me kind of sad to write something like that, because I am generally absolutely pro gender equality, but posts like that make it just really difficult to be understanding. This should not be men vs. women...

No offense but dinner, laundry, babysitting.... we are not living in the 50s anymore. If you got yourself a lazy husband/boyfriend that can't cook, can't change a diaper or does nothing around the house, that's kind of you fault ;) The couples I know share these tasks. To quote my female boss "There's never been a better time for women in science". I can't speak for the UK but in several European countries, they desperately try to increase the amount of female professors. At my institution, every single Assistant professor that was assigned in the last years was female, almost every job ad has the additional sentence "University/Company X wants to increase the amount of women and therefore especially encourages them to apply" and at least for my University I know that when equally qualified, the woman usually gets the job. I am pretty sure that my University is no exception. I am not complaining about this, for decades men had unfair advantages and it's great that things are finally getting equal but with sentences like this



you just undermine the work men do making it seem like no accomplishment and a simple result of the supportive environment. That's just wrong. Not all issues a woman has in the workplace are gender-based and you also do not have per se a harder life or more difficulties.

Probably not the answer you wanted to have, sorry for that, but this post kind of provoked me ;)

I would probably check important symposia in that specific field, check the lab websites of the speakers and look at the alumnis. There are quite a lot of US labs where a ridiculously high amount of former PostDocs are Assistant Professors now and even the ones who aren't are usually at least lecturer or senior scientists in companies. For me this is a good indicator of a big shot/well renowned lab in this particular field and also your best chance to land a position in academia afterwards. It depends a lot on your supervisors' connections.

That's just one of thousand ways. The best would be probably to talk to people who work in that field. They should know ;)

I think that is actually very common. I don't know any PI who provides real lab support unless they are early-stage group leaders and have to do labwork because the group is very small. Even if my boss would go to the lab she would be probably no help because she has not been in a lab since ages. Having people around that are doing the same stuff is convenient, but also not always the case. The post docs in my lab are doing completely unrelated stuff. It sounds however as if you are managing it by yourself after all, so I would suggest to be a bit more confident ;) You taught yourself the stuff and that's what it is all about. Someone has to do a technique for the first time. You can't expect that someone takes your hand and shows you everything you need to know for your PhD. Sometimes one is lucky and that is actually the case but you probably can't expect it to be like that.



I don't really get why doing stuff yourself is battering your self esteem?? That's great! If every PhD student would exclusively follow the instructions of the PI there would be little challenge in a PhD. As long as you discuss the experimental design you made with him this sounds pretty much optimal to me. You are probably learning way more than the PhD students who just execute what their supervisors are telling them.



I guess you can only confront him and tell him that you want to discuss the big picture and where this project is going. Most PIs do that and you don't have to ask for it but you can probably not expect him to sense that you are not happy with the, in your opinion, sloppy research question. I don't think that he would be offended by that.

How is your data looking so far? If you make progress and create data you can use then I guess the main issue is rather your doubts in your own work (and the resulting ineffective work and sickness) :) Maybe the whole situation is not as bad as you think (at least I hope so)

I don't want to offend anyone but it is usually people who never applied for a job in industry that tell you it looks great on your CV or before your name ;) My dad is an engineer with a PhD. He never has regret doing it, but it was also never necessary for his career. He just enjoyed it at the time. Personally I heard way more often that people who apply for positions in industry wanted to get rid of the PhD in their CV than of people who said it was beneficial. If you consider academia it is worth thinking about it. If not, not.

Great news. Success!

Of course you don't want to discourage people, but there will be a point at which Universities can't compete with the private sector anymore. When the brightest people are not even thinking about getting into academia because of this job-roulette. We have to stop treating symptoms. There are so many programs now that try to make post docs attractive for positions that have nothing to do with their actual expertise (science, not even just the subject of your PhD) instead of thinking about why we have so many highly educated people we have no use for. Of course these people are now there and you can't fail them but I have the feeling that this is getting the new normal.



I basically agree but would say that it is already too late when it comes to the PhD decision. In Germany for instance there are not a lot of things you can do with a masters in chemistry or biology. So in that case it is not just a problem of too many post docs but generally too many people in a certain subject.

The last part is true. I never understood why you have to leave after a certain amount of time even though your boss is happy with your work. Highly inefficient. We have some people in the department who are here for 30 years now (something like permanent post docs without teaching) and they acquired so much knowledge in this area. If you struggle or hit any obstacles they are the ones you talk to. Why hiring a new post doc every 2 years, introduce them to techniques, let them read all the literature, while you let the person that already knows all that stuff go just for the sake of people-rotation. Just make it a normal job. If the boss is happy with your performance you stay, if not, he can hire someone else. But you would have to change the whole system for that...not going to happen

I was only referring to the German system. We have only a few permanent lectureships. Most of them are temporary.
I didn't want to say that you don't get anything useful out of it, it was more the bigger picture kind of question. As a society we should maybe think if it is really desired that 75% of scientists end up in jobs that have little to do with science or research. Especially in the light that science degrees are the most expensive. I think it is possible to not regret a PhD and appreciate what you learned and at the same time accept that this is an inefficient system with a lot of flaws.

It is. Like all fields of sciences. What they don't tell you is that this has nothing to do with the job market. The only permanent position at a University is basically the professorship and some few other positions (Akademische Räte etc.). The rest is done by temporary staff like PhDs and Post Docs. The chance of getting one of those positions is approximately around 5%. Outside of academia it does not look so much better. Big companies hire a few post docs but relative to the total amount of post docs out there this is not sufficient. Just check how many biology students are completing a degree at the average German university and then imagine that at least 80% of them complete a PhD afterwards. There is just a massive oversupply of highly educated scientists.

There is only a certain demand of scientists in our society even though especially media sometimes puts it as if there could not be enough of them.There is just no use for all these people unless we quadruple the amount of money we spent for science and create a huge amount of new positions (which would then probably just lead to even more people getting into sciences....vicious circle :D ).

In Germany it is common for students in medicine to do their PhD while still studying and it does not take long. Some do it in 6-12 months basically part-time BUT they get awarded the "Dr. med" afterwards, while researchers from neurosciences, organic chemistry, theoretical physics and so on get the "Dr. rer nat" after doing a 3-4 year PhD. Not everyone knows that there is a difference but it becomes more and more known in the general public (Every employee knows that it is not the same). It is a weird situation, as medical students basically don't need a PhD (just a proof of being capable to conduct research) and some of them probably don't even want to do one. The main reason that most students in medicine still do it is that a doctor without a PhD ("Dr. med") is often regarded as less competent by older generations who don't know that the title tells you absolutely nothing about the performance of a doctor outside of basic research. There are a lot of people suggesting that they should get the Dr. med automatically after they finished their degree without having to this pseudo-dissertation that, frankly said, does not deserve the name dissertation if compared with other dissertations.

Definitely medicine. The conditions after a PhD are as bad as you read. These are no exaggerations. If you complete a degree in medicine you would still have the option to get into research by doing a "real" PhD (Dr. rer nat) in neuroscience afterwards instead of the common Dr. med, but with the huge advantage that you can always work as a normal doctor if things don't work out after the PhD. As you said, medicine is still a job guarantee in Germany. If you go for neurosciences and things are not working out you are pretty much screwed and left with little options.

For industry, a PhD is probably rather an obstacle. It maybe helps you to get some positions at the very top but entering the job market will be so much harder, especially when you are quite old until you finished the PhD (for UK standards). If a long-term position in academia is not desired, I would not recommend to do a PhD. They probably just search for a way to keep you cheap.

I didn't want to draw that conclusion because I never studied at a UK institution but that was my impression as well. There seems to be a huge difference in how people perceive their PhD depending on the country. I am absolutely sure that if you would ask the people that defended their PhD in the departments I was ( all European universities) then 95% would say that it was a difficult, but overall great time. There are always obstacles and some projects are not going as good as others but that's how it is. You don't know it in advance. There are of course also shitty supervisors that don't care about their students but it is not as omnipresent as it is often described here.

What's your definition of "common"? Is it common that PhD students suffer from anxiety and depressions? If so, I've been pretty lucky so far and met all the exceptions. I am aware that not everybody is openly talking about mental health issues but here I sometimes have the feeling as if this was regarded as perfectly normal. Maybe I get a wrong impression because the happy people are usually less abundant in these kind of forums. Of course there are difficult parts during a PhD (like there are in every job) but I am pretty sure that not even 1% of the PhD students at my university could tell you where you could find the counselor. So for me this is not common (even though it of course exists) but rather a big issue if you are feeling so bad that you are seeking professional help.

Why can't you write the paper? Conference presentations are a nice thing but a paper is way higher valued. Most employees just want to have your journal-publication list. Anyway, the only thing you can do is confront your supervisor and tell him that you think you should be first author or that it should be a shared first authorship. Of course then you should also contribute to the writing.