It can feel like a career in science is about sacrifice. Your school friends may quickly become upwardly mobile while you remain overqualified, stressed and underpaid. You work late evenings and weekends, as and when the experiments dictate and/or your supervisor demands. You're never permanently employed. And no grant means no job. A PhD is not the ticket to an academic career that it once promised. Anyone entering the field of research should know that in the absence of a magical bull’s-eye (i.e., you happen to pick a subject just as it captures the public’s attention), it takes blood, sweat and tears to achieve that truly novel ‘find’ (and that Nature/Science paper). Those lucky few may receive fellowships, PI grants and lectureships (though even that is no longer assured). The rest, the faceless postdocs, grind out a career until they become too expensive, embarrassingly old and ultimately unemployable. A lucky few might eke out a lectureship after 15 years on the merry-go-round – post-doctoral jobs have long been considered training posts for academia.

Posts to study for a PhD tend to be short term and in high demand. Successful candidates are often required to move miles away from their family and friends – or even to another country. Indeed, experience in various labs, ideally in several different countries, is a prerequisite for landing a permanent position. As the number of doctorate holders worldwide grows, many PhD graduates find the process ever-more challenging in an environment where opportunities become fewer and farther between.

You don’t easily forget the sinking feeling as the end of your contract approaches. What is the chance of further funding? Will my grant application be successful? Will I have to apply for another job? To add to your pressures, the postdoctoral period often coincides with the time of life when your non-scientific peers begin settling down, getting a mortgage and starting a family. You find yourself in poorly paid ‘training posts’, unable to buy a house, save for retirement or support a family. For those who did their undergraduate degrees in shortsighted countries in which universities prosper as undergraduates build debt, the prospect is bleak. Settling your debt in impossible while you continue postdoc-ing.

Funding from research councils or charities for post-doctoral research is often associated with guidelines that emphasise the importance of career development. However, these are not always followed, often because supervisors have little management training and have little time for the career development of others. The 2015 report ‘Career Tracking of Doctorate Holders’, cautions that the current system is unsustainable, reporting on a jobs market that is saturated with candidates [1]. The consequence is insecure employment and rising dissatisfaction and stress among post-doctorates.

With the rising realisation that a future in academia is unlikely, candidates often begin to feel they are a failure – having to ‘move on’ changing direction to find something else – effectively leaving science. Considering society invests in developing their skills, you can’t be blamed for feeling that we are wasting a valuable resource. This is much how I felt two decades ago after several years postdoc-ing. I was faced with the prospect of a change in the focus of my research and re-direction of my grants – it was all too much. I jumped to the commercial arena. I first tried medical communications or ‘medcomms,’ where I found that the skills I practiced in research transferred naturally to the creating communications for the pharmaceutical industry, fluently speaking the language of academic leaders and experts. The first invaluable skill I noticed was an ability to converse with fellow scientists on their level – beyond that of account managers, ‘creatives’ and self-appointed ‘ideas’ men. I could appreciate the underlying science, discuss it on an equal standing and suggest imaginative ways to address issues. I could draw insights out of academic researchers and help them share their learning in unfamiliar commercial settings. Postdocs naturally know how to consider a lot of data and think critically about it. Postdocs are also used to reading and digesting a lot of scientific sources to find the most important parts and present them in a way that is easy to understand. These skills can be used to bring things to life for people who might have had trouble picturing them otherwise. Lastly, writing grants, abstracts, posters, and articles had taught me how to quickly compile documents that are well-organized, clear, and full of useful information.

I realised that although I was using many of these skills it was not providing me with fulfilment. Although science was a component of the job it was often viewed as the raw material, minimally respected and processed with little love and less appreciation. Rather, the approach was that of a production line, and I was simply another cog in the wheel. It was, in fact, turning out to be the worst of all worlds – I had left research behind and was simply processing science as a commodity. I felt that there must be a better approach and 18 years ago I set up a company of my own, Niche Science & Technology Ltd. My goal was to start a business where scientists could work on science projects in a setting that felt like a university setting. At Niche, we've put together a dedicated group of people who are focused on using the skills they've been working on over the past few years.

These days company meetings and water-cooler interactions often talk about fun, fulfilment and black holes. We focus is giving clients what they need (not necessarily what they ask for) and helping team members achieve their goals. We are only a small organization – although we are always looking to add exceptional people to our team. Despite our size (and the ever-present necessity to pay our mortgages) we are, more than ever, finding ourselves involved in cutting-edge science. In addition to holding several multimillion Euro research grants with both the European Union and the UK Medical Research Council, for example, we recently finished working on the first-ever gene therapy. We are working on projects as diverse as new treatment pathways for patients suffering with severe asthma and methods for identifying people who are likely to become frail in old age. We are also working on possible new treatments for malaria to cures for haemophilia.

The take home message (for those facing yet another round of self-reinvention and CV manipulation to highlight how perfectly you fit into a new post that you are not otherwise perfect for in a field you have no interest in) is that there are careers where you can remain ‘in science’, achieve financial security and receive the respect of your colleagues in a stimulating and nurturing environment. There is a future for those of you who perceive joining the ranks of market analysts working in banks, pharmaceutical industry middle management or medcomms medical writers as a ‘second place’ option. Below, Ryan, a recent addition to the Niche team, describes his experience in his own words.

Observations from a new medical writer

When I started a Masters programme at Imperial College London, my interest in science came back to life. I had a great year and decided that study was my calling. I imagined saving the world by making a lot of important discoveries over the course of my life. This was my goal when I started my PhD. I was excited to show what I could do. Things went well at first, and I quickly turned into an independent researcher who tested my own ideas and came up with interesting results. I felt good enough about my subject that I could start arguing more experienced coworkers. I quickly gathered enough information to write my first paper as a first author.

It wasn't the process of sending in and then being rejected that made me give up. It was seeing how hopeless my coworkers were after it was turned down. The thing that hurt me was my pride, and I quickly got over it. But it was much worse for everyone else, including my boss, who was just moved to senior lecturer. For him, having a manuscript turned down was the end of his job. During a beer after work, my boss told me that his deal told him how to get a certain amount of money. It was this man's job to learn more about childhood illnesses, but he was told that the only thing he was worth was the money he brought into the school. He couldn't use a key peer-reviewed article to back up his next grant application because his manuscript had been turned down.

I saw how completely Titanic the current system was (it was sinking). To be effective, you need to work on topics that are in style or with a Professor who became a "big name" by chance or by advertising themselves. Over the next 2 years, I saw many young scientists go from being rising stars to failing in their careers. This made me see that my success as a scientist would probably never depend on how hard I worked, how creative I was, or how dedicated I was. If I wasn't lucky, I would soon be added to the pile of scientists who don't have jobs, but this time my more experience would make me more expensive. I felt like I was giving up on my dreams and leaving science behind because I had to take charge of my job. It broke my heart.

This made me very happy to learn that biological scientists can keep working in science and use the skills they've learned during their PhD. Medical writing hadn't occurred to me as a career choice, and some of my coworkers had voiced doubts. But I quickly realised that it was something I was good at, that it was fun and satisfying, and most importantly, that it was the start of a job in which I can make good money in an interesting field. You are truly valued at Niche for the skills and ideas you bring to the table. Good work is essential to our progress, and I'm glad that my efforts are recognised and rewarded.

References

1. Phillips s, et al. Career Tracking of Doctorate Holders. European Science Foundation, May 2015