Looking for career advice - PhD or job?

For the love of god, please please do the PhD. You will not regret any aspect of it, you will also be getting industry experience, 4 years is a very very small amount in the grand scale of things. A funded PhD is pure gold, and you are getting a steady stipend on top.

The PhD will open up many consultancy roles atop of your actual experience. This can in time lead you to earn £400+ an hour for panels and boards. Just make sure you keep a hold of every contact you ever come across in the industry and make sure you keep in touch with them via linkedin of FB. When it comes to job time let the highest bidder take you. I have found that getting a well paid job in this economy is all about being good and having widespread contacts within the industry you are in.

Good luck, and congrats mate :)
 
waspy88 said:
For the love of god, please please do the PhD. You will not regret any aspect of it, you will also be getting industry experience, 4 years is a very very small amount in the grand scale of things. A funded PhD is pure gold, and you are getting a steady stipend on top.

The PhD will open up many consultancy roles atop of your actual experience. This can in time lead you to earn £400+ an hour for panels and boards. Just make sure you keep a hold of every contact you ever come across in the industry and make sure you keep in touch with them via linkedin of FB. When it comes to job time let the highest bidder take you. I have found that getting a well paid job in this economy is all about being good and having widespread contacts within the industry you are in.

Good luck, and congrats mate :)
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Do you do a PhD? (or did you do one). Thanks for the post :).

I am still completely torn between the two.

PhD = 3 years, likely working with a huge worldwide manufacturer (don't think I can say who but they are many times bigger than the one this job offer is with) in a subject that will be big. We haven't much steel or oil left, we are running out and so this topic will be big, it is a case of when not if. Placement company (same place as job offer) are not interested and will drop me compeltely, but this isn't an issue as I would have a PhD in sustainable manufacturing. No tuition fee repayment , but I leave with just £5,000 debt anyway so this is not an issue. I have done a year in industry so coming out the other side with no experience is not possible.

Job = Good money, work way up, buy a house in 2 years whilst living at home (home is brilliant but I will be living there to save with the intention of getting my own place!). Tuition fee repayment to me for the full amount over 5 years.
 
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mglover070588 said:
Do you do a PhD? (or did you do one). Thanks for the post :).

I am still completely torn between the two.

PhD = 3 years, likely working with a huge worldwide manufacturer (don't think I can say who but they are many times bigger than the one this job offer is with) in a subject that will be big. We haven't much steel or oil left, we are running out and so this topic will be big, it is a case of when not if. Placement company (same place as job offer) are not interested and will drop me compeltely, but this isn't an issue as I would have a PhD in sustainable manufacturing. No tuition fee repayment , but I leave with just £5,000 debt anyway so this is not an issue. I have done a year in industry so coming out the other side with no experience is not possible.

Job = Good money, work way up, buy a house in 2 years whilst living at home (home is brilliant but I will be living there to save with the intention of getting my own place!). Tuition fee repayment to me for the full amount over 5 years.
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I am unfortunately not dedicated enough, but my partner is. She finished her PhD last year with a major drugs company. She got offered a job right at the end. However the post was in Germany. She declined then, but now they have offered the same role in London so we are moving from the North to the south.

She did a lot of consultancy during her course as she chose the same subject for her dissertations and MSc and MPhil level. She was seen as an expert in particular area.

She has been working purely on consultancy and lecturing up until now since mid last year. She is looking forward to leading her new team.

Just to put some perspective on it, if she had gone straight from university into a graduate scheme in the bio informatics field she'd be on a decent wage now as she would have had several years industry experience. She did her double masters and the PhD because she loved the broad range of things she could learn. Now after the end of her courses she has explored every avenue inside and out in her particular field. She can command a pretty epic salary due to the amount of people in the world with her knowledge is limited to a hundred or so people. She cannot do the same if she'd just gone through industry.

Though industry experience is seen as a good thing, for certain areas it is not always cutting edge and as such reduces your prospects of standing out completely. Now she could have moved up the hierarchy of that company and got to a senior level, but it would have been within that workspace, so ACME chemical industry and all their processes and challenges etc etc, but she would not have known much about the broader field as it stands with pioneering research and studies. She actually speaks to the leading figures in the field every month via conferences and calls due to her study. This is the kind of contact / knowledge which one single company will never offer if you are locked within their working schedules.

The field you describe sounds very much cutting edge and you will be in that elite group of people who know a lot about an emerging field and as such you will be able to command a pretty epic salary in a decade or so. I am not going to re-iterate what others have said on the difficulties of concentrating on it. Missus had a fair struggle with her PhD as we had our now 3 year old daughter in between. She was studying journals in bed before she was due to give birth, and when my then 1 day old daughter was beside her she was writing and consolidating research notes from other colleagues.. but like anything in life hard work has paid of for her now.

Just to conclude your financial gains will depend solely on how you take your PhD. My wife didn't see it as a career progression or anything remotely related to making money, for her it was a passion that had to be dealt with. The consequences of her current employment are all by-products of her passion in the subject. So do the PhD if you really love the idea of what it stands for.

PS: we had a chat about this before I clicked submit so ideas are hers!
 
waspy88 said:
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Awesome post. Thanks for taking the time for that!!

I have no other half or any children and no other ties at all.

I would be doing the PhD for future earnings as it really is an emerging field that is absolutely essential to the life on this planet. I do love what it stands for and I only get motivation by two things. The first being people on at me for deadlines and the fear of failure, the second being that I truely believe what I am doing is important. The PhD would be the belief of importance in what I am doing - I know that all manufacturers, from cars and excavators to food and paper must change soon as resources deplete - An obvious example is oil, it has almost gone and sure as heck isn't coming back. My placement company at the interview themselves were saying how the price of steel is completely outdoing all their cost-down efforts.
 
meghatronic said:
Right, because a PhD is solely about the money.
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My point was that PhDs in most countries are massively under paid for the work done but at least in Switzerland you get something reasonable. There are many other benefits, such as universities with plenty of money to buy equipment, staff , etc. And this is actually more important, I was shocked at the state of most departments in the UK with tragic levels of under funding.
 
Lack of funding of departments varies very widely indeed. Top ten chemistry departments in the UK generally have very good equipment and staff. The important factor is the amount of funding any department is bringing in on a regular basis, which is what allows them to modernise and keep doing cutting edge research.
 
i did molecular biology at bsc level, now ive been out of uni 3 years and have almost nothing to show for it, im considering doing a PhD too, dunno if i should, but if i dont i have to give up on science cause its got me no where, is 4 years [putting me at 30] a good idea? i dont know, but i know if i stay at my current job for 4 years ill only be on 23K at most,

doing a PhD for me now would only be worth it if i was guaranteed a good job at the end, this is the question for me.. will it be worth it, at this point in time i regret doing science all the way from 6th form because its got me nowhere

im gonna vote for 'i dont know' because im in a similar [if not so good] situation
 
al4x said:
i did molecular biology at bsc level, now ive been out of uni 3 years and have almost nothing to show for it, im considering doing a PhD too, dunno if i should, but if i dont i have to give up on science cause its got me no where, is 4 years [putting me at 30] a good idea? i dont know, but i know if i stay at my current job for 4 years ill only be on 23K at most,

doing a PhD for me now would only be worth it if i was guaranteed a good job at the end, this is the question for me.. will it be worth it, at this point in time i regret doing science all the way from 6th form because its got me nowhere

im gonna vote for 'i dont know' because im in a similar [if not so good] situation
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You can get well payed research possitions with big pharma without doing a phd, but if you want to build your career the PhD will be necessary at some stage.

At your stage, I jumped ship. I couldn't the stand the thought of being in a lab for that long, as interesting as science is.
 
Nitefly said:
You can get well payed research possitions with big pharma without doing a phd, but if you want to build your career the PhD will be necessary at some stage.

At your stage, I jumped ship. I couldn't the stand the thought of being in a lab for that long, as interesting as science is.
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Im also thinking this, cut my losses, but i dont have a clue what to do, wish i did engineering like the OP tbh, just lost atm, horrible feeling may start a thread myself!
 
al4x said:
Im also thinking this, cut my losses, but i dont have a clue what to do, wish i did engineering like the OP tbh, just lost atm, horrible feeling may start a thread myself!
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To give you some ideas, some biology co-students of mine are now:

Lawyers
Working for media (BBC etc)
Teachers
Researchers
Studying medicine

So there's some food for thought. If you can't think of anything you would actually rather be doing anyway, I wouldn't blame your degree :p
 
Nitefly said:
To give you some ideas, some biology co-students of mine are now:

Lawyers
Working for media (BBC etc)
Teachers
Researchers
Studying medicine

So there's some food for thought. If you can't think of anything you would actually rather be doing anyway, I wouldn't blame your degree :p
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Dont do what i did OP, take the first job that came up cause its a job, i can think of ideas, but i dont want to get it wrong again, i cant afford that!
 
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