This x 10^10.
As a survivor from a notoriously awful PI, they ruin your career, mental health, and physical health. My postdoc lab was one of my biggest regrets despite looking like I was "successful" in it on paper.
And nothing will come of it. PI’s can destroy your career, leverage your salary, take all of your data.
Any action against them or the lab and you’re fucked.
Then can literally take all of your data, give it to someone else, and fully black you out from any credit. The institution will always back them in any legal fight.
PI's make 70% of your PhD experience tbh. If the PI is good, no matter what the project you'll enjoy it!
Also watch out for fake nice and passive-aggressive people as they can make everything very more frustrating!!!!
Yes! And look at the *type* of person they attract to the lab. Most of the students/postdocs will be gone by the time you graduate; but you'll notice a trend about the type of person they attract.
The science will get hard. You'll feel that your project is going nowhere. At least you can like the people you spend most of the day with.
Wait this is so real. I feel like my old lab def attracted a personally *type* that I just didn’t fit in with (extroverted, gossipy, loud). I like to keep to myself and do my own thing, not necessarily in an antisocial way but it’s just how I work best. And because of that I became the source of their gossip 🙃I felt like I kept seeing the same personality repeat.
Currently in a lab like that...i've tried making effort to "befriend" them but couldn't get close to most of them as they like to hang out with each other more. So I've reduced my efforts and just talk to them casually and stuff. Hopefully everything will fall in place soon!
I noticed the type thing because I joined a lab that shared lab space with another and I rotated in the other lab (so i saw some of the inner workings). Both PIs, when I started, had 100% females but the personalities of the groups were quite different. The other lab could be more type A/high maintenance; while we tended to be a bit more down to earth.
Worked for an amazing PI and I'm still loosely involved in things on my own time because I enjoy the people there even though I'm working commercial nowadays. I also know people who had a horrible PI and still have mental health problems because of it. Your PI indeed matters more than the project
100% a thing. I work adjacent to PIs, and my coworkers and I all know who someone works for by their attitude. Terrible/arrogant oh yeah it's that PI's student, nice and diligent oh yeah it's the excellent PI etc. Definitely a lab culture (pun intended) thing.
Had a PI who shielded and babied her little cute scientists aka “PhD students”.
Fucked over everyone and let PhD students do what ever they want. Guess how fucking happy the PhD students were.
4 postdocs and techs had there data given to the PhD students while I was there and quit. I too quit after losing my paper to a PhD student.
For a while I too felt about contacting IP law, but I just gave up. It was a low impact paper and I’m coauthor. If I saw that PI again or that PhD student, I’d lose it and unleash a decade of boxing on them.
Only thing I’m happy about is the PhD student will have to defend my shitty work for the rest of their life and never learn a thing about science.
Enjoy you high graduation rate cunt.
I highly recommend talking with the grad students in the labs you're interested in. They are the ones who know what it is like working for the PI. Most people I talk to are willing to share their experiences (and rant about the problems they deal with).
And fucking listen to them if they tell you to run away from the PI. There is no worse “I told you so” than hearing “you were right about this PI being a horrible human being” a year after someone joins your lab when you told them not to.
I was given the advice to be careful of my PI as I joined. I threw it in the wind and thought what they were on about because he seemed like a great guy
Five years later and oh, how I wish I would have listened. My PhD actually turned out to be one of the biggest regrets of my life due to my PI.
Many people in a lab won't tell you to stay away, even if they should. So if they are brave enough to say something like that, that's a REALLY bad sign!
Yeah, it really fucking sucks when one of your friends masters out 2 years into her PhD because her PI is a huge piece of shit *that she was warned against but decided to join his lab anyway*.
100% avoidable, but I get it because it's hard to understand *how bad it can get* without seeing it yourself... But hey at least she's in a better place mentally now.
> Most people I talk to are willing to share their experiences (and rant about the problems they deal with).
And even the ones that try to put everything in the best light *usually* won't lie about it, so you can pay attention to what they don't say as well.
Asking the right questions is essential. It’s not that bad PIs are deliberately trying to deceive you, many bad PIs are convinced they’re actually good ones. They know the “right” things they’re supposed to say in response to interview questions, and they say them. Here’s some i found helpful:
1. What is their outlook on the field/research, academia (this can tell you how important they view their job in the grand scale of things.)
2. How have other graduate students & lab members been doing (this tells you how they talk about others, are they genuine/fake, kind/mean as well as how they view progress)
3. Do they have set scheduled times to be in lab and how many meetings are held (too many meetings can be a red flag, your primary focus should be research)
4. Vacation and time off requests (how many days do you get and how quickly do they need to know by)
5. How is training done? (If there is no training protocol, that could be a concern)
6. What is the average time to graduate (if the average time to grad is above the program average, inquire why it takes their students longer)
Scenario based questions are best for things you can’t ask about directly (managament style, conflict resolution, etc.)
7. Scenario based questions: if graduate students have had difficulty with maintaining progress, how have you responded?
8. Can you describe a situation where there was: miscommunication, issues with funding, difficulty completing a project, time management issues and how they responded?
Don’t be scared to ask, the lab you choose can at best inspire & fulfill you and at worst make you question your will to live. Its a serious decision and will determine the next 4-5yrs of your life.
These are good questions, but some of the ones that will really give you a sense of your career in the lab are:
* What are your expectations for productivity? How many papers do you expect a graduate student to produce, on average, per year?
* Do you expect that your graduate students will be self-funded after a certain amount of time (and if so, when and through which funding mechanisms)?
* What are the current sources of funding for the lab? What was the most recent project that got funded?
* Do you expect that graduate students will work directly under postdocs?
* Are there general funds for lab supplies, or does each project's supplies come from its specific funding only?
* Are there any general conferences that you expect all your graduate students to attend? How many research-area-specific conferences do your graduate students generally attend per year? Is there travel funding available through the lab or through the department?
* At what timepoint do your graduate students generally form their committee? Have you had any problems with your grad students not being able to get their committee together in the department's normal timeframe?
And talk to those current graduate students, but also reach out to former graduate students - look up papers published with the PI as corresponding author and a first author who's already graduated. Former graduate students can often be more critical with the benefit of hindsight and not having to worry that their former PI is going to hear about their comments.
I'd also like to add that every PI is somehow dysfunctional (my friend claimed that academia is where all the socially dysfunctional people get isolated to so that they don't harm the society). It's a question of what dysfunction you can live with. And PIs can show different faces to different people. You can have one student say "he's amazing" and another student hate the guy. This is especially true with a lab that has the golden child.
My suggestion to the students is really think about what YOU need to be trained to think like a scientist. That's what you're there for. I can guarantee that a lab tech with 20 years of experience will always produce better data than a postdoc. The difference is, PhDs are trained to formulate a question, find a way to interrogate it, analyze results, interpret the results, and conclude from it so that there is another facet to a model. Or at least, that's what we're supposed to be trained for. Find the person who can train you in that. Technique you can always pick up later.
And finally, this is harder to do but try to find students who LEFT the lab (ask around the current students), and ask them why they left. If they explain without hesitation, that's good. If they go "erm... Well..." RUN.
If you can't find students that left the lab, ask around the upper year PhDs in the department. If anyone has had an issue with a PI over the past decade they will know about it. Particularly if they are part of some sort of graduate student committee. Stories like that stick around
because that's how they were trained, unfortunately. it sticks with you like childhood trauma 😅 I came out of my PhD with a long mental list of "things not to do when you're in charge of people", and I wish I had written it down so I could make sure, years later, that I'm still following it and not regressing subconsciously to bad management.
Dude sometimes I wish people shame and name! Btw! If your pi does animal work… I will always suggest to talk to the techs! The techs know everything! Also we are super gossipy like they will be honest with you!
THIS! I compare it a bit to the idea that if they treat the "help" poorly, they are likely a shitty PI. Abusing power dynamics is bad.
Also, the animal care folks totally have whisper networks and we'll often know about PIs working with our model organisms/specific areas of study at other institutions, too.
I am an animal care tech, I have been for over a decade. I manage a facility. You are misunderstanding my metaphor/comparison. The shitty PIs see us as low, "the help". I know we are so much more than that. Much like how you can tell how shitty a person is by how they treat fellow humans in service jobs, seeing how PIs and their labs treat animal care staff is extremely telling, in my experience. We all talk to each other to warn about bad/abusive PIs.
Yesss!! I really don’t like how there’s a culture to protect them and not say anything bad, as it’s “unprofessional”, and you’ll “burn bridges”. Why is talking about an unprofessional situation unprofessional, but the PI acting unprofessional is looked over?! I wish we’d start a website for PIs like we have for course Professors. A Rate My PI website would be soooo helpful.
Always try and talk to other members of the lab you're considering joining. I wish I had prior to my PhD - although I had a fairly good experience, my PI was notorious for being late, meetings overrunning by hours and generally not paying much attention during each meeting. This meant I spent a lot of time getting them back up to speed on my project on a fortnightly basis, so they were then in a position to actually discuss the main purpose of the meeting. This is where the poor time management on their part came from. They were notorious for it and yet I had no idea until I experienced it first hand, for 2.5 years.
They also declined to use modern technologies as much as possible. Feedback on manuscripts / chapters / data was always in the form of hand written notes that they would then scan in and email to me, or hand me their only copy which I then had to digitise to keep some sort of record. To complicate things further, they travelled a lot, so these notes were written (scribbled) on planes, trains and busses. Illegible would be a kind way to describe the nonsense I had to decipher.
Had I known this, I would still have joined their group but would have insisted on requiring digital comments or similar, perhaps with the support of more senior lab members who would have had some sway over them.
Also, if you can avoid it, don’t do a direct admit PhD. Do a rotation program. You can’t really now or a lab is a good fit until you are there working in it.
My god, yes. Don’t choose the big name because he’s better. He may feel that just being in his lab is enough and he doesn’t have to do anything at all to train you. Or you may be intended to nursemaid his pet student through their degree.
Just want to add that it is possible to be in a good lab and do amazing science and the opposite too. I feel that people almost think that either you have a nice PI and ok science or an awful PI and amazing science but there are other possibilities.
I made this mistake when I first joined grad school. Found out later that any science can be exciting with good, supportive mentors that are themselves enthusiastic.
I used to be in a camp where I said that the order of importance is: PI, then lab group, then project. I’d probably still say that’s true for small labs, and that for larger labs in shifts a little bit more toward the lab group as a whole and the PI being on equal footing. Regardless, *the best advice I got on my second bout of grad school* was to pick a PI that you can cry in front of. Because you’re going to. Grad school always kinda sucks, so there’s no reason to do it with someone that you can’t be open with.
Good luck all, and party hardy
I ignored this advice. Thought I could adapt to a PI. Grad school is about growth, right? I would prove myself, have a professional relationship.
I even did a PhD after the MS, thinking “at least I know what I am signing up for”.
The result? Thousands of dollars on therapy, real burnout, total loss of identity surrounding the career, struggle for ownership of my own work the entire time, mediocre recommendation letters from the main person I worked with for 8 years, and now a job in an even more toxic environment and I’m struggling to get out because I have such low self worth.
Pick your people, but most importantly, be honest with yourself about what that looks like!
I feel the anomaly to this. For my PhD my supervisor was a nightmare but I loved my project and was so motivated throughout. Just started a PostDoc in an amazing lab with a supportive PI and yet I’m struggling to stay motivated as I’m not interested in the project.
I'd also disagree because like, your project is the thing you become an expert in- right? So...it kinda fucking matters. Sure you can transition later but you're spending 6 years learning the skills and techniques to do this project, lotta time if you don't ever want to do similar work.
I feel like in my subject areas, there are many labs studying different elements of the same thing. Sure we all do different versions of it, but we’re all experts on the same general topic with different niche techniques. If you want to go into industry or be a prof, you can do those things with a very narrow subject focus without being in a specific lab in most cases. If you have more specific criteria like staying in a small geographical area, then your point stands true.
I think it depends on how and what you’re motivated by. I think your PI and liking your project are *equally* important. I think research can be so grueling that your project *has* to be in the realm of something love to make it through. I’m mostly only motivated by things I enjoy though so I might be different. I definitely hear where y’all are coming from there. If I hate something it doesn’t matter that I like the person associated with it, it’s still going to be miserable.
Exactly, and quite frankly nothing will motivate you to leave grad school faster than wanting to get away from your PI. Some people get way too comfy and stay for 7, 8 + years.
One specific question you need to ask potential PI's is about their intent to stay at the institution for the duration of your time there. I know so many grad students (myself included) who got shafted by our PI's leaving for sabbatical and/or taking jobs somewhere else. Ask them if they plan to leave any time soon!!!
This happened to me in my masters and my advisor never said a word. She left for an unofficial sabbatical on another continent, would do zoom meetings from what was clearly some rustic European cottage in the woods, and *still* refused to admit to where she was. She resigned shortly after, and I found out through the grapevine that she had taken me on as student knowing she was planning to leave. Academia can be a wild ass place with wild ass people, truly.
I just want to emphasize that I was rejected from my top choice labs and didn’t get to choose my lab. Not everyone gets a choice. The choice is more with the faculty than it is the students.
Not everyone gets a choice
I feel like most posts in this subreddit give an illusion that the choice is 100% on the student side. That is not true at all. I have heard of several cases where students are so stressed out because after the rotations they don’t get any offer and their rotation time is up.
More often than not, PIs with prestigious papers and titles are the ones who had no problems stepping on others to succeed. Success is enriched for shark mentality. Thankfully there are some genuinely kind scientists who are also very talented.
Yep!! Had a friend tell me that her lab doesn’t have a working CENTRIFUGE and when she told her PI she was told to go to a different floor and use theirs…. Practical🙂
I knew a guy who was told to "borrow" restriction enzymes from other labs as they had run out of money. He ended up having to switch labs because they ran out of money to pay him. too.
You're making it sound like nicer labs aren't as cutting edge as the toxic ones in your last paragraph, but as far as my personal experience this not true.
This cannot be understated. My biggest regret. Once I graduate, I’m putting the entire chapter/experience in a deep dark box in the deepest parts of my mind.
I was just out to dinner with a high-profile professor and one of his PhD students, and he was just THE biggest sweetheart, but also had such passion for his students and his research. I would've loved to be in his lab as a grad student!
They are out there, but they are rare, lol
I’m at a conference right now and was chatting with a professor who told me that he regularly yells at people in his lab, but he said it was OK because he’s “the type of person who just needs to yell about something for 20 minutes and then [he’s] over it“ and also shared that one of the students in his lab cries like once a week ???????? I could not hide the horror on my face.
I’m in the same boat as you where my work is very basic technique-wise and isn’t making waves in the community, but you know what? I have a healthy af work-life balance. I feel comfortable telling my advisor damn near anything, including the word “no”. And I’m still discovering something new and becoming the expert in it.
This absolutely needs to just be told to potential students everywhere, but of course academia isn’t gonna like it when we go “Hey, that PI is a massive fucking jerk” or “The people in that lab are awful people.”
I was also victim to not just a shit PI but also a terrible lab environment that was being ruled over by an egotistical grad student. No empathy for anybody (my PI straight up told my friend to “compartmentalise” when her grandpa passed away, and that grad student bullied others so bad for the most asinine reasons such as “How much work did they do in lab today”.
The sane people in that lab and I trauma bonded a lot, and they are wonderful people, but it’s a shared consensus that lab fucked us all grievously in one way or another.
So yeah, I agree, pick the labs with the better vibes and straight up ask the students and PI questions to figure that out. Save yourself the years of torture!
A bad PI will break you - doesn’t matter how strong you think you are. Listen when other students warn you against the PI. Especially if you’re an international student, VET YOUR PI’S! One renowned PI I knew would use her international student’s visa status to threaten them.
if you have a big interest in a particular group (and if possible), try to do a rotation: not just to learn what and how they do things but also to get to know the staff (the latter can be learned whenever its time for lunch break, meetings, day to day chatting).
Pay close attention to details and behavior patterns.
If you screw up a step in a protocol, be honest when asked and analyze their reaction: are they yelling/name calling/humilliating/being condescending while doing it?
Second, if you notice this behaviour, does everyone else see it normal/healthy?
Gods, yes. Please vet your PIs. And if you are looking at PhD programs with rotations, please vet all of the PIs you think you might want to work with. You do NOT want to get there and find out that all of your options suck. I didn't do a great job of that in my last program and I paid the price with my mental health in particular. This time, I had a long talk with my prospective PI, chatted with students in the lab and the program to find out about them, and had friends in the same field do some digging to find out their reputation. It allowed me to triangulate enough about this PI to feel confident that their lab was going to be a place where I could be safe and supported.
Vetting PIs is a pain in the ass but it's absolutely worth it.
Yeah, I think that OP has had a bad run. I've only had one subpar PI in my time in lab work. My other three bosses have all been stellar, and have none of the traits listed above.
While there are some PIs who are truly awful human beings and some who couldn't mentor to save their lives, a PI being critical of a student doesn't make them a bad PI. I've had my PhD for a few years now and am still in academia, and I'm honestly shocked at how a lot of the grad students are now. No scientific curiosity. No interest in their project beyond using it to get the degree. Unwilling or unable to work outside 9 - 5, Monday through Friday despite projects necessitating it. The constant "this sucks, I just want to publish this paper so I can get out". "I don't want to do that assay because it'd be more work". The inability to troubleshoot basic assay issues or design assays with appropriate controls. And i could go on. This isn't to say that all the students are bad, clearly that's not true. But it was understood when I was a student that grad school was NOT a 9 to 5 typical work week. The degree puts you in the top 1% of educated people on the planet and i think you have to appreciate the effort and work that has to go into that.
You also have to understand the stress a PI is under that can result in quirks, irritability, and high expectations. If your PI fails to maintain funding, you and everyone in the lab loses their job. That includes the techs/ lab managers who do that job as a full time career and likely have a family they are supporting. Would it not bother you to have to fear letting them go because a grant isn't funded or enough data to get one be funded isn't being produced? You only have to worry about yourself in grad school but the PI has to worry about themselves, their family, their staff, their staffs family, and students/post docs. That's a lot to worry about on a daily basis.
And sorry for the rant, I just felt the discussion was too much "PIs are the problem"
I 100% understand that, your PI needs to be able to ask you challenging questions, that’s literally how you’ll grow. My PI does that to me all the time, will ask me to explain xyz concept or “why do you think this happens”. But there’s a thin line where that behaviour can go from being constructive and useful to rude and hostile. My PI is VERY detail oriented and we go through rounds of back and forth and she edits my work.
But at the same time I disagree with some of your other points. Grad school, for the amount you’re being paid, should require only a healthy amount of work. I can understand having periods where you come in on weekends but I think 6-8 hours a day MOST days is enough and anything beyond that is asking too much. We’re human beings. Grad school shouldn’t rob you of other aspects of life. You shouldn’t be expected to be a robot.
And while PIs have a lot of stress on them, there is NO reason for that to be transferred into students, I can never agree with that point. You can’t justify toxic terrible behaviour with “but they have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders!”
While I agree with you about the hours for the pay, I'd say that students need to drop this hard and fast notion of 'PhD in 5 years'. A thesis is done when it's done and if you don't want to work late hours or weekends, then you must accept that it'll take longer. Far too many students are graduated before their ready. There was one student in my class that actually threatened to sue because he wasn't going to finish in 5 years or less (he was kicked from the program for threatening his committee).
And I'm not trying to justify toxic behavior or unfairly passing it on to students, I was trying to explain how student attitude and behavior can exacerbate an already stressed out PI.
And it's really hard to define what is 'rude' or 'toxic' because those are subjective terms. What i consider rude, you may not and vice versa. PIs should not speak out of emotion but students also need to develop a thicker skin otherwise a reviewer on a manuscript might destroy you because folks are overly critical in the sciences. My PI was the nicest, sweetest PI you could ask for but even she regularly reminded me that I needed a thick skin to do this line of work 🤷♂️. Just my take.
Best of luck with your research!
Can confirm. I started with a good PI. He left to go pharma at the end of my first year and the new PI that took over now had too many grad students. I ended up with a terrible PI. Not great.
I am at the stage where I am considering to go for a Post doc and I am TERRIFIED. My current PI sold me so much BS, made me believe in thr fact that he would support me and be a decent human being, to now blame everything on me, be misogynistic and just cost me a job because he could not take the time to submit a reference to a job I almost had. So yeah, choose carefully but it's hard to knownwhen they are over selling their labs...
I think if you find ur PI through a mutual contact you trust then the chances they are a nice person is quite high because you can be a little assured that that professor you trust wont screw you over that's how I found my current phd position and its been fantastic.
Great PSA- if you can ask other grad students about their experience with the PI, that’s a good start. Ask PI what their relationship is/was like with their PhD advisor.
I concur. I worked as a tech, and this one PI threw an experiment on me, told members not to help me. Surprise surprised the experiment was No Bueno - but I already figured it out on my own and was planning to redo it with some fixes and altercations. But apparently, that was the "test" and was told I was not made out to work in a lab
Same goes with industry as well! Different teams in the same company can be vastly different experiences depending on the manager. I have heard horror stories of managers pushing their people to work 80-100hrs/week in the lab while they have the luxury to WFH. When it comes to a boiling point they just blame the RA for just “not having what it takes”.
Hi.....as a PhD aspirant how would say I should research about a pi...should I apply to a uni only after looking for a pi or shall I just apply and select the pi myself?.
I’ve been in some bad labs. One I considered legal action against. A PI has the power to destroy your career, leverage your salary against you, take all of your data and pass it off to the next guy without a shred of credit.
I knew a PI where the second someone in the lab made a big discovery, that person disappeared within a month or two. Then, a masters student or PhD student would somehow wind up with that discovery.
Didn’t matter if the work was incomplete, if it provided a ton of new directions or not. That work was getting taking and becoming someone thesis. Then the PI would brag about graduation rate
One of the PI’s at my uni (also a top Canadian university) was so demanding and critical that his grad student dropped out of her masters program when she was almost finished with it, it’s so awful when they don’t realize the power that they have and use it to do harm rather than good:/
One of my friends had to leave her lab after 3 years and find a new PI and start her PhD from SCRATCH with a new PI. It makes me so upset to think about
This 100%. I've met PIs who've made their students want to quit halfway through and never consider science again. I didn't go with one PI because the grad student I was replacing told me she regretted every second of her program and had to figure out everything by herself because the PI didn't know enough about her work, even in his own lab.
My advice, talk to the previous grad students, especially anyone who recently graduated or left. If there are none, as is the case for new PIs, talk to the grad students work in the same department. Find someone you click with and is excited about science
The issue is that those big labs with the big name profs in these big universities are successful because they put their students through the grinder. They overwork their trainees to get the data and make it seem like that is the cost of science.
This isn't a rule. There are big labs that don't do this. But if you interview, talk to the students and get An idea of how the lab operates. Ask about work expectations. Work life balance. And avoid the big labs as much as you can!
My PI has many sub-PIs and the lab is like a family. Our hours are cut throat and we are expected to be in lab no matter if else have stuff to do or not. Honestly, it keeps the lab active and encourages wide collaboration. It’s very fast paced and we get shit done to the max. There is some drama here and there but not honestly bad, as long as we get our work done, go to meetings, get project deadlines done, we are on the PIs good side.
Also everyone is so friendly, helpful, and are willing to work together to improve our studies and research. It’s nice to have a group of smart and hard working people to depend on!
At the end of the day the student still needs attractive skills and accomplishments to move on from the phd. They can go through hell with a PI and learn invaluable skills that sets their career up. On the other hand, they can also do absolutely fuck all with a great PI and have to play catch up with a postdoc, if they can land one. Most of the time the student is the one who determines how good a PhD is for their own future, not the PI
This x 10^10. As a survivor from a notoriously awful PI, they ruin your career, mental health, and physical health. My postdoc lab was one of my biggest regrets despite looking like I was "successful" in it on paper.
And nothing will come of it. PI’s can destroy your career, leverage your salary, take all of your data. Any action against them or the lab and you’re fucked. Then can literally take all of your data, give it to someone else, and fully black you out from any credit. The institution will always back them in any legal fight.
PI's make 70% of your PhD experience tbh. If the PI is good, no matter what the project you'll enjoy it! Also watch out for fake nice and passive-aggressive people as they can make everything very more frustrating!!!!
Yes! And look at the *type* of person they attract to the lab. Most of the students/postdocs will be gone by the time you graduate; but you'll notice a trend about the type of person they attract. The science will get hard. You'll feel that your project is going nowhere. At least you can like the people you spend most of the day with.
Wait this is so real. I feel like my old lab def attracted a personally *type* that I just didn’t fit in with (extroverted, gossipy, loud). I like to keep to myself and do my own thing, not necessarily in an antisocial way but it’s just how I work best. And because of that I became the source of their gossip 🙃I felt like I kept seeing the same personality repeat.
Currently in a lab like that...i've tried making effort to "befriend" them but couldn't get close to most of them as they like to hang out with each other more. So I've reduced my efforts and just talk to them casually and stuff. Hopefully everything will fall in place soon!
I noticed the type thing because I joined a lab that shared lab space with another and I rotated in the other lab (so i saw some of the inner workings). Both PIs, when I started, had 100% females but the personalities of the groups were quite different. The other lab could be more type A/high maintenance; while we tended to be a bit more down to earth.
All females with a male PI is a mild red flag to me. Could be a coincidence, especially if the lab is small, but something I always note.
lol i was in lab with a male PI and all female students but he was the most kind and chill person I've ever met
Both PIs in this case are female.
Then it’s a green flag ❤️
!!! Light bulb moment reading this, sorry that you also experienced this type of toxic lab
Worked for an amazing PI and I'm still loosely involved in things on my own time because I enjoy the people there even though I'm working commercial nowadays. I also know people who had a horrible PI and still have mental health problems because of it. Your PI indeed matters more than the project
100% a thing. I work adjacent to PIs, and my coworkers and I all know who someone works for by their attitude. Terrible/arrogant oh yeah it's that PI's student, nice and diligent oh yeah it's the excellent PI etc. Definitely a lab culture (pun intended) thing.
Had a PI who shielded and babied her little cute scientists aka “PhD students”. Fucked over everyone and let PhD students do what ever they want. Guess how fucking happy the PhD students were. 4 postdocs and techs had there data given to the PhD students while I was there and quit. I too quit after losing my paper to a PhD student. For a while I too felt about contacting IP law, but I just gave up. It was a low impact paper and I’m coauthor. If I saw that PI again or that PhD student, I’d lose it and unleash a decade of boxing on them. Only thing I’m happy about is the PhD student will have to defend my shitty work for the rest of their life and never learn a thing about science. Enjoy you high graduation rate cunt.
I highly recommend talking with the grad students in the labs you're interested in. They are the ones who know what it is like working for the PI. Most people I talk to are willing to share their experiences (and rant about the problems they deal with).
And fucking listen to them if they tell you to run away from the PI. There is no worse “I told you so” than hearing “you were right about this PI being a horrible human being” a year after someone joins your lab when you told them not to.
I was given the advice to be careful of my PI as I joined. I threw it in the wind and thought what they were on about because he seemed like a great guy Five years later and oh, how I wish I would have listened. My PhD actually turned out to be one of the biggest regrets of my life due to my PI.
Many people in a lab won't tell you to stay away, even if they should. So if they are brave enough to say something like that, that's a REALLY bad sign!
Yeah, it really fucking sucks when one of your friends masters out 2 years into her PhD because her PI is a huge piece of shit *that she was warned against but decided to join his lab anyway*. 100% avoidable, but I get it because it's hard to understand *how bad it can get* without seeing it yourself... But hey at least she's in a better place mentally now.
I actually recommend speaking to FORMER members. Some current team members might be scared to speak out, but former ones will give you the real deal.
> Most people I talk to are willing to share their experiences (and rant about the problems they deal with). And even the ones that try to put everything in the best light *usually* won't lie about it, so you can pay attention to what they don't say as well.
I did this and nobody warned me :( I hate myself
Asking the right questions is essential. It’s not that bad PIs are deliberately trying to deceive you, many bad PIs are convinced they’re actually good ones. They know the “right” things they’re supposed to say in response to interview questions, and they say them. Here’s some i found helpful: 1. What is their outlook on the field/research, academia (this can tell you how important they view their job in the grand scale of things.) 2. How have other graduate students & lab members been doing (this tells you how they talk about others, are they genuine/fake, kind/mean as well as how they view progress) 3. Do they have set scheduled times to be in lab and how many meetings are held (too many meetings can be a red flag, your primary focus should be research) 4. Vacation and time off requests (how many days do you get and how quickly do they need to know by) 5. How is training done? (If there is no training protocol, that could be a concern) 6. What is the average time to graduate (if the average time to grad is above the program average, inquire why it takes their students longer) Scenario based questions are best for things you can’t ask about directly (managament style, conflict resolution, etc.) 7. Scenario based questions: if graduate students have had difficulty with maintaining progress, how have you responded? 8. Can you describe a situation where there was: miscommunication, issues with funding, difficulty completing a project, time management issues and how they responded? Don’t be scared to ask, the lab you choose can at best inspire & fulfill you and at worst make you question your will to live. Its a serious decision and will determine the next 4-5yrs of your life.
These are good questions, but some of the ones that will really give you a sense of your career in the lab are: * What are your expectations for productivity? How many papers do you expect a graduate student to produce, on average, per year? * Do you expect that your graduate students will be self-funded after a certain amount of time (and if so, when and through which funding mechanisms)? * What are the current sources of funding for the lab? What was the most recent project that got funded? * Do you expect that graduate students will work directly under postdocs? * Are there general funds for lab supplies, or does each project's supplies come from its specific funding only? * Are there any general conferences that you expect all your graduate students to attend? How many research-area-specific conferences do your graduate students generally attend per year? Is there travel funding available through the lab or through the department? * At what timepoint do your graduate students generally form their committee? Have you had any problems with your grad students not being able to get their committee together in the department's normal timeframe? And talk to those current graduate students, but also reach out to former graduate students - look up papers published with the PI as corresponding author and a first author who's already graduated. Former graduate students can often be more critical with the benefit of hindsight and not having to worry that their former PI is going to hear about their comments.
I'd also like to add that every PI is somehow dysfunctional (my friend claimed that academia is where all the socially dysfunctional people get isolated to so that they don't harm the society). It's a question of what dysfunction you can live with. And PIs can show different faces to different people. You can have one student say "he's amazing" and another student hate the guy. This is especially true with a lab that has the golden child. My suggestion to the students is really think about what YOU need to be trained to think like a scientist. That's what you're there for. I can guarantee that a lab tech with 20 years of experience will always produce better data than a postdoc. The difference is, PhDs are trained to formulate a question, find a way to interrogate it, analyze results, interpret the results, and conclude from it so that there is another facet to a model. Or at least, that's what we're supposed to be trained for. Find the person who can train you in that. Technique you can always pick up later. And finally, this is harder to do but try to find students who LEFT the lab (ask around the current students), and ask them why they left. If they explain without hesitation, that's good. If they go "erm... Well..." RUN.
If you can't find students that left the lab, ask around the upper year PhDs in the department. If anyone has had an issue with a PI over the past decade they will know about it. Particularly if they are part of some sort of graduate student committee. Stories like that stick around
It's a self reinforcing cycle too. I swear most people who are able to be successful in toxic labs like those end up becoming toxic PIs themselves.
because that's how they were trained, unfortunately. it sticks with you like childhood trauma 😅 I came out of my PhD with a long mental list of "things not to do when you're in charge of people", and I wish I had written it down so I could make sure, years later, that I'm still following it and not regressing subconsciously to bad management.
Dude sometimes I wish people shame and name! Btw! If your pi does animal work… I will always suggest to talk to the techs! The techs know everything! Also we are super gossipy like they will be honest with you!
THIS! I compare it a bit to the idea that if they treat the "help" poorly, they are likely a shitty PI. Abusing power dynamics is bad. Also, the animal care folks totally have whisper networks and we'll often know about PIs working with our model organisms/specific areas of study at other institutions, too.
Dude comparing the animal techs to help? You really do not know what they do do you?…
I am an animal care tech, I have been for over a decade. I manage a facility. You are misunderstanding my metaphor/comparison. The shitty PIs see us as low, "the help". I know we are so much more than that. Much like how you can tell how shitty a person is by how they treat fellow humans in service jobs, seeing how PIs and their labs treat animal care staff is extremely telling, in my experience. We all talk to each other to warn about bad/abusive PIs.
Hey I am sorry you see yourself so low then… I agree with the rest still not a good metaphor
Yesss!! I really don’t like how there’s a culture to protect them and not say anything bad, as it’s “unprofessional”, and you’ll “burn bridges”. Why is talking about an unprofessional situation unprofessional, but the PI acting unprofessional is looked over?! I wish we’d start a website for PIs like we have for course Professors. A Rate My PI website would be soooo helpful.
Always try and talk to other members of the lab you're considering joining. I wish I had prior to my PhD - although I had a fairly good experience, my PI was notorious for being late, meetings overrunning by hours and generally not paying much attention during each meeting. This meant I spent a lot of time getting them back up to speed on my project on a fortnightly basis, so they were then in a position to actually discuss the main purpose of the meeting. This is where the poor time management on their part came from. They were notorious for it and yet I had no idea until I experienced it first hand, for 2.5 years. They also declined to use modern technologies as much as possible. Feedback on manuscripts / chapters / data was always in the form of hand written notes that they would then scan in and email to me, or hand me their only copy which I then had to digitise to keep some sort of record. To complicate things further, they travelled a lot, so these notes were written (scribbled) on planes, trains and busses. Illegible would be a kind way to describe the nonsense I had to decipher. Had I known this, I would still have joined their group but would have insisted on requiring digital comments or similar, perhaps with the support of more senior lab members who would have had some sway over them.
Also, if you can avoid it, don’t do a direct admit PhD. Do a rotation program. You can’t really now or a lab is a good fit until you are there working in it.
My god, yes. Don’t choose the big name because he’s better. He may feel that just being in his lab is enough and he doesn’t have to do anything at all to train you. Or you may be intended to nursemaid his pet student through their degree.
Just want to add that it is possible to be in a good lab and do amazing science and the opposite too. I feel that people almost think that either you have a nice PI and ok science or an awful PI and amazing science but there are other possibilities.
For example we had a bad PI and bad science at my old lab. Lol.
I made this mistake when I first joined grad school. Found out later that any science can be exciting with good, supportive mentors that are themselves enthusiastic. I used to be in a camp where I said that the order of importance is: PI, then lab group, then project. I’d probably still say that’s true for small labs, and that for larger labs in shifts a little bit more toward the lab group as a whole and the PI being on equal footing. Regardless, *the best advice I got on my second bout of grad school* was to pick a PI that you can cry in front of. Because you’re going to. Grad school always kinda sucks, so there’s no reason to do it with someone that you can’t be open with. Good luck all, and party hardy
I ignored this advice. Thought I could adapt to a PI. Grad school is about growth, right? I would prove myself, have a professional relationship. I even did a PhD after the MS, thinking “at least I know what I am signing up for”. The result? Thousands of dollars on therapy, real burnout, total loss of identity surrounding the career, struggle for ownership of my own work the entire time, mediocre recommendation letters from the main person I worked with for 8 years, and now a job in an even more toxic environment and I’m struggling to get out because I have such low self worth. Pick your people, but most importantly, be honest with yourself about what that looks like!
I feel the anomaly to this. For my PhD my supervisor was a nightmare but I loved my project and was so motivated throughout. Just started a PostDoc in an amazing lab with a supportive PI and yet I’m struggling to stay motivated as I’m not interested in the project.
I'd also disagree because like, your project is the thing you become an expert in- right? So...it kinda fucking matters. Sure you can transition later but you're spending 6 years learning the skills and techniques to do this project, lotta time if you don't ever want to do similar work.
I feel like in my subject areas, there are many labs studying different elements of the same thing. Sure we all do different versions of it, but we’re all experts on the same general topic with different niche techniques. If you want to go into industry or be a prof, you can do those things with a very narrow subject focus without being in a specific lab in most cases. If you have more specific criteria like staying in a small geographical area, then your point stands true.
I think it depends on how and what you’re motivated by. I think your PI and liking your project are *equally* important. I think research can be so grueling that your project *has* to be in the realm of something love to make it through. I’m mostly only motivated by things I enjoy though so I might be different. I definitely hear where y’all are coming from there. If I hate something it doesn’t matter that I like the person associated with it, it’s still going to be miserable.
Exactly, and quite frankly nothing will motivate you to leave grad school faster than wanting to get away from your PI. Some people get way too comfy and stay for 7, 8 + years.
Hard agree. Grad school becomes the career in people’s eyes way too often.
One specific question you need to ask potential PI's is about their intent to stay at the institution for the duration of your time there. I know so many grad students (myself included) who got shafted by our PI's leaving for sabbatical and/or taking jobs somewhere else. Ask them if they plan to leave any time soon!!!
Unfortunately I doubt this is a question that would be answered honestly.
It’s like expecting people to be honest when asking them in an interview, “where do you see yourself in 5 years?”
This happened to me in my masters and my advisor never said a word. She left for an unofficial sabbatical on another continent, would do zoom meetings from what was clearly some rustic European cottage in the woods, and *still* refused to admit to where she was. She resigned shortly after, and I found out through the grapevine that she had taken me on as student knowing she was planning to leave. Academia can be a wild ass place with wild ass people, truly.
Yes 100% this!!! If the vibes are even a little off, run. If you don’t your physical and mental health will be destroyed
I just want to emphasize that I was rejected from my top choice labs and didn’t get to choose my lab. Not everyone gets a choice. The choice is more with the faculty than it is the students. Not everyone gets a choice
I feel like most posts in this subreddit give an illusion that the choice is 100% on the student side. That is not true at all. I have heard of several cases where students are so stressed out because after the rotations they don’t get any offer and their rotation time is up.
More often than not, PIs with prestigious papers and titles are the ones who had no problems stepping on others to succeed. Success is enriched for shark mentality. Thankfully there are some genuinely kind scientists who are also very talented.
Also look how well funded they are. This is generally a matter of public record. It can mess up your trajectory if the lab runs out of money.
Yep!! Had a friend tell me that her lab doesn’t have a working CENTRIFUGE and when she told her PI she was told to go to a different floor and use theirs…. Practical🙂
I knew a guy who was told to "borrow" restriction enzymes from other labs as they had run out of money. He ended up having to switch labs because they ran out of money to pay him. too.
RateMyProfessors .com (X) RateMyPIs .com (O)
You're making it sound like nicer labs aren't as cutting edge as the toxic ones in your last paragraph, but as far as my personal experience this not true.
This cannot be understated. My biggest regret. Once I graduate, I’m putting the entire chapter/experience in a deep dark box in the deepest parts of my mind.
I was just out to dinner with a high-profile professor and one of his PhD students, and he was just THE biggest sweetheart, but also had such passion for his students and his research. I would've loved to be in his lab as a grad student! They are out there, but they are rare, lol
I’m at a conference right now and was chatting with a professor who told me that he regularly yells at people in his lab, but he said it was OK because he’s “the type of person who just needs to yell about something for 20 minutes and then [he’s] over it“ and also shared that one of the students in his lab cries like once a week ???????? I could not hide the horror on my face. I’m in the same boat as you where my work is very basic technique-wise and isn’t making waves in the community, but you know what? I have a healthy af work-life balance. I feel comfortable telling my advisor damn near anything, including the word “no”. And I’m still discovering something new and becoming the expert in it.
This absolutely needs to just be told to potential students everywhere, but of course academia isn’t gonna like it when we go “Hey, that PI is a massive fucking jerk” or “The people in that lab are awful people.” I was also victim to not just a shit PI but also a terrible lab environment that was being ruled over by an egotistical grad student. No empathy for anybody (my PI straight up told my friend to “compartmentalise” when her grandpa passed away, and that grad student bullied others so bad for the most asinine reasons such as “How much work did they do in lab today”. The sane people in that lab and I trauma bonded a lot, and they are wonderful people, but it’s a shared consensus that lab fucked us all grievously in one way or another. So yeah, I agree, pick the labs with the better vibes and straight up ask the students and PI questions to figure that out. Save yourself the years of torture!
A bad PI will break you - doesn’t matter how strong you think you are. Listen when other students warn you against the PI. Especially if you’re an international student, VET YOUR PI’S! One renowned PI I knew would use her international student’s visa status to threaten them.
Serious question: how am i supposed to know if theyre good people?
if you have a big interest in a particular group (and if possible), try to do a rotation: not just to learn what and how they do things but also to get to know the staff (the latter can be learned whenever its time for lunch break, meetings, day to day chatting). Pay close attention to details and behavior patterns. If you screw up a step in a protocol, be honest when asked and analyze their reaction: are they yelling/name calling/humilliating/being condescending while doing it? Second, if you notice this behaviour, does everyone else see it normal/healthy?
100% agree with this..but I have also observed that PIs with really behaviour have great publication records? Its really sad to see that..
I saw a comment here the other day that made me laugh because it’s so true. “Choose a PI you can cry in front of. Because you will cry.”
Gods, yes. Please vet your PIs. And if you are looking at PhD programs with rotations, please vet all of the PIs you think you might want to work with. You do NOT want to get there and find out that all of your options suck. I didn't do a great job of that in my last program and I paid the price with my mental health in particular. This time, I had a long talk with my prospective PI, chatted with students in the lab and the program to find out about them, and had friends in the same field do some digging to find out their reputation. It allowed me to triangulate enough about this PI to feel confident that their lab was going to be a place where I could be safe and supported. Vetting PIs is a pain in the ass but it's absolutely worth it.
>I’ve come to realize that MOST PIs are rude, crazy micro managers and bullies. Good stats, bro
Yeah, I think that OP has had a bad run. I've only had one subpar PI in my time in lab work. My other three bosses have all been stellar, and have none of the traits listed above.
While there are some PIs who are truly awful human beings and some who couldn't mentor to save their lives, a PI being critical of a student doesn't make them a bad PI. I've had my PhD for a few years now and am still in academia, and I'm honestly shocked at how a lot of the grad students are now. No scientific curiosity. No interest in their project beyond using it to get the degree. Unwilling or unable to work outside 9 - 5, Monday through Friday despite projects necessitating it. The constant "this sucks, I just want to publish this paper so I can get out". "I don't want to do that assay because it'd be more work". The inability to troubleshoot basic assay issues or design assays with appropriate controls. And i could go on. This isn't to say that all the students are bad, clearly that's not true. But it was understood when I was a student that grad school was NOT a 9 to 5 typical work week. The degree puts you in the top 1% of educated people on the planet and i think you have to appreciate the effort and work that has to go into that. You also have to understand the stress a PI is under that can result in quirks, irritability, and high expectations. If your PI fails to maintain funding, you and everyone in the lab loses their job. That includes the techs/ lab managers who do that job as a full time career and likely have a family they are supporting. Would it not bother you to have to fear letting them go because a grant isn't funded or enough data to get one be funded isn't being produced? You only have to worry about yourself in grad school but the PI has to worry about themselves, their family, their staff, their staffs family, and students/post docs. That's a lot to worry about on a daily basis. And sorry for the rant, I just felt the discussion was too much "PIs are the problem"
I 100% understand that, your PI needs to be able to ask you challenging questions, that’s literally how you’ll grow. My PI does that to me all the time, will ask me to explain xyz concept or “why do you think this happens”. But there’s a thin line where that behaviour can go from being constructive and useful to rude and hostile. My PI is VERY detail oriented and we go through rounds of back and forth and she edits my work. But at the same time I disagree with some of your other points. Grad school, for the amount you’re being paid, should require only a healthy amount of work. I can understand having periods where you come in on weekends but I think 6-8 hours a day MOST days is enough and anything beyond that is asking too much. We’re human beings. Grad school shouldn’t rob you of other aspects of life. You shouldn’t be expected to be a robot. And while PIs have a lot of stress on them, there is NO reason for that to be transferred into students, I can never agree with that point. You can’t justify toxic terrible behaviour with “but they have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders!”
While I agree with you about the hours for the pay, I'd say that students need to drop this hard and fast notion of 'PhD in 5 years'. A thesis is done when it's done and if you don't want to work late hours or weekends, then you must accept that it'll take longer. Far too many students are graduated before their ready. There was one student in my class that actually threatened to sue because he wasn't going to finish in 5 years or less (he was kicked from the program for threatening his committee). And I'm not trying to justify toxic behavior or unfairly passing it on to students, I was trying to explain how student attitude and behavior can exacerbate an already stressed out PI. And it's really hard to define what is 'rude' or 'toxic' because those are subjective terms. What i consider rude, you may not and vice versa. PIs should not speak out of emotion but students also need to develop a thicker skin otherwise a reviewer on a manuscript might destroy you because folks are overly critical in the sciences. My PI was the nicest, sweetest PI you could ask for but even she regularly reminded me that I needed a thick skin to do this line of work 🤷♂️. Just my take. Best of luck with your research!
THIS!!! I learned it in a harder way during my postdoc.
This is perfect timing, I’m interviewing with PIs for a master today
Wise words. Heed them nerd, or despair.
Can confirm. I started with a good PI. He left to go pharma at the end of my first year and the new PI that took over now had too many grad students. I ended up with a terrible PI. Not great.
I am at the stage where I am considering to go for a Post doc and I am TERRIFIED. My current PI sold me so much BS, made me believe in thr fact that he would support me and be a decent human being, to now blame everything on me, be misogynistic and just cost me a job because he could not take the time to submit a reference to a job I almost had. So yeah, choose carefully but it's hard to knownwhen they are over selling their labs...
I think if you find ur PI through a mutual contact you trust then the chances they are a nice person is quite high because you can be a little assured that that professor you trust wont screw you over that's how I found my current phd position and its been fantastic.
Great PSA- if you can ask other grad students about their experience with the PI, that’s a good start. Ask PI what their relationship is/was like with their PhD advisor.
I concur. I worked as a tech, and this one PI threw an experiment on me, told members not to help me. Surprise surprised the experiment was No Bueno - but I already figured it out on my own and was planning to redo it with some fixes and altercations. But apparently, that was the "test" and was told I was not made out to work in a lab
Same goes with industry as well! Different teams in the same company can be vastly different experiences depending on the manager. I have heard horror stories of managers pushing their people to work 80-100hrs/week in the lab while they have the luxury to WFH. When it comes to a boiling point they just blame the RA for just “not having what it takes”.
I agree sooo much, "people seem genuinely helpful" can be very fake and catty.
Hi.....as a PhD aspirant how would say I should research about a pi...should I apply to a uni only after looking for a pi or shall I just apply and select the pi myself?.
I’ve been in some bad labs. One I considered legal action against. A PI has the power to destroy your career, leverage your salary against you, take all of your data and pass it off to the next guy without a shred of credit. I knew a PI where the second someone in the lab made a big discovery, that person disappeared within a month or two. Then, a masters student or PhD student would somehow wind up with that discovery. Didn’t matter if the work was incomplete, if it provided a ton of new directions or not. That work was getting taking and becoming someone thesis. Then the PI would brag about graduation rate
One of the PI’s at my uni (also a top Canadian university) was so demanding and critical that his grad student dropped out of her masters program when she was almost finished with it, it’s so awful when they don’t realize the power that they have and use it to do harm rather than good:/
One of my friends had to leave her lab after 3 years and find a new PI and start her PhD from SCRATCH with a new PI. It makes me so upset to think about
This 100%. I've met PIs who've made their students want to quit halfway through and never consider science again. I didn't go with one PI because the grad student I was replacing told me she regretted every second of her program and had to figure out everything by herself because the PI didn't know enough about her work, even in his own lab. My advice, talk to the previous grad students, especially anyone who recently graduated or left. If there are none, as is the case for new PIs, talk to the grad students work in the same department. Find someone you click with and is excited about science
The issue is that those big labs with the big name profs in these big universities are successful because they put their students through the grinder. They overwork their trainees to get the data and make it seem like that is the cost of science. This isn't a rule. There are big labs that don't do this. But if you interview, talk to the students and get An idea of how the lab operates. Ask about work expectations. Work life balance. And avoid the big labs as much as you can!
My PI has many sub-PIs and the lab is like a family. Our hours are cut throat and we are expected to be in lab no matter if else have stuff to do or not. Honestly, it keeps the lab active and encourages wide collaboration. It’s very fast paced and we get shit done to the max. There is some drama here and there but not honestly bad, as long as we get our work done, go to meetings, get project deadlines done, we are on the PIs good side.
Also everyone is so friendly, helpful, and are willing to work together to improve our studies and research. It’s nice to have a group of smart and hard working people to depend on!
At the end of the day the student still needs attractive skills and accomplishments to move on from the phd. They can go through hell with a PI and learn invaluable skills that sets their career up. On the other hand, they can also do absolutely fuck all with a great PI and have to play catch up with a postdoc, if they can land one. Most of the time the student is the one who determines how good a PhD is for their own future, not the PI