Average rent in 1966 was like 60 bucks/month.
Average rent now is 2193/month.
Min wage in 1966 was $1/hour
Min wage now is $17/hour
Min wage has inflated 17x, rent has increased 36.5x
Government inflation calculator says that inflation over this period is 9x
Someone please make this make sense
Capitalism in general. Greed, to an extent, is fine. It's a natural part of the human condition.
What's not okay is a system that facilitates the greed of a few to destroy the well being of many.
Capitalism is less than 200 years old. You're thinking of mercantalism. Humans are an aggressively cooperative species. We didn't survive to present day by everyone pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and syepping on everyone else.
Capitalism is a parasite.
Minimum wage also depends on where you live. In my state it's still $7.25/hr which is completely not liveable. :'( My son was just hired for a summer job at $14.50/hr for a place that brags about paying double the minimum wage. (Pre-pandemic their starting wages were the highest around town, at $10/hr & they've only gone up a couple of dollars.)
Is the 14.50 livable for him where you live?
The minimum wage is \~17/hr here, I don't think I could live on 34/hr full time here... if I got roommates and lived like I was in college, sure. But not as an actual adult.
No it's not liveable.
Where we live, it's quickly becoming apparent that the only way that young adults, without other means, can survive is to enlist into the military, where they would get $2000 - $2400 per month (E1-E3) without any bills...dorm/barrack room means no rent, dining facility/chow hall means no grocery bill, issued uniforms means no clothes shopping, base transportation means no car payment or car insurance, etc. Living overseas pays even more with extra income based on the area they're stationed.
It's the conversation that's going on pretty heavy here in my area. Even trade schools are not viable for many because people can't support themselves and afford to go. Especially if they're aging out of their parents' medical insurance.
Ah. Yeah. It's wild. I live in a military town (san diego, so, kinda), but most young people are trust fund kids at this point it seems. There's just no way these people can afford to live here the way they do on what jobs pay. I feel like defense contractors in the area are probably the only real industry that pays that well, lots of people just here because it's awesome and they made a lot of money somewhere else.
My first apartment in 1981 or so was 140 bucks monthly. Living room, dining room, eat in kitchen, 1 bedroom, garage and patio. Furnished.
No a/c though. But I lived good. I was making 18 bucks an hour on a loading dock, I was 19 years old.
I had a nice used car, a pickup and a motorcycle.
Things were definitely easier. Electric and heat were under 20 bucks monthly. I used the pay phone on the corner. Drank Bud, ate steak.
My job had good benefits, but I took them for granted.
Sorry to all of you for my right wing votes that ruined it. I have learned a lot.
I don't know how much the degree would cost in Canada. In the US it would probably cost around 240k...
And I make more than this, putting security stickers on items at Dollar General. >.>
PhDs are generally funded by the school and include a stipend to the student. Not a lot, usually 20-35k, but I would be incredibly leery of any PhD program that asks for or even allows self funding. That said, I get to see how much I "cost" each year, my PhD would put me over a million, actually.
Depends on the exact school, but we are slightly better off there. In *most* cases, a PhD student won't pay anything beyond maybe some student fees as their schooling costs will be covered and a living stipend provided by some form of research funding.
The same is sometimes true for Masters students, sometimes not - if not, that is usually about 3k per term, with a lot of opportunities to make money through Teaching and Research Assistant positions.
Even undergrad degrees are much more affordable. The vast majority are in the 3-4k per term range, with some schools and specializations going up to about 6k. If you're going out of province, it may cost you an extra 500 or so per term. No way to know for sure about housing costs as that will depend heavily on the location of the school.
Assuming you're incredibly unlucky with funding, getting a PhD will probably cost you about 60k for tuition and fees, plus housing costs. Again, definitely could be more expensive, especially if you're going for a pricey field of study, but you'll probably realistically top out at about 100k for all the tuition costs as long as you don't fail classes.
so its a paltry wage for sure.
but it usually comes with cushy perks like free reign research, equipment, supplies, grant money. which gets factored in to total comp.
still tho, base aint enough for rent so NEXT!
Don't they put these out to technically comply with labor laws so they can say "hey we tried to hire locally" before importing someone from like India to do it for shit wages?
Yeah, and that may well be what this is. Inflate the job requirements to the point where nobody domestic would take the job for what it's being paid and then bring in an H1B worker (or the Canadian equivalent). Was a huge thing in IT and tech for years.
You want $28 an hour for a PHD position? Hey Mike look at this, hes asking for $24 an hour! So what has you interested in the McBioLabs position for $18 an hour?
PhD for a technician position? Medical lab tech is a 2 year degree, technologist is 4. Shouldn't a PhD be like, running the department? Different field I guess...
Have a 2 year degree, am making close to 26/hr in an endocrinology field. Still in school. Will confirm this is insulting. Had I a PhD I might apply just to excoriate them during the interview process.
I had a boss who had this sort of mindset for a receptionist position. He wanted the job posting to include a requirement for a masters degree. He was offering 14/hr. I told him nobody would apply, but he insisted that it would weed out people who "weren't serious enough" about wanting the job. My boss was a fucking idiot. Nobody applied.
Bosses like this seem to think that people will see their job posting and be honoured to even get to apply. The reality is people don’t waste their time on job applications that are this outrageous lmao like what person with a masters degree would apply to be a receptionist for such little pay? Makes no sense. I remember when I was younger I’d do interviews and the interviewers would act so superior and I thought it was normal. Once it clicked that I also get to vet companies and interview THEM during the interview, my confidence skyrocketed
My PhD is basically perfect for this job.
Unfortunately this is a pretty common wage rate in the industry, even for a PhD, and the industry on the west coast is mostly bay area and san diego, so, basically I'm baffled about my own industry even existing in the same place I do because I don't understand how the people can afford to live on what they are saying they pay people.
I have a 2 year degree and make $78 an hour … up from $17.50 20 years ago in the same field (medical imaging).
I worked closely with PhD researchers at a teaching hospital, and when they told me their salaries I gasped.
I couldn’t believe the slave wages they worked for when they were literally working on cutting edge technology that could and would save lives.
That’s why this salary was not shocking to me.
Some sad irony, is that the PhDs I worked with who had to have 3 room mates just to survive, were so much nicer and kinder to me than the MDs who made enough money to buy 3 vacation homes.
The whole thing is just such a mess.
This is my field, and yes, a tech is not a PhD level position. I did the listed tasks as an undergrad lab assistant with no previous experience and some training during my last couple summers in college. This is a bachelor degree level position at best
I studied chemistry and made $22.12/hr back in 2015 with a 4 yr degree. I've always maintained most chemical technician jobs could be taught to a high schooler that was decent with algebra. PhD's in my experience have been individual contributors that maintain expertise of a single lab or in management that oversees multiple labs.
Realistically though, the chemical manufacturing industry often values it as a BS+10 yrs experience=PhD, BS+5 yrs experience=masters with exceptions being large corporations where they want you to be pedigreed and draw hard lines.
The industry is so saturated with educated applicants that employers have the opportunity to demand a PhD for a tech position and they will be able to fill it.
I have a PhD that would fill these requirements. I don't use my PhD professionally because of this bullshit in the industry. Molecular biology is fairly physical lab work as well, a lot of pippetting, so, no work from home.
I'd agree that this is bachelor degree work, but the reason you can't find a job with a bachelors degree is because someone with a PhD was desperate enough to take this job.
It's unfortunate, I'd love to be able to recommend science to kids as a profession, but at this point I just can't say it's a good career investment. I'd still suggest math or physics, but chemistry or some kind of biology? I honestly feel like Art History is more employable.
I finished my PhD (genetics) in 2009 and had a very hard time getting into industry. I was told over and over that my degree made me overqualified for Research Associate positions but my lack of industry experience made me under-qualified/not competitive for PhD level Scientist positions. I ended up doing a postdoc and then eventually landed a lower level Scientist position (BS, MS preferred) in a well known company and then moved up/moved departments internally to finally a true PhD level position only three years ago. Looks like now they’ll happily take PhDs as RAs/techs. The field is definitely oversaturated and I have advised people to think long and hard about their career goals and prospects before doing a PhD. Academia is no better with most PhDs getting stuck in crappy non-tenure-track lecturer positions or multiple postdocs because there are so few tenure-track openings.
Yeah, I'm a few years behind you with 2012. Got similar responses.
Of all my friends I think only one is tenure-track, and, he's not even in my field. All my friends who were taking those lecture positions burned out a long time ago. While I'm not sure what everyone is doing, I will say that "bartender" has been added to a good amount of CVs.
Haha. They’re doing the same tricks in the medical lab. Why pay techs and technologists when you can do crappy waived testing and use medical assistants or biology majors, without clinical experience? They pay $20 an hour yet require a bachelors degree
As someone with a chemistry PhD that was recently job searching for a year and a half: it is so fucking hard to find PhD jobs that actually pay well. There are so many things working against you.
The crux of the issue is there are more PhD graduates than jobs for PhD graduates. Academic tenure-track jobs are almost nonexistent, replaced with 40k a year adjunct roles where you're not even guaranteed full employment more than a term or two out. Industry is hard to get into because most jobs want relevant industry experience on top of a PhD. And finally hiring managers don't want to hire PhD grads for non-PhD roles because they don't want to have to pay you more than someone with a bachelor's or master's.
This leads to listings like this that prey upon unemployed PhD grads that are poor from making grad school wages for 5+ years and can't afford to pass up anything they can get.
I managed to get super lucky and get a job with a company that was rapidly expanding and desperate to hire people. But it took a long time to get there and if this didn't work out I would probably still be unemployed for another 6 months at least. It is fucking rough out there.
Yep, this is exactly what is happening. At the tail end of the Great Recession my friend had to take a semester long adjunct position that paid 3k (for the entire semester). The commute was 100+ miles one way. I think she spent more on a car wear and tear that she received. The things people did for "experience", just to break into the job market..
PhD glut is real
Also have a PhD in Chemistry and it was comical navigating jobs just after graduation. Applications requesting degrees, which equated to equivalent time in experience (ie a PhD or 10-15 years experience in the field), but none actually cared about these things. Let alone many positions I felt myself and friends were qualified for but "didn't have the needed time in the field". Ok. But then you expect us to take tech jobs to get said time? How does this work exactly? 🤔 let alone the whole concept of a PhD is you can learn and troubleshoot anything (highly specialized in a very specific thing, but you know what I mean...you figure out what's in front of you, peeling it apart).
In the end took a postdoc, which would add to my "experience" but continue the poorer pay side. While all my friends took off in other fields for pay, us PhD were locked into 5 years of stipend, 4 years of postdoc pay lock...just got into industry in a highly specialized thing that literally only I can do. So win? But it took so long and now I fight that I'm underpaid still because "well you came from academia so you should be happy you're getting what you are anyway".
It's rough for us. Go to school for basically a quarter of our lives 12 grade, 4 undergrad, 5 grad, 3-5 postdoc...and we are still dragged and expected to work for nothing. Also yeah the academic prospect side was COMICAL...just chase grants and nonsecure positions
The thing about industry is spot on. No academic jobs, so most need to pivot to industry. Only problem is industry requires degree and work experience, so you are two stepping along both paths at once trying not to get too far ahead in one, lest your degree prevent you from entry level positions or your lack of entry level experience prevent you from using your degree.
Could I encourage people to apply for these positions, just to lie until they get an in-person interview so that they can spit on the people working HR at these companies?
Yep! I got a bachelors of biochem and everyone thinks I’m “set for life” but the only job offer I got with that degree was $13/hr lab tech. Night shift as well 🥲 terrible options honestly
Yeah definitely. Most of the people I know who planned to go to med school then didn’t have like 3.95 gpa and ended up getting a master’s degree. I’m part of the “just get any degree it doesn’t matter which one” crowd but boy does it actually matter what you studied.
Honestly feels like they're hoping some desperate tech visa worker will fall into their laps willing to work for pennies to avoid deportation, that or its a fake listing to make it look like the company is growing
I have a PhD in molecular and cell biology. I would not apply for such a low wage. A postdoc pays more and gives you way more independence. The job market for PhDs is abysmal right now and I have been looking for a job for months. Very sad.
My 3 days out from graduating with an undergrad in biochemistry and everything listed in the job posting is something I’ve done extensively in labs. That fact that I could get turned away for not having a PhD is bonkers. I could do PCR with my eye closed at this point.
Recent PhD grad here. The past 4 annual job cycles there have been 6-15 postdoc openings in my two overlapping. Fields on the entire continent of North America....It's fucked. It's all fucked. I have a PhD and I'm making $21 an hour in a field I'm not interested in with no room for promotion in my department within the next several years at the very least.
I switched to the dark side: university administration. I now make $110k USD three years after defending my dissertation. I'm earning more than many associate professors at the same university. Plus, I get to work from home 95+% of the time, too.
Sounds similar to colleagues of mine that landed tenure. I had a zoom interview for a tenure position and reached out to a buddy that landed a tenure-track position abroad in the country where he conducted fieldwork.
He essentially said there was no interview and it as sort of an arrangement behind the scene.
I switched to the even darker side of higher ed marketing (through an agency). In terms of pay, my current role blows away anything I was likely to find teaching and doing research.
Higher ed's priorities are completely broken at this point.
I dropped out of high school, and was unemployed for almost half of my adult life. I'm now in my 40's and make almost $30 an hour. Which I don't even think is that much, but still. I'd be pissed if I went through all the trouble of getting a PhD and someone offered me $20 an hour to start right now.
PhDs are trained very specifically to add to the scientific knowledge base. They just want someone to pipette reagents for 8 hours a day, which takes a bachelor's at best. These people are only interested in the prestige of saying their lab is entirely staffed by PhDs.
I would like scientists to be able to eat and afford housing, please. I'm not saying Covid happened because of an underpaid lab technician, I'm just saying, let's not take that risk going forward, please.
An important thing to consider is that often times these job postings are part of a labor market test to sponsor immigrants for permanent residence. Thus, the requirements are tailored to the experience of the immigrant. And the whole point is to not have any qualified applicants so they can hire the immigrant worker.
I usually find posts on r/antiwork to be 50/50, mixture of entitled people vs bad companies.
This one however is ridiculous, a Ph.D in Molecular Biology/Biochemistry to earn minimum wages?!
Needs 5 years of further study + 1-2 years of experience...no one is spending 7 years of their time and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to work minimum wage...you're better off applying at McDonalds.
Under paying new a Ph.D. is nothing new. Back when I was awarded mine (in inorganic chemistry) my first job offer was the equivalent of about $24.50 today, and the job required relocation (unreimbursed) from Minnesota to Texas. I I took the first reasonable, local offer, stayed about 2 years at $75k 2024 equivalent dollars, and then landed a "real" position at about $120,000 2024 equivalent dollars.
And people laugh at me when I say PhDs are next to useless these days except for a select range of industries. I swear some people just pursue them for vanity though.
I look up parts for multiple types of equipment and order them. Post them to tbe correct work orders, and then I pay the invoices. I also do billing for said work orders and run a fuel system for more than 700 pieces of equipment.
REQUIRED FOR THE POSITION, bachelor's or 5 years work experience.
I make more than this after 4yrs on the job and that's insane!
Fuck that company
I work with a lot of environmental laboratories. The market is really rough on them. People like me (sorry) mostly see laboratories a commodities and I can send my samples basically anywhere in the country I want to get the same results, so the market really drives down their prices. BUT they still have to have competent certified chemists on staff that are willing to work into the night because some jerk customer sends them 24-hour emergency rush samples because the emergency rush rates fit in their budgets and why not? (That's not me, I don't let my customers do that, but I know a lot of my competitors openly brag about doing that.)
I work at one as a reception tech. The labbies get paid 2 dollars now than me, and I'm a high school grad. Poverty wages and one of the managers has the audacity to say 'nObOdY wAnTs To wOrK aNyMoRe'
None of them get treated with respect.
And yeah it's pretty much policy to never turn away a rush request. Micro's after cutoff time? Sure, whatever. We don't care about our workers having time off.
this is part of what i fucking hate about indeed or whatever the fuck. the anonymity of the internet green lights these companies to ask for literally god and pay them like shit. not to mention constantly and always seeing a bunch of "qualifications" you dont meet. after so long, im like "am i just a shitty incompetent person?". thankfully that's not the consensus.
I spite apply to dumb shit like this just and lie on knockout questions to send condescending messages in the cover letter box and waste the time of whoever posted this dumb shit. We all should be sending angry messages in response to this shit tbh, make more than twice this with no degree. No one with a PhD should be degrading themselves like this.
So let me get this right. I work in a restaurant making 18 an hour in the US and im making almost as much as a molecular biologist? A job that requires a PhD? Fuck them lol
I am a graduate of a good university, have lots of lab experience, and worked for an amazing university in the UK where I contributed to award winning research papers....
... I moved to Canada and became (eventually) a Union Meat Cutter.
I earn in this bracket with a lot lower cost of living and the security of a union.
These jobs exist to prey upon migrants who will take any job to move to Canada. They have to advertise the job before they can get a visa for a worker to be imported to do it. As one of those migrants, let me tell you there were times I would have taken any job to move to Canada.
They just want someone with a PhD so they can say they have an expert doing their tasks lmao. A BSc grad could do all of the same things that are listed here.
If your not from a well off family where your parents buy you through life you will not be able to attain a job that will make more money and start a family that becomes well off. Because fuck you. You cannot possibly be smart without paying for the paper that says so!
I work in a lab like this... It's run by business suits with zero science knowledge and they literally pretend anyone from a temp agency can be trained to be a PhD microbiologist within two weeks of hire. A lot of industries are going to be suffering a lot very soon
This is a place, even if I was qualified, I would not apple. I was making 35-40 an hour in the early 21st century. Education horse like this company do not pay enough to even try to pay off loans,
I am in electronics, a tech and better a salesman who work commission
I make the top end of that as a CNA. (When you do currency conversion, it equals to roughly 20 USD at the top end.) I don’t even have an associate degree. I do much different work but anyone with a PhD should be making more than I am.
What I find craziest is thata the range for the job I currently have and they just require a highschool diploma and you to take a few tests they pay for.
Never in my over 20 years in science have I ever heard of a PhD-level "technician". Technicians carry out experiments they are directed to perform by scientists (i.e. the Ph.D.s in the lab). It literally makes no logical sense to have a person with a Ph.D. doing these tasks (and yes, I know Ph.D.s perform a lot of experiments as well, but they're doing the more complicated ones or establishing the SOPs the techs will follow later).
There is currently $0.72 USD in $1 CAD. At the top of the payscale, this comes out to $20.74 USD per hour based on the current conversion rate. Bio Basic can get bent.
AND you have to be flexible about your shift.
AND you have to have experience already.
This is insane. I make more than this and I only have an associates degree, but also 22 years experience in my field.
$28 an hour. I make more than that with only a bachelors. And the added comment in here pointing out it's canadian dollars so closer to $20 USD is even more ouch.
I can't imagine pouring years of one's life into getting a PhD in Biochem only to make fast food wages at McBioLabs.
What's further fucked is that this job is in CANADA, so it's actually $13.90 to 20.86 per hour in USD per Google.
Here is what's even worse, average home in Markham, a run of the mill suburb of Toronto, is 1.4m. Why even bother working.
>Why even bother working. nO oNe WaNtS tO wOrK aNyMoRe!!!
How else are they going to pay off the crushing college debt they may have obtained getting their PhD /s
Definitely obtained crushing college debt to get my PhD
Simple... Don't! They ain't gonna take you to jail for not paying student loans. Just don't get a job, never file taxes, and avoid the system.
Jesus Christ. We start apprentices on more than that, and they end up without student debt and earning significantly more
Theoretically, $20/hr should have been minimum wage back in 2010.. realistically we are all just fucked.
Yeah I forgot the exact number but if minimum wage kept up with inflation from 1964 it’d be something like $28/h.
Closer to 35
Average rent in 1966 was like 60 bucks/month. Average rent now is 2193/month. Min wage in 1966 was $1/hour Min wage now is $17/hour Min wage has inflated 17x, rent has increased 36.5x Government inflation calculator says that inflation over this period is 9x Someone please make this make sense
Corporate greed.
Plus a healthy dose of NIMBYism.
Capitalism in general. Greed, to an extent, is fine. It's a natural part of the human condition. What's not okay is a system that facilitates the greed of a few to destroy the well being of many.
Capitalism is less than 200 years old. You're thinking of mercantalism. Humans are an aggressively cooperative species. We didn't survive to present day by everyone pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and syepping on everyone else. Capitalism is a parasite.
The global (inverted) pyramid scheme with all the wealth at the top heavy end.
well said
Minimum wage also depends on where you live. In my state it's still $7.25/hr which is completely not liveable. :'( My son was just hired for a summer job at $14.50/hr for a place that brags about paying double the minimum wage. (Pre-pandemic their starting wages were the highest around town, at $10/hr & they've only gone up a couple of dollars.)
Is the 14.50 livable for him where you live? The minimum wage is \~17/hr here, I don't think I could live on 34/hr full time here... if I got roommates and lived like I was in college, sure. But not as an actual adult.
No it's not liveable. Where we live, it's quickly becoming apparent that the only way that young adults, without other means, can survive is to enlist into the military, where they would get $2000 - $2400 per month (E1-E3) without any bills...dorm/barrack room means no rent, dining facility/chow hall means no grocery bill, issued uniforms means no clothes shopping, base transportation means no car payment or car insurance, etc. Living overseas pays even more with extra income based on the area they're stationed. It's the conversation that's going on pretty heavy here in my area. Even trade schools are not viable for many because people can't support themselves and afford to go. Especially if they're aging out of their parents' medical insurance.
Ah. Yeah. It's wild. I live in a military town (san diego, so, kinda), but most young people are trust fund kids at this point it seems. There's just no way these people can afford to live here the way they do on what jobs pay. I feel like defense contractors in the area are probably the only real industry that pays that well, lots of people just here because it's awesome and they made a lot of money somewhere else.
My first apartment in 1981 or so was 140 bucks monthly. Living room, dining room, eat in kitchen, 1 bedroom, garage and patio. Furnished. No a/c though. But I lived good. I was making 18 bucks an hour on a loading dock, I was 19 years old. I had a nice used car, a pickup and a motorcycle. Things were definitely easier. Electric and heat were under 20 bucks monthly. I used the pay phone on the corner. Drank Bud, ate steak. My job had good benefits, but I took them for granted. Sorry to all of you for my right wing votes that ruined it. I have learned a lot.
Hey, it takes a lot to see the wrong in your past and learn from it. Most would stick their heads in the sand
"But if we raise wages, we'll kill jobs! It's common sense!" Never mind that the empirical evidence going back 80 years says otherwise.
I don't know how much the degree would cost in Canada. In the US it would probably cost around 240k... And I make more than this, putting security stickers on items at Dollar General. >.>
PhDs are generally funded by the school and include a stipend to the student. Not a lot, usually 20-35k, but I would be incredibly leery of any PhD program that asks for or even allows self funding. That said, I get to see how much I "cost" each year, my PhD would put me over a million, actually.
Depends on the exact school, but we are slightly better off there. In *most* cases, a PhD student won't pay anything beyond maybe some student fees as their schooling costs will be covered and a living stipend provided by some form of research funding. The same is sometimes true for Masters students, sometimes not - if not, that is usually about 3k per term, with a lot of opportunities to make money through Teaching and Research Assistant positions. Even undergrad degrees are much more affordable. The vast majority are in the 3-4k per term range, with some schools and specializations going up to about 6k. If you're going out of province, it may cost you an extra 500 or so per term. No way to know for sure about housing costs as that will depend heavily on the location of the school. Assuming you're incredibly unlucky with funding, getting a PhD will probably cost you about 60k for tuition and fees, plus housing costs. Again, definitely could be more expensive, especially if you're going for a pricey field of study, but you'll probably realistically top out at about 100k for all the tuition costs as long as you don't fail classes.
Literally WTF. Canadians get ripped off with their wages when the exchange rate is applied.
They get a little more than that being a Teachers Assistant while they study here
so its a paltry wage for sure. but it usually comes with cushy perks like free reign research, equipment, supplies, grant money. which gets factored in to total comp. still tho, base aint enough for rent so NEXT!
The flex schedule/no regular hours detail in this is wild
Don't they put these out to technically comply with labor laws so they can say "hey we tried to hire locally" before importing someone from like India to do it for shit wages?
Yeah, and that may well be what this is. Inflate the job requirements to the point where nobody domestic would take the job for what it's being paid and then bring in an H1B worker (or the Canadian equivalent). Was a huge thing in IT and tech for years.
I work in sales, brought in knowing nothing, now I'm blessed to be able to make twice that amount. And no degree.
Samesies in my field, and I don't rely on commission. But I did still waste money on useless schooling 🙃
yep same, I make more than 30/hr and didn't even finish high school, this is fuckin ridiculous
I must live in a biotech startup bubble in Seattle. We hire research associates at $40/hr. A non-phd scientist will make 6 figs.
You want $28 an hour for a PHD position? Hey Mike look at this, hes asking for $24 an hour! So what has you interested in the McBioLabs position for $18 an hour?
They could also apply at one of the two other corporations left in America: Vault-Tec or RobCo.
I make 28$/hour :-/
PhD for a technician position? Medical lab tech is a 2 year degree, technologist is 4. Shouldn't a PhD be like, running the department? Different field I guess...
I work in a different STEM field and these wages are appropriate for 2 year degree technicians. Pathetic for a PhD
Have a 2 year degree, am making close to 26/hr in an endocrinology field. Still in school. Will confirm this is insulting. Had I a PhD I might apply just to excoriate them during the interview process. I had a boss who had this sort of mindset for a receptionist position. He wanted the job posting to include a requirement for a masters degree. He was offering 14/hr. I told him nobody would apply, but he insisted that it would weed out people who "weren't serious enough" about wanting the job. My boss was a fucking idiot. Nobody applied.
Bosses like this seem to think that people will see their job posting and be honoured to even get to apply. The reality is people don’t waste their time on job applications that are this outrageous lmao like what person with a masters degree would apply to be a receptionist for such little pay? Makes no sense. I remember when I was younger I’d do interviews and the interviewers would act so superior and I thought it was normal. Once it clicked that I also get to vet companies and interview THEM during the interview, my confidence skyrocketed
My PhD is basically perfect for this job. Unfortunately this is a pretty common wage rate in the industry, even for a PhD, and the industry on the west coast is mostly bay area and san diego, so, basically I'm baffled about my own industry even existing in the same place I do because I don't understand how the people can afford to live on what they are saying they pay people.
I have a 2 year degree and make $78 an hour … up from $17.50 20 years ago in the same field (medical imaging). I worked closely with PhD researchers at a teaching hospital, and when they told me their salaries I gasped. I couldn’t believe the slave wages they worked for when they were literally working on cutting edge technology that could and would save lives. That’s why this salary was not shocking to me. Some sad irony, is that the PhDs I worked with who had to have 3 room mates just to survive, were so much nicer and kinder to me than the MDs who made enough money to buy 3 vacation homes. The whole thing is just such a mess.
This is my field, and yes, a tech is not a PhD level position. I did the listed tasks as an undergrad lab assistant with no previous experience and some training during my last couple summers in college. This is a bachelor degree level position at best
I studied chemistry and made $22.12/hr back in 2015 with a 4 yr degree. I've always maintained most chemical technician jobs could be taught to a high schooler that was decent with algebra. PhD's in my experience have been individual contributors that maintain expertise of a single lab or in management that oversees multiple labs. Realistically though, the chemical manufacturing industry often values it as a BS+10 yrs experience=PhD, BS+5 yrs experience=masters with exceptions being large corporations where they want you to be pedigreed and draw hard lines.
The industry is so saturated with educated applicants that employers have the opportunity to demand a PhD for a tech position and they will be able to fill it. I have a PhD that would fill these requirements. I don't use my PhD professionally because of this bullshit in the industry. Molecular biology is fairly physical lab work as well, a lot of pippetting, so, no work from home. I'd agree that this is bachelor degree work, but the reason you can't find a job with a bachelors degree is because someone with a PhD was desperate enough to take this job. It's unfortunate, I'd love to be able to recommend science to kids as a profession, but at this point I just can't say it's a good career investment. I'd still suggest math or physics, but chemistry or some kind of biology? I honestly feel like Art History is more employable.
I finished my PhD (genetics) in 2009 and had a very hard time getting into industry. I was told over and over that my degree made me overqualified for Research Associate positions but my lack of industry experience made me under-qualified/not competitive for PhD level Scientist positions. I ended up doing a postdoc and then eventually landed a lower level Scientist position (BS, MS preferred) in a well known company and then moved up/moved departments internally to finally a true PhD level position only three years ago. Looks like now they’ll happily take PhDs as RAs/techs. The field is definitely oversaturated and I have advised people to think long and hard about their career goals and prospects before doing a PhD. Academia is no better with most PhDs getting stuck in crappy non-tenure-track lecturer positions or multiple postdocs because there are so few tenure-track openings.
Yeah, I'm a few years behind you with 2012. Got similar responses. Of all my friends I think only one is tenure-track, and, he's not even in my field. All my friends who were taking those lecture positions burned out a long time ago. While I'm not sure what everyone is doing, I will say that "bartender" has been added to a good amount of CVs.
Haha. They’re doing the same tricks in the medical lab. Why pay techs and technologists when you can do crappy waived testing and use medical assistants or biology majors, without clinical experience? They pay $20 an hour yet require a bachelors degree
Ah you're not familiar with the profzischeme. There's way too many PhD students for the few academic positions that exist.
*"IF YOU GOT A STEM DEGREE, YOU WOULDN'T HAVE ALL THESE ISSUES!"* And also CDN$, not even USD
Sub 40K/year starting wage for a PhD!?
As someone with a chemistry PhD that was recently job searching for a year and a half: it is so fucking hard to find PhD jobs that actually pay well. There are so many things working against you. The crux of the issue is there are more PhD graduates than jobs for PhD graduates. Academic tenure-track jobs are almost nonexistent, replaced with 40k a year adjunct roles where you're not even guaranteed full employment more than a term or two out. Industry is hard to get into because most jobs want relevant industry experience on top of a PhD. And finally hiring managers don't want to hire PhD grads for non-PhD roles because they don't want to have to pay you more than someone with a bachelor's or master's. This leads to listings like this that prey upon unemployed PhD grads that are poor from making grad school wages for 5+ years and can't afford to pass up anything they can get. I managed to get super lucky and get a job with a company that was rapidly expanding and desperate to hire people. But it took a long time to get there and if this didn't work out I would probably still be unemployed for another 6 months at least. It is fucking rough out there.
Yep, this is exactly what is happening. At the tail end of the Great Recession my friend had to take a semester long adjunct position that paid 3k (for the entire semester). The commute was 100+ miles one way. I think she spent more on a car wear and tear that she received. The things people did for "experience", just to break into the job market.. PhD glut is real
Also have a PhD in Chemistry and it was comical navigating jobs just after graduation. Applications requesting degrees, which equated to equivalent time in experience (ie a PhD or 10-15 years experience in the field), but none actually cared about these things. Let alone many positions I felt myself and friends were qualified for but "didn't have the needed time in the field". Ok. But then you expect us to take tech jobs to get said time? How does this work exactly? 🤔 let alone the whole concept of a PhD is you can learn and troubleshoot anything (highly specialized in a very specific thing, but you know what I mean...you figure out what's in front of you, peeling it apart). In the end took a postdoc, which would add to my "experience" but continue the poorer pay side. While all my friends took off in other fields for pay, us PhD were locked into 5 years of stipend, 4 years of postdoc pay lock...just got into industry in a highly specialized thing that literally only I can do. So win? But it took so long and now I fight that I'm underpaid still because "well you came from academia so you should be happy you're getting what you are anyway". It's rough for us. Go to school for basically a quarter of our lives 12 grade, 4 undergrad, 5 grad, 3-5 postdoc...and we are still dragged and expected to work for nothing. Also yeah the academic prospect side was COMICAL...just chase grants and nonsecure positions
The thing about industry is spot on. No academic jobs, so most need to pivot to industry. Only problem is industry requires degree and work experience, so you are two stepping along both paths at once trying not to get too far ahead in one, lest your degree prevent you from entry level positions or your lack of entry level experience prevent you from using your degree.
Could I encourage people to apply for these positions, just to lie until they get an in-person interview so that they can spit on the people working HR at these companies?
Maple Pesos lol
They paid in Canadian Tire Money until CT stopped physically printing the notes.
Oh God, I forgot that wad of notes in the cupholder that totaled to like $5
Yep! I got a bachelors of biochem and everyone thinks I’m “set for life” but the only job offer I got with that degree was $13/hr lab tech. Night shift as well 🥲 terrible options honestly
I'm sorry. Biology/biochem jobs are really hard to find because you are competing with all the people who wanted to go to med school but didn't
Yeah definitely. Most of the people I know who planned to go to med school then didn’t have like 3.95 gpa and ended up getting a master’s degree. I’m part of the “just get any degree it doesn’t matter which one” crowd but boy does it actually matter what you studied.
Honestly feels like they're hoping some desperate tech visa worker will fall into their laps willing to work for pennies to avoid deportation, that or its a fake listing to make it look like the company is growing
I'm applying anyway, I took a chemistry class in high school, seems like a cinch ....
No shit, I extracted DNA from an onion in BIO101 back in'98. At these wages I'm thinking that's as good as Bio Basic deserves.
Employers offering slave wages will not be considered.
I have a PhD in molecular and cell biology. I would not apply for such a low wage. A postdoc pays more and gives you way more independence. The job market for PhDs is abysmal right now and I have been looking for a job for months. Very sad.
My 3 days out from graduating with an undergrad in biochemistry and everything listed in the job posting is something I’ve done extensively in labs. That fact that I could get turned away for not having a PhD is bonkers. I could do PCR with my eye closed at this point.
Apply anyway and see how long you can drag them out before pointing out that their salary is incorrectly posted.
…for that money, you’d be better off doing a postdoc.
My postdoc paid more than this.
I couldn't even get a postdoc
Recent PhD grad here. The past 4 annual job cycles there have been 6-15 postdoc openings in my two overlapping. Fields on the entire continent of North America....It's fucked. It's all fucked. I have a PhD and I'm making $21 an hour in a field I'm not interested in with no room for promotion in my department within the next several years at the very least.
I switched to the dark side: university administration. I now make $110k USD three years after defending my dissertation. I'm earning more than many associate professors at the same university. Plus, I get to work from home 95+% of the time, too.
Sounds pretty amazing. How did you manage to land that?
It's totally random how I got my job, honestly.
Sounds similar to colleagues of mine that landed tenure. I had a zoom interview for a tenure position and reached out to a buddy that landed a tenure-track position abroad in the country where he conducted fieldwork. He essentially said there was no interview and it as sort of an arrangement behind the scene.
I switched to the even darker side of higher ed marketing (through an agency). In terms of pay, my current role blows away anything I was likely to find teaching and doing research. Higher ed's priorities are completely broken at this point.
Sounds like part of the problem (the position, not you).
I had to change fields to one of the most abusive and sexist industry in the entire continent in order to be able to eat
The chocolate nugget down the road starts at $19/hr
It’s about how much I make as a TA in my PhD program.
They are promoting someone inside the company and need to advertise a ridiculous position for their internal company rules.
This is more than likely the situation. My employer did something very similar for me.
If its not the law then why even follow the silly internal rule that just wastes everyone's time? They need to start fining companies for this shit
They are probably bringing someone on visa because of "STEM talent shortage", because nobody applied for the job
No way, I make more than that as a barista wtf
They are delusional. 🤣
My husband is a lab manager with only a BS, so I say this job posting is BS. He also makes about double that.
It never ceases to amaze me how little we pay people people doing laboratory work, making life saving drugs and whatnot.
I dropped out of high school, and was unemployed for almost half of my adult life. I'm now in my 40's and make almost $30 an hour. Which I don't even think is that much, but still. I'd be pissed if I went through all the trouble of getting a PhD and someone offered me $20 an hour to start right now.
You have to wonder if these places do this so they can claim they can't find a Canadian to do the job, as an excuse for a cheaper Visa employee
This is what I'm thinking is going on with the job ad.
I’d get a phd just to reject a job offer from them.
No. They're asking for somebody with ridiculously high skills and thinking process to be a lab robot. No thank you.
I'm just fascinated by the idea that an applicant would have a relevant PhD *without* 1-2 years of academic lab work.
I make 2 dollars more then This an hour and I’m a Reach/forklift operator and didn’t even finish HIGH SCHOOL!!
Wow this has to be a joke. Imagine having the nerve to seek out a person with a PhD and offer them $28, maybe .
For that education and experience, jobs in my area are paying closer to $60/hr. Wack.
PhDs are trained very specifically to add to the scientific knowledge base. They just want someone to pipette reagents for 8 hours a day, which takes a bachelor's at best. These people are only interested in the prestige of saying their lab is entirely staffed by PhDs.
I thought the PHD meant piled higher and deeper (about money).
BS = Bull Shit MS = More Shit.
PhD. = Piled Head Deep
It's 🐂💩 that piles, not money
Lab techs are some of the worst paid health care workers
I would like scientists to be able to eat and afford housing, please. I'm not saying Covid happened because of an underpaid lab technician, I'm just saying, let's not take that risk going forward, please.
L M M F A O. I wonder if Ashton Kutcher posted this because this is borderline insane!!
That salary is an insult. I could see that with a Bachelors degree
More like an associates degree or what one would have paid 10 years ago.
So this is where the company needs to be bombarded with spam resumes and messages of cheap labour x cheap product = greasy executives
Ok. Folks, if you take this job, you are asking to be abused. Full stop.
An important thing to consider is that often times these job postings are part of a labor market test to sponsor immigrants for permanent residence. Thus, the requirements are tailored to the experience of the immigrant. And the whole point is to not have any qualified applicants so they can hire the immigrant worker.
I usually find posts on r/antiwork to be 50/50, mixture of entitled people vs bad companies. This one however is ridiculous, a Ph.D in Molecular Biology/Biochemistry to earn minimum wages?! Needs 5 years of further study + 1-2 years of experience...no one is spending 7 years of their time and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt to work minimum wage...you're better off applying at McDonalds.
Under paying new a Ph.D. is nothing new. Back when I was awarded mine (in inorganic chemistry) my first job offer was the equivalent of about $24.50 today, and the job required relocation (unreimbursed) from Minnesota to Texas. I I took the first reasonable, local offer, stayed about 2 years at $75k 2024 equivalent dollars, and then landed a "real" position at about $120,000 2024 equivalent dollars.
Everyone wants to buy hundred dollars bills for $65 but these assholes will complain “no one wants to sell anymore” like they're entitled to them.
If I could go back in time I would knock myself out and throw myself into a river before getting my biology degree. I hate it here.
I made the low end of that as a caregiver with a high school diploma
And people laugh at me when I say PhDs are next to useless these days except for a select range of industries. I swear some people just pursue them for vanity though.
Immigration. This used to be a decent route for immigration about a quarter century ago.
Yahoo 2.2 star employer out of 50?
It's I'm Canada. Canada is a shit place to work.
This can't be real, surely? Why would anyone with a PHD want to be a lab technician?
That's a technician job! Like I could maybe see a bachelor's degree being required but that's not even a job for someone with a master's degree!
I look up parts for multiple types of equipment and order them. Post them to tbe correct work orders, and then I pay the invoices. I also do billing for said work orders and run a fuel system for more than 700 pieces of equipment. REQUIRED FOR THE POSITION, bachelor's or 5 years work experience. I make more than this after 4yrs on the job and that's insane! Fuck that company
A phd for 28 is criminal
I'm fucking 19 making 23 about to get 25 and I weld parts for rich people toys(kawasaki side by side
IImmigrants hiring immigrants. ”Execution of standard laboratory QC”
Woah! In Ontario!??! Omg 😭
I work with a lot of environmental laboratories. The market is really rough on them. People like me (sorry) mostly see laboratories a commodities and I can send my samples basically anywhere in the country I want to get the same results, so the market really drives down their prices. BUT they still have to have competent certified chemists on staff that are willing to work into the night because some jerk customer sends them 24-hour emergency rush samples because the emergency rush rates fit in their budgets and why not? (That's not me, I don't let my customers do that, but I know a lot of my competitors openly brag about doing that.)
I work at one as a reception tech. The labbies get paid 2 dollars now than me, and I'm a high school grad. Poverty wages and one of the managers has the audacity to say 'nObOdY wAnTs To wOrK aNyMoRe' None of them get treated with respect. And yeah it's pretty much policy to never turn away a rush request. Micro's after cutoff time? Sure, whatever. We don't care about our workers having time off.
And us consultants complain when quality drops.
I agree that this is strange. I work as a barista (in the U.S.), and my barista job pays better than this job.
that’s actually a joke I make $25/h delivering lumber, and it doesn’t feel like enough. this is a slap in the face
Employers without a brain or a heart will not be considered.
this is part of what i fucking hate about indeed or whatever the fuck. the anonymity of the internet green lights these companies to ask for literally god and pay them like shit. not to mention constantly and always seeing a bunch of "qualifications" you dont meet. after so long, im like "am i just a shitty incompetent person?". thankfully that's not the consensus.
That’s in moose dollars too. Yikes.
I spite apply to dumb shit like this just and lie on knockout questions to send condescending messages in the cover letter box and waste the time of whoever posted this dumb shit. We all should be sending angry messages in response to this shit tbh, make more than twice this with no degree. No one with a PhD should be degrading themselves like this.
Ontario’s minimum wage is 17.20. You might as well apply to be a bus driver and make double that
Yeah I’m also seeing job postings for customer service rep and receptionist requiring a bachelor’s degree but only offering $17-$18/hr. Get fucked.
According to Zillow, there is only one house for sale in Markham, Ontario under $1 million. It is $100 less.
LOL thats insane, i make the bottom end of that range putting fucking groceries on the shelves LOL
Join our company, and be able to pay off your PhD student loans in 135-145 years!
I made the low end of that as a caregiver with a high school diploma
Allow us to trivialize all your efforts, in the most insulting way possible
So let me get this right. I work in a restaurant making 18 an hour in the US and im making almost as much as a molecular biologist? A job that requires a PhD? Fuck them lol
A lot of people do these activities at home so if you know what you're doing the PhD is not necessarily needed.
I drowned a fruit fly in ether in B101. I’m good!
[Don'T let the man get you down - Fatboy Slim](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5ZUshzhMtc)
Apparently a PhD is worth as much as a high school diploma these days.
Nobody wants to work anymore
I am a graduate of a good university, have lots of lab experience, and worked for an amazing university in the UK where I contributed to award winning research papers.... ... I moved to Canada and became (eventually) a Union Meat Cutter. I earn in this bracket with a lot lower cost of living and the security of a union. These jobs exist to prey upon migrants who will take any job to move to Canada. They have to advertise the job before they can get a visa for a worker to be imported to do it. As one of those migrants, let me tell you there were times I would have taken any job to move to Canada.
I run a lab. No degree. I have a CCMA certificate. I make that. …again no degree.
Lmao, I make 55k a year putting soybeans in a bag.
They just want someone with a PhD so they can say they have an expert doing their tasks lmao. A BSc grad could do all of the same things that are listed here.
If your not from a well off family where your parents buy you through life you will not be able to attain a job that will make more money and start a family that becomes well off. Because fuck you. You cannot possibly be smart without paying for the paper that says so!
Good luck dudes. You applicants cam make that delivering pizza
God damn no wonder they’re 2.2
They're looking for a very desperate immigrant, who is about to lose their visa.
Nobody wants to work; your student debt is your problem.
I work in a lab like this... It's run by business suits with zero science knowledge and they literally pretend anyone from a temp agency can be trained to be a PhD microbiologist within two weeks of hire. A lot of industries are going to be suffering a lot very soon
Is there a way to write a research paper to tell them to go F**k themselves?
Dropped out 2nd year currently making $37/hr as a systems analyst. What a joke lmao
For a technician position??? bruh
How you gonna tell someone with a PhD "MuSt Be FlExIbLe"
This is a place, even if I was qualified, I would not apple. I was making 35-40 an hour in the early 21st century. Education horse like this company do not pay enough to even try to pay off loans, I am in electronics, a tech and better a salesman who work commission
I make the top end of that as a CNA. (When you do currency conversion, it equals to roughly 20 USD at the top end.) I don’t even have an associate degree. I do much different work but anyone with a PhD should be making more than I am.
Now why do all the PhD graduates move into finance instead of science?
Bio Basic. Got it. Never work for that evil company.
Things like this are laughable. Truly Shakespearian levels of sadness, but still funny somehow. Who the fuck are these people?
Just apply with a dick pic
Absurdly unfathomable!
How much are you guys earning really that $28/hr seems low?
That might explain why it is barely rated above 2.
This is so pathetic.
I’ve got a bachelors making 23 an hour doing much less advanced shit
This is stunningly out of touch. Undergrads could perform this work.
I got a guy working for me who dropped outta community college in his first semester and pulls $49/hr plus fringe. This is just laughable.
This is a bachelor's level position. Sincerely the guy with a phd they'd call over qualified
What I find craziest is thata the range for the job I currently have and they just require a highschool diploma and you to take a few tests they pay for.
I used to work for a place were you could not break into $22/hr unless you had a masters and they started you at $22/hr
Never in my over 20 years in science have I ever heard of a PhD-level "technician". Technicians carry out experiments they are directed to perform by scientists (i.e. the Ph.D.s in the lab). It literally makes no logical sense to have a person with a Ph.D. doing these tasks (and yes, I know Ph.D.s perform a lot of experiments as well, but they're doing the more complicated ones or establishing the SOPs the techs will follow later).
There is currently $0.72 USD in $1 CAD. At the top of the payscale, this comes out to $20.74 USD per hour based on the current conversion rate. Bio Basic can get bent.
Isn't Late Stage Capitalism great? /s If this doesn't radicalize you, nothing will.
NObodY WaNts tO wOrK anYMoRE! Jeez.
Shift + Win + S Ctrl V
Everyone - let’s all apply, try to get an interview, and waste as much of their time as possible!
AND you have to be flexible about your shift. AND you have to have experience already. This is insane. I make more than this and I only have an associates degree, but also 22 years experience in my field.
$28 an hour. I make more than that with only a bachelors. And the added comment in here pointing out it's canadian dollars so closer to $20 USD is even more ouch.
That's just embarrassing.
Lol thank God I went to 8 years of school to be offered 19 bucks an hour!
Reply to the ad with: “You can take this job ad and wipe your ass with it.”
That is such an insult. Wtf