Cotton-Pickin’ Days

A comment from a WSJ Juggle post about how losing your job can affect your kids referring specifically to the Bear Stearns meltdown:

If you are depending on so-called “finance” jobs for your work you might consider learning a skill that is more practical and useful.

Ouch!!

4 Comments »

I don’t really get this post–A Career Substitution–at the BusinessWeek Working Parents blog. Guest writer and former museum curator Lori Gilbert writes about well-educated women with specialized skills who left full-time paid work for their children and chose to return as substitute teachers and librarians?! She asks:

Has giving up our full-time work placed us permanently in the category of substitutes?

Heck yeah! And that’s only because you let yourself be placed in that second-tier category.

From high school onwards, I have never taken a job that didn’t have some relevance to my future goals. For my first job, I worked as a receptionist at my mother’s company where I learned business etiquette and practices. Later on, I worked as a pharmacy clerk and research assistant at biotech start-ups. While I may not be the full-time professor or researcher that I envisioned for myself 15 years ago, I am still working in my field part-time. If I were no longer involved in science and biotech, I’d feel that I’d wasted the specialized knowledge I gained through many years of hard work and study.

FYI, here’s the comment I left at the blog:

Your experience and anecdote about your friend are both interesting but I have to wonder how smart women could have ended up with less than suitable jobs. I have a PhD in public health (genetic epidemiology) from Johns Hopkins and have an undergrad degree from Stanford that I finished in 3 years (and a quarter) as well. I left the full-time workforce a few years ago to take care of my son and now have another child on the way.

When I was ready to return to paying work, however, I chose to make a “comeback” as a science writer and biotech consultant. Both positions give me even more flexibility that the substitute jobs you’ve mentioned because I work from home. Yet I’m still involved in science and public health.

I fear you may be selling yourselves short by not reaching for jobs that can utilize your full potential and specialized knowledge. For women like us who are experts in our field, it’s a real shame to lose your input and skills in the marketplace!

I’ve learned over the last few years not to sell myself short. And don’t you do it either!

10 Comments »

As promised, my company profile is up. Go have a laugh.

Thank goodness everyone looks good in pictures as small as 72×99 pixels. Or not. You may disagree.

4 Comments »

My sister helped me take a few profile pics this morning for my company website and this one didn’t make the cut. When the one I did choose goes up, I’ll let you all know so you can have a good laugh.

13 Comments »

My parents, my sister, and I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in the second half of my fifth grade year. I moved away in 1994 to go to grad school, but my sister and her husband plus my parents and most of my close friends remain in the area. Some live and work in the heart of Silicon Valley and others nearby.

For a long time, I thought I would move back someday, somehow. This past Spring, we almost did when there was a strong promise of a job for me. But after talking to Marv, we decided that this wasn’t the time to return even if Silicon Valley feels like the center of the world (at least for my area of expertise - genomics and the Web).

Today’s NY Times article further confirmed our decision not to move back.

In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich

No one knows for certain how many single-digit millionaires live in Silicon Valley. Certainly their numbers reach into the tens of thousands, say those who work with the area’s engineers and entrepreneurs. Yet nearly all of them still have all-consuming jobs, not only because the work gives them a sense of achievement and satisfaction but also because they think they must work so much to afford their gilded neighborhoods.

Marv and I have a good life even though we live in London, UK, also one of the most expensive cities in the world.* Granted, we’re business expats so needn’t worry about some basic needs like housing, car, etc. Even more important, we’re able to save money for Stephen’s college education and still enjoy our life of books, video games, and toys. I’m sure we could do the same in the Bay Area made all the easier because we’d be with family and friends but my biggest worry is: I’m not sure I could resist joining in the chase.

Umberto Milletti of InsideView:

Here, the top 1 percent chases the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and the top one-tenth of 1 percent chases the top one-one-hundredth of 1 percent.

For now, I’ll enjoy watching the race from the sidelines. It’s a lot more comfortable here in my dining room next to the River Thames. Thank goodness for the Internet! We’re so far, yet still so close.

*Moscow has London beat, though!

9 Comments »

Scott Adams in The Dilbert Blog says:

ROUNDERS: This group rounds things off. A problem that’s a two on a scale of one to ten gets rounded to zero. If a rounder has five problems that are all about a two on a scale of one to ten, he’ll tell you he has no problems.

That’s me. Blinders on. Head in the sand.

Scott also hands out an assignment:

Your assignment for today is to describe your own job in one sentence, preferably in a humorously derogatory way.

This is mine:

It’s my job to make a big deal out of nothing.

~Hsien, biotech commentator and consultant

What’s your job description? (Don’t miss the reader responses to this at The Dilbert Blog.)

8 Comments »

clipped from blog.pmarca.com Google, on the other hand, uses the metric of educational achievement. Have a PhD? Front of the line. Masters? Next. Bachelor’s? Go to the end. In apparent direct contraction to decades of experience in the computer industry that PhD’s are the hardest people to motivate to ship commercially viable products — with rare exception.

No Comments »

After all the whining and complaining, I signed a contract this week and am now a consultant for DNA Direct!

Oh, and I think I may be coming down with my fifth cold in as many months. That’s 5 for 5. AHHHHH.

22 Comments »

This past week I’ve been busy getting myself on a new career path. Part of my efforts involve emailing everyone to tell them that I’ve left b5media and can be found at my new independent genetics blog - Eye on DNA. Almost every person has asked why I left b5.

The most important reason for moving on is that I wanted to refocus and concentrate solely on genetics and science. But another reason is that I wanted a new challenge. I’d learned enough about social media and professional blogging to be able to strike out on my own (with some much appreciated help from Christina). And although I still subscribe to over 50 blogging-related feeds, it was time to step outside my comfort zone of 18+ months.

After a few recent conversations with knowledgeable people (who shall remain nameless because of NDA’s and such), I feel somewhat confident that I can parlay the reputation I’ve built for myself as an industry expert into biotech consulting. I’m still not sure how it will turn out but there is already one problem I have to overcome.

I must stop using self-defeating language like: “I hope I can move into biotech consulting” or “I wish to return to genetics and biotech.”

John Chow said it best:

You know why a person with a loser’s mentality always use words like someday, I hope or I wish? He does it because it gives him an out and not be accountable to his word. If he was to place a time limit on the goal and doesn’t do it, he fails, and a loser hates failing. Winners have no fear of failing because they know success is made from a string of failures.

I won’t admit to being afraid of failing since I’ve certainly failed before and gotten back up. And it helps that my income is supplementary rather than primary so I don’t have any real pressure NOT to fail. (Thank you, Marv!) It is true, however, that I’m afraid of humiliation and am trying to give myself an out.

I figure if the project proposals I’ve turned in or talks fall through, I can always plug away at Eye on DNA and have plenty of ideas for expanding that would keep me busy for a while. The thing is, I don’t believe expert blogging in this form will last forever. And, I want to be involved in the genome revolution rather than just be a bystander.

So, instead of telling people what I hope or wish to be doing, I’m going out there to do it. No matter how many emails it takes or how many disappointments I have to endure, I will find some way to get involved.

Damn. It’s scary just to say this out loud.

8 Comments »

With Stephen now at school full days (no tears this first morning from either of us!), I decided to set-up a home office in the guest bedroom. It’s away from the kitchen and temptation. And, it’s got a much better view than the courtyard.

It’s 11:15 am now and it feels so odd not to be rushing out the door to pick him up. Another four hours of productivity. I hope to get most of my work done before Stephen comes home. Anything left undone can be finished after he goes to bed. If past behavior tells me anything, he’ll be wound up when he gets home and will neet a lot of attention.

4 Comments »