Xykademiqz made a good point in my last post that I posted my current hours when I was asked by a student about industry hours. I've moved up at a rate much higher than the average, and have been taking the learning lumps that goes with being underqualified for a position. I started in a role similar to a lot of people straight out of grad school, if not just a little higher since I had a good amount of industry and national lab experience before I tried to earn my letters. I got my first big promotion about 8 months in, and at my meeting with the head of my company for the promotion I pitched a new type of idea for medical device design. One that has paid off big for my company. He made me in charge of this new group (which I still lead). He set aside a small amount of money and within a year our budget increased by 10x because of the results my group had. It was three of us, and we're easily responsible for all the upcoming products in our company's pipeline. Everyone in my group gets promoted at 2x what everyone else does because of our success. Any success I have is 99% luck from this meeting with the head of my company. My hours changed dramatically at this stage. I wanted...needed...to make this concept work. I have a surprising amount of free time, especially outside of work, rarely working outside of the office. I had a ton more free time (and fewer gray hairs) when I first started here. Though I would never trade my current position for my old one. Without further ado, here's my hours when I first showed up:
Very laid back day:
9am Arrive
9-11am Experiments/design
11am-1pm Lunch
1pm-3pm Reading...occasional short meeting...emails
3pm-5pm Emails, calls, some design work or experiments
5pm Gone!
Laid back day
8:30am Arrive
8:30-9am Emails and day planning
9am-10am Meting
10am-11am Experiments
11am-noon Small group stuff, experiments, design stuff
Noon-1pm Lunch
1pm-4pm Work (experiments, design, etc)
4pm-5pm Email, reading
5pm Gone!!!
Busy day
8am Arrive
8am-9am Meeting
9am-10am Computer stuff
10am-noon Experiments
Noon-1pm Look at data while eating
1pm-3pm Experiments...maybe some small group meeting stuff
3pm-4pm Meeting
4pm-6pm Experiments and prototyping
6pm-7pm Emails, reading, transcribing notes
7pm Gone
Average day while traveling
5am-6am Check email during breakfast
6am Report to hospital
6am-8am Prepare equipment
8am-1pm Run animal study
1pm-2pm Lunch
2pm-7pm Run animal study
7pm-8pm Put equipment away
Do this 5 days in a row.
My percentages were probably like so, on average:
20% VLBD
60% LBD
5% BD
15% Travel
Those students out there: if you're worried about the hours, mine were definitely better than grad school. And my starting salary was definitely higher than my old advisor's...but there are trade offs :)
Wait, you're saying that you used to put in less than 8 hours a day?
ReplyDeleteThat's correct. I'm a pretty fast worker, but more importantly you don't usually get fully into the swing of your job for 6 months or so. You're training, learning the field, getting to know your team, etc. these hours were pretty short because I had less to do, and was still getting situated in the city (and wanted free time to explore). After 6 months things got busier, so maybe I was taking 15 min off my lunch or staying a little later sometimes, but the days were still laid back. Just less screwing off while on the clock.
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