Where Can I Go From Here?

Or rather can I get there from here?

Welcome back to the career focused issue of the newsletter. I have to confess that much of this writing is selfish because these are the types of questions I tend to ask myself. I figure if I am asking them, then the professionals in the chemical industry might also be asking these questions of themselves as well. Perhaps we could have a dialog here if anyone has some thoughts? 

Last month I wrote about how many of us are so focused on just landing that first job that we don’t really have a plan for what’s next. Sometimes the weight of school (undergraduate or graduate) or a toxic job is so heavy that any port in a storm will do. Just being able to work a 40 hour week and being paid enough money to actually live a somewhat normal life feels like a luxury. Feeling like that job is secure is an even greater luxury. Eventually we recover from our professional traumas and start to wonder.

This issue of The Polymerist is sponsored by:

Reach out to Stephanie Kemp if you need a job in the chemical industry

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Where Can I Go From Here?

Right now I essentially have to choose a career path to work towards. I’ve job hopped a few times in the last six years and I’ve gained those bumps in salary with each hop. I’m approaching a point where job hopping and the promise of that pay bump just doesn’t do it for me. Most of my jobs have been the same for the most part, but the end markets are different, and I don’t necessarily have to synthesize my own polymers anymore either. I’m in the market for that elusive powerup.

I think it’s difficult to power-up or level-up your career by changing into it as in being hired as a leader without having already been a leader. Sure, I could make the argument that I’ve managed undergraduate and graduate students, provided mentorship to younger scientists, or managed projects with technicians who might report directly to me, but that’s more managing and not necessarily leading. I’ve seen managers get hired on without any prior experience and I have yet to see them gain the trust of their direct reports, perhaps a tolerance with mild annoyance.

Leadership, at least in the R&D sense, is the one path that seems to be available to me now, but it will likely be years of “performing above my duties’ before I am actually in a position of leadership. In my experience this is normal. Managing “high performers” as I’m told is not as easy as it might seem. From Harvard Business Review: 

One of the hardest things about managing a supremely competent and confident employee is making sure he’s sufficiently challenged in the job. The antidote to this problem is “classic talent development,” Shapiro says. First, “ask your employee, ‘Where do you want to go next, and what experiences do I need to give you to make sure you get there?’”

I was chatting with a former coworker/“leader of a different group” of mine a few days ago and I was lamenting that I have to try and deliver what felt like “The World” within the next few years and that this always “happens to me.” He proposed that perhaps I get myself into these situations by being both talented technically and agreeable to these situations that are stressful. I think he has a point.

I think at heart I’m still an experimentalist. An audacious goal to me sounds more like a complex problem that I could maybe figure out as opposed to something that is “technically impossible.” I want to see if it really is impossible. A professional, “hold my beer” moment.Can I make it to the top of the ladder?

So where do I want my career to go? In conversations with my wife I think we know what we want our best life to be, but it’s mainly a challenge of how do we get there from here?

Perhaps for me, a leadership role is a stepping stone to attaining that lifestyle or maybe being a full time project manager is the better approach? 

Should I go product management into marketing? 

Should I focus on this experiment of a newsletter more?

What else can I do outside of being a technical person?

To me it feels like I’m still at the beginning or maybe at the end of the beginning. Perhaps I’m slowly moving into the second act of my career, but I’m listening to all of my options including the recruiters out there like this month’s sponsor CPS.

A Message From My Sponsor

We’ve been in the business of connecting highly skilled and impressive laboratory professionals with established industry leaders since 1973. You’ve got important work to do… Let us lend our expertise. You can confidently trust your career in the hands of our experienced and dependable Recruiters at CPS, Inc.

Contact Stephanie Kemp to get started Skemp@cps4jobs.com

Sr. R&D Scientist and Project Manager in Hopewell, VA—$90-120k/year

Lead Process Organic Synthesis Chemist in Columbia, SC—$90-105k/year

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I’m writing from the airport and I’m having trouble thinking about how I might end this and perhaps it’s just difficult because my professional career is still in progress. How do I end an article about something that isn’t finished?

I do want to hear from the audience.

Has anyone else reading this found their professional home or are you still seeking? What worked for you or didn’t work for you. Let me know in the comments if you feel comfortable sharing with everyone or if you just want to tell me and have it filter back out by influencing my writing then reply to this email.

Do you have a non-traditional career that took you from the bench to writing full time or doing public policy or something way out of left field? I want to talk and share your stories here if possible.

I just talked to an old friend from graduate school and he’s making significantly more money than I am, lives near his family, and is dating someone who he really likes. He has been in a new technical role for only a week, but he tells me he could see himself staying there for a long time. I wasn’t necessarily jealous of the money, but rather of the feeling that he told me about. That feeling of finding your professional home. I’m very happy for him and that feeling he is experiencing is something I want us all to experience. Sounds like an audacious goal right?

Hold my beer.

Tony