Preparing my anus and inbox for a potential flood of downvotes and hate...

I'm an old man by reddit standards. In my 40s. I've been in this business for 20 years. I've run projects, supervised staff and managed a few publications in that time. And I did it without a PhD. Just a bachelor's degree. And here's what I've learned about the majority of new PhDs: they are, by and large, arrogant, pig ignorant and bloody awful to work with.

The ones with post doc experience are if anything worse. Reluctant to look outside their own little field of "expertise" and gasp like a fish out of water when things get sticky. And having worked in academia, industry and medicine in the UK and Sweden I would say wholeheartedly that British and Swedish research is doomed because of the jokers they recruit and the psychopaths (I'm serious) that run things.

Maybe it's different in the US. Dunno.

So what about me? How did I manage without a PhD? I work bloody hard, I try all sorts of things and I try to remain as objective about my projects as I can. If a project is failing, kill it. Decide on the study that will finish it once and for all, and do it. Done in vivo, in vitro, molecular biology, pharmacology and physiology. Why? Because there rarely happens to be anyone with the expertise I require in a department at any given time.

And when I see recruiters and managers ask for a good PhD and postdoc experience I roll my eyes because that's not really what they want, what they need. They've fallen into the same trap that you have, and are victims of their own arrogance.

Tip: learn some humiloity. Don't say stuff like "I'm 95% sure I don't want to be a professor - I think I could do it," because old lags like me hate that. What we want to see is people getting their hands dirty, not going to every fucking meeting and seminar under the sun, just knuckling down and getting shit done. And don't give me all that "oh but I've been doing it for the last few years, time I had a break from the lab". It's a job. A career. And I'm sorry, but until you have enough experience under you, you're not going to get the pick of the jobs. You're going to have to put up with the short end of the stick for a while longer, because there are literally thousands of other people with exactly the same qualifications as you.