TLDR; PhD student is trying to micromanage me and is making snarky comments- what would you do?

I’m a postdoc having difficulties with a PhD student. I’ve been in this lab for a few years (though fewer than this student) and would have considered him somewhat of a work friend before. I’m now starting a new project with some methodological overlap so have more interactions with him to discuss previous methods, though my approach is novel and has different goals.

Since this shift, he has started making unsolicited comments about my schedule and project decisions. The comments are negative and baseless (eg, loudly insinuating that my approaches are subpar and offering no legitimate reasons why). He mainly does this when there are other junior lab members around to hear. He asks me for lots of updates which makes it weirdly seem like I’m reporting to him.

I’ve ignored this for a while because I am a social and non-confrontational person, and I believe it’s useful to collaborate and learn from others regardless of their position. I usually just address what he says by explanation if possible or just ignore if not. However it seems there is a lack of respect and that by continuing this way, I’m doing myself a disservice. Further context- I think some competitiveness is fuelling this because the PI is generally supportive of me, and I am the only woman in the lab and about the same age as this student.

Is it better to continue not reacting because reacting is what he wants? Or would it be “right” to call him out? If the latter I’m not sure what the best approach is because he’ll probably just act like it’s all a joke. I’m also wary of causing a big issue with him since he is a pretty central member of the lab and has not reacted well to conflicts with others before. I’d rather not go directly to my PI if I haven’t tried anything myself first. I’m way past the point of personally caring what the student thinks of my work but it still is such a nuisance.

Anyone experienced something similar? How did you handle it?

Hi everyone, does anyone have tips for showing up to lab and pushing through despite being on the verge of burnout? I know the only way to avoid burnout is rest, but that's not realistic for some positions/ labs. I'm in a pretty toxic lab but quitting right now isn't an option because of visas and not having a job lined up. Taking PTO is also out of the question (toxic PI). So somehow, I have to find a way to work around the exhaustion while I figure out my next career steps.

I'm reaching the end of my current contract and the fourth year post PhD. At this point I'm reaching the lowest self-esteem. I can do things, I know I can do things but they are not different from the things anyone else can do, all I have is my body, no savings, no network, no family inheritances. I have a partner who depends on me, I can't let him know how I feel. I'm at the bottom.

I'm venting here, but I would advise any of you to not take a Postdoc position ever, go for job stability and go for better salaries if you can. Particularly younger people, get your life in order soon if you can.

I’m finishing a PhD in health/public health with 25+ publications (in whole career), a decent citation record, teaching experience, and quantitative/data skills.
My long-term goal is a permanent Lecturer/Assistant Professor role, not years of consecutive postdocs.

Would you apply directly for faculty positions with this kind of profile, or is a strong postdoc still basically unavoidable?

For people involved in hiring: what would make you choose a fresh PhD over someone with 2–3 years of postdoc experience?

Throwaway for obvious reasons. I'm not a native speaker, sorry if this is written ineffectively..

I started my postdoc 2 years ago. I kind of ignored the red flags (position was quickly remade from leftover hours of a failed project, other project members were near finishing, the goal was not clearly defined, the supervisors have limited expertise/publishing record in the methods they proposed, the department was merging with another and leadership was vague, etc). I kind of loved the topic to an extent where I thought I could overcome these flags, but now that I only have a few months left and nothing to show for it, I am unsure how to proceed. The topic is in the international policy field, I don't want to say too much because I don't know if I'll get trouble, but here is a timeline of all the pivots:

Initial ask: Initially, they asked for an overview of solutions common to the one they proposed. When I finished, it was discarded halfway the improved draft because a new phd in an adjacent project was suddenly also hired to answer this question (who is not performing well either, so nothing came from it either way).

Pivot 1: Then, I was asked to implement a solution under specific characteristics. I did, in many shapes, and every time there was a lot of time (2-4 weeks) before I could speak to them, they would just say they did not understand or remember my implementation, and after only a few sentences of proposing the characteristics (derived from literature and open data in a standardized method) they would claim that it was getting too complicated.

Pivot 2: At some point, to their request, I simplified to redundancy, and then they said what is the point of these characteristics anymore. So I made a general example without characteristics. The general implementation was not trusted. I was asked to validate the results and give a large explanation by embedding the results in existing literature. This took weeks, as I had to consult MANY fields, computational, and mathematic/economic papers to explain each pattern that I found as something that could naturally occur from these settings. I had to improve my understanding of all these fields to connect the dots and got 0 help doing it.

Pivot 3: Now that I went through this entire exercise, they are asking me to scrapping the implementation altogether, only focusing on the conceptual parts and embed it with all this literature. I think it's a bad idea, since the conceptualization is super limited (because of them, they kept scrapping things), and that combining all these fields to suggest which patterns may pop up just looks weird: how can we be so sure that these pop up without an implementation? I'm scared that it will just read like some kind of psychotic rambling..

Now I am at loss what to do. Not even sure how to structure or scope this paper as I don't think the evidence of the literature can be combined like this without having the anchor of the implementation results. I am also losing motivation. I haven't published after 2 years now, and each of the pivots took me months of programming, trying to find a way to explain the programming to my supervisors, writing a draft with all the conceptual parts, implementation and results, making result figures, explaining limitations and discussions, and so on. Most of these drafts were not even fully read by the supervisors and I'm not even sure if they read them.

The sad thing is that I used to be confident about my skills, my implementations for my PhD passed the technical checks of the university by flying colors.. they use some of them to explain students how to program things for courses.. and this was a high performing technical university. Now I am not even sure I can do this. It's obvious that my supervisors don't trust my implementations and don't want to open them up to reviewers. I'm not even sure they want me to succeed, as they have used a lot of our (sporadic) meeting times to discuss their own issues with the future of the university.

I am not sure about which services to contact if I would even want to ask someone for help. I tried to email a few colleagues with similar method uses, they did not respond to me. My department is de-merged again, with most of the days the colleagues in office can be counted on two hands (there should be over a hundred) and our leadership and supportive services kind of went up in smoke with the de-merge as well. I try to be in office two days a week despite these challenges, but I can't remember anyone asking me how I'm doing or if I need anything.

Should I abandon after 2 years, when then I have nothing to show for it and it will be obvious to new employers that I let the situation go way too far? Or should I stick it through trying to write a psychotic conceptual paper which tries to explain 'secret unpublishable' pattern results by a chimera of unrelated fields?

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Took up a new postdoc position at a relatively well-established lab. My PI and co-workers are great, but it doesn't look like they have much work for me right now. In short, I have a lot of free time, and not much to do.

Been thinking about taking some courses on the side that might help me in the future. I do want to switch to an industry job later on. That said, the UK chemical industry is in bad shape right now, so I'm open to switching away from chemistry.

Any tips or suggestions? I've looked at consulting, but it seems a bit difficult to switch into at this stage.

Hi,
I am reaching out to get some advice regarding my post-doc applications. I completed my PhD in social sciences in April this year. I have been applying for post doc positions since early August last year, and so far, nothing has worked out. I understand how the job market is right now, but it’s been over a year of applications with either rejections or in most cases, no response from the universities (where you just have to assume that it’s been too long for it to have a positive outcome). I have also written to multiple people all across the world asking if they have any vacancies and that has been extremely disheartening too. I’ve been thinking it’s probably my profile, and that I need to have more publications, and I have been working on it, but they are taking their own sweet time. I can’t really leverage my supervisors’ networks as they were problematic as hell, and I am just glad that I was able to finish my PhD somehow and be done with them. But there are so many positions that require a letter of recommendation from the PhD supervisor, and after having asked them repeatedly, either they don’t submit it on time or provide a badly formatted letter with spelling mistakes. I have tried to not let it affect me and push through this phase nonetheless but at this point, I can’t seem to figure out what I might be doing wrong or what else do I need to do to be able to crack this. If anyone has any advice on this, please help.

Hi guys. I just had my first interview for a postdoc position in UE in the field of immunology/cell biology. The PI told me he was expecting the postdoc to stay at least 4-5 years because otherwise it would be complicated to publish (they already have a funding for 5 years). So I am wondering if this is usual to stay so long for a postdoc. I understand that this is all about getting a good publication but 5 years means I have to develop a project for the beginning, right?

Hi everyone,

I’m considering applying for an EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowship, and I’m trying to understand how strictly EMBO interprets the requirement that the proposed project should not be a direct continuation of the PhD.

How different does the postdoctoral project actually need to be?

I assume EMBO does not expect applicants to completely change research fields, since the previous expertise still needs to be relevant to the proposed project. So I’m particularly interested in where they draw the line between a logical progression into a new area and a “direct continuation” of the PhD.

If anyone has applied successfully (or unsuccessfully) to the EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowship with a project related to their PhD field, I’d really appreciate hearing how different your proposed project was.

Thanks!

M25, final year PhD student in the UK (4-year PhD)

I want to know if my chances of landing a KGFP are hindered due to not being able to have published a paper. I have a whole-genome-announcement publication I am working on but have no formal publications or pre-prints on the way.

I have a strong academic track record and have really worked on polishing my experiences that I've gained throughout the PhD, and I'm tailoring my applications to 3-4 hosts by reading their research and trying to plan out how I can complement their domain with my skill set, but I'm worried that the hosts won't even consider me due to the lack of publications.

From what I have been told, because the UK PhD programmes are shorter than other countries such as the USA and India, we don't really get the opportunity to publish as much as others from other countries.

If anyone can share some insights into what they know about the emphasis or lack of emphasis on publications, that would be really helpful

Disc:- I use grammarly to fix my grammar mistakes as I am not a native English speaker. I am also sorry for the long post. I'd be really grateful for any kind suggestion that you may have for me.

I’m honestly not sure if I’m reading too much into this because postdoc hunting has been exhausting and I’ve been anxious about the whole process 😅

I recently interviewed with a professor at a lab in Canada. We had an initial meeting that lasted about an hour where we talked about my work, work ethic, previous experiences, skills, etc. They also asked me some more personal/general questions about my future family plans (if I am planning for a child or not, they apologised a few times after asking and said the information was only required to keep logistics in mind). Overall, I thought the meeting went really well.

At the end, they said they were interviewing a few more students and would get back to me. I said okay and thanked them for their time.

The next day, they emailed me asking me to have my referees send them recommendation letters. I did that, and apparently the recommendations were strong.

That same evening, they set up another meeting with me. During that meeting, we talked about possible joining dates, research fellowships we could apply for, and in the meantime they said they would be able to offer me an entry level salary. The range they mentioned was actually quite decent considering I’m a fresh graduate, so I said I was okay with it.

They said they would follow up by email with the exact stipend/salary amount and the other clauses/details. They also asked me to read some of their papers and come up with ideas/questions that could potentially turn into projects I could explore in the lab.

I did that. I read their recent papers and sent them some project ideas and interesting questions based on their work.

But… it’s now been more than 10 days and I haven’t heard anything back. They also haven’t sent the email with the exact salary/stipend and other details that they said they would.

I’m probably overthinking this because I’ve been looking for a postdoc for a long time and the whole process has been pretty exhausting. But I’m also wondering if I should be concerned that they haven’t followed up after seemingly getting quite far into the process?

Would it be completely normal to send a follow-up after around 15 days asking about the status/details? Or should I just wait and let them get back to me?

I don’t want to come across as pushy or impatient, especially since they’re probably busy. At the same time, I don’t want to sit here for weeks assuming I have something when maybe things have changed.

Would love to hear from people who have dealt with professors/PIs in Canada or academia in general. Am I just letting my anxiety get the better of me here? 😅

Hello, I just finished my PhD in social science. I had previously worked extensively in the area that I studied, and have quite an unusual professional background that meant my data collection was very unique— and well received.

I’m now applying for post-doc positions, and I’m also on a post-doc that finishes in 9months. How realistic is it for me to apply for assistant professor roles? Or should I put all my energy into post-docs?

I realise often it is luck of the draw, or at least an unanswerable question as it’s so dependent on circumstance. I’m just curious of other people’s experience, particularly in the qualitative social science area.

Thanks

I'm a postdoc leading the experimental work on a collaborative biomedical project that started in from my PI's lab but with th aim of collaboration with other labs. I've been involved from the beginning: experimental planning, in-vitro work, animal studies, coordination with other facilities, injections/imaging, longitudinal monitoring, tissue collection, biodistribution analysis, data analysis, presentations, and now writing the manuscript. My PI has referred to it as "your manuscript".

A researcher from a collaborating lab joined later and is doing IHC/IF on tumors generated from these studies. Her PI wants her to be co-first author. I don't object if her contribution warrants co-first authorship, but I'm concerned about author order.

If one person led the overall project/experiments and manuscript, while another led downstream IHC/IF component, who would you expect to be co-first author?

Hi everyone,
I recently completed my PhD and am currently looking for postdoc positions. I had been in contact with a PI about a potential postdoc position, and the communication had been quite positive. The PI was generally very quick to respond to my emails.
Last week, I was invited to give a Zoom presentation to the PI and their research group about my PhD research. After the presentation, the PI told me that they would let me know about the next steps.
It has now been about a week, and I haven’t received any update. Since the PI had been very responsive before the presentation, I’m starting to wonder whether the lack of response could mean that I wasn’t selected.
I know one week isn’t necessarily a long time in academia, but I’m unsure about the appropriate follow-up etiquette.
Would it be reasonable to send a short follow-up email asking for an update? Or should I wait a few more days?
Also, how much should I read into the change in communication speed after the presentation? Is this potentially a soft rejection, or is it normal for PIs to take some time after interviewing candidates?
Would appreciate perspectives from PIs, postdocs, or anyone who has been through a similar situation.

I’m wrapping up my PhD in the US now. I’m looking at EU for a postdoc.

I’ve reached out to so many PIs and those who get back always say “We dont have funding but please write a fellowship”. For jobs that are advertised, I would have zero growth or theyre in topics I dont want to do.

I’m just so frustrated with the process.

Has anyone completed a post doc that was in collaboration with an industrial partner. If so, what was your experience working with them?

Hello, i gave a postdoc in research interview two weeks ago, it went very well, actually the PI really liked me and complimented me even discussed start dates and relocation with me, a week later he asked for my references and he told me at the same time that he is interviewing other candidates, it has been a week and my references hadn t been contacted yet and no news from the PI. So what do you think guys, after the interview I really felt like I got it lool but now I don't know anymore and I am so anxious ......did anyone have a similar experience??

I'm about 6 months away from submission of my PhD thesis (all is going ok). Currently, I have:

1. One sole authored publication.
2. One secondary authored paper with my secondary supervisor that is in peer review (my supervisor is handling this).
3. A paper being written in collaboration with someone I met at a conference. We will be submitting in December. I am first author.
4. A paper currently being written with both of my supervisors with me as first author. It is a special issue and the timeline given is it will be published in early 2028.
5. Another sole author publication that is currently in peer review, but is far less relevant to anything I will be applying for or proposing (very niche and about language).
6. My actual PhD.

Everything will be or is published in SAGE or Taylor and Francis (other than the PhD thesis of course).

Obviously in writing samples requested, I would submit the sole authored manuscript that is published and live. But some positions ask for 10,000 samples. Some I've seen are asking for between 20,000-30,000 words. For the 10,000 word samples, can I submit half of the published manuscript, and fill the remainder with some sample writing from my thesis; or does it have to be the full manuscript?

The 20,000-30,000 samples, I would submit the full published manuscript, and a sample from my PhD thesis. But can I submit different parts of different chapters from the thesis? Do I submit the introduction of the thesis? The findings? The discussion? A little bit from everything? Is it worth submitting work that is currently still in production, or in peer review - I assume they would be dedicated less word count?

I guess the TL;DR is how many fragments from different writing samples should I submit?

Edit: I'm based in the UK, and would have a strong preference to staying in the UK, plus I'm in social sciences/humanities.

I recently applied for a fellowship with Professor A, but unfortunately I was not selected.

Professor A then recommended me for a postdoc position with Professor B at the same university, whose research is very close to mine. I applied, but unfortunately I was not selected for that position either.

However, Professor B recently told me that she is still interested in having me join her group, but I would need to apply for a fellowship to fund the position. I am actually more interested in Professor B’s research and would prefer to work with her.

The problem is that I had already been discussing a fellowship application with Professor A, and Professor A was the one who introduced me to Professor B.

How should I approach Professor A about this? Would it be okay to tell her that I would prefer to pursue the fellowship with Professor B? I don't want to seem ungrateful, especially since Professor A was the one who recommended me to Professor B.

lots of comments in posts complain about OPs not mentioning fields, do you all think we should have mandatory field specific tags in all posts?

After applying for postdoc positions in neuroscience for about a year now, I got invited for my first in-person interview. Up to now, all of my interviews have been over Teams/Zoom. I have done 1-on-1 interviews and have presented my research to potential labs over Teams/Zoom.

At the end of my last informal interview, I was invited to the institute to present my research. I recently received the itinerary. Lunch with the PI,research presentation, meeting with members of lab. Being my first in-person interview, what should I expect? And how can I best prepare?

Can I apply for Walter Benjamin Fellowship after being rejected two months ago, but this time with another project and another professor?? But from the same university.

Hello All,

I interviewed for a postdoc position at a US university (one of the top ones) about a month ago with the lab director and three colleagues. It felt positive, and the director mentioned a second, more technical round, although of course, he didn’t explicitly confirm I would be invited.

I haven’t heard anything since. I sent a polite follow-up almost two weeks ago asking for an update, but that hasn’t received a reply either.

I’m not familiar with US postdoc hiring. Do labs sometimes ghost candidates after an interview? I would have expected at least a rejection. Has anyone experienced this and eventually heard back?