by BMK » Thu Apr 09, 2015 9:44 am
Let me second some of Dave's points and elaborate on others.
1a) It is weird (and potentially off-putting) to negotiate the salary of a postdoc position before you get there. Really, salary is set by your institution, which in turn bases their decisions based on the active grants of your group (your PI's and yours) and what the salary line items for your position were set at. Your PI can very much wish to pay you more, but as NIH rules prevent supplementing salary with federal money, a purely NIH-funded PI would have their hands tied while another with a large departmental discretionary budget would have more leeway. This is the cause of ALOT of the variability we see in practice. Alternatively, convince the DOD or a private foundation that your salary will be X (and your institution to let you put X as your salary) your fine, you are basically asking for the raise at this junction. If your institution says the budget is correct (which they have to confirm for every grant application they allow their name to be on), then almost no grant or fellowship committee will question it even if it has no semblance to the NIH paytable. Not just reach the top of the range, but surpass it.
1b) Be really productive in your first year and see if you can't convince people to slide you up the range for your level even without your own fellowship.
1c) Also realize you could "supplement" your income with awards, like NIH has a loan repayment program if you have qualified student debt.
2a) While its nice to negotiate an "understanding" with your PI of different perks and expectations (vacation days, training, travel for professional development, road map to your project and success), postdocs are not often considered actual employees of a university (its most commonly seen an apprenticeship or glorified grad student from HR's perspective). As such there is no contract to back ANY of the promises up, so make sure you talk to the people in the lab and make sure the PI is by and large sincere. I don't believe that most PI's would willingly renege on that kind of stuff, but it doesn't mean it doesn't happen either.
2b) That said: professional travel expenses for conferences and so that you can do your fieldwork/collaborations should be in the budget already, otherwise the PI and grant reviewers really dropped the ball.
3) Interview expenses (for trainees) are not allowed to be paid for by federal money, moving expenses may be allowable by NIH but then subject to institutional rules.
4) Depending on whether your institution considers you an employee, your benefits (incl retirement) will vary. At a minimum, one would get healthcare for themselves as part of the grant as I believe that is a mandatory requirement by NIH (family and whether its subsidized or not, is another matter).
5) Depending on where the money comes from, things like laptops may be given to you for personal use, but the institution would still consider it their property.