by Dave Jensen » Wed May 04, 2005 4:15 pm
Pam,
I was just sent a correction to one of my earlier comments, from a friend of mine who works for Amgen. He said that the company has terminated its postdoc program, and that many company scientists are not very happy about this. It seems that the firm had a fairly good program going there, as did Immunex, but when the two companies merged they decided to drop postdoctoral programs. There are a few people finishing up Amgen postdocs, but no new ones coming in (I didn't confirm this with Amgen management, but it sounded legitimate).
I don't expect you to know anything about this scenario, but I would like to ask you, in general, if you can comment on why industry postdoc programs don't seem to be catching on. In fact, they are retracting. Can you give us any hints as to how employers view these programs? Is it seen as a high-cost item, one that has no pay back for the corporation? It seems to me that it is a wonderful way to "give back" to the community of PhD's out there, plus I am sure that on occasion this research work has a corporate benefit as well.
Just how DO company managers view the postdoc program at Genentech, and why do you think this isn't "catching on" with other companies?
Dave Jensen, Moderator
“There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.”- Alain de Botton