Money and self-esteem

[Sabine Dippel]

In article <l03102801b043ea42f426@[143.48.60.60]>, 
leemor at CSHL.ORG (Leemor Joshua-Tor) writes:
|> 
|> It's really hard to tell from what you write what happened w.r.t.
|> having the respective PI's pay you in an interim period before
|> getting a postdoc fellowship. Things are also probably very different
|> in that respect between Europe and the US. But you have to keep a
|> few things in mind before passing judgement. We, the PI's, don't
|> have the type of control over money and salaries like some people
|> in this newsgroup seem to think sometimes. At universities, or research
|> institutions, there is no profit and we work completely from grants
|> that we must raise. Usually, if you are lucky to get a grant funded
|> which takes several months after writing one, you even get that cut,
|> either just an 'across the board cut' or they may cut some of the
|> personnel etc. that you asked for. So in most cases, there isn't much
|> of a margin to work from and you are almost always at the edge.
|> Now, unless the PIs have a slot open from a grant, a new slot from a
|> new grant or someone leaving it may be pretty hard to raise another
|> salary just like that. Especially, if this was not arranged quite a
|> few months in advance.
|> So, they probably truely would have loved to pay you, but they may just
|> simply not have the cash floating around. It doesn't have anything
|> to do with how much they value your work. That's just life these days in
|> academic science.
|> 
|> 				--Leemor
|> 
|> 
|> 

Okay, I'm sorry, seems as if what I wrote can really easily be misunderstood.
I know that these people really are not able to pay me, and that it's not 
their fault -- but realizing this, realizing that there can be people who
REALLY want you to work for them, but cannot pay you, and realizing that this 
is a situation that happens pretty often made me (among other things, like 
regular 40 hour weeks, not having to move every 2 years or so etc.) simply now
helped me to decide to get out of academic science. I did not want to blame 
PI's or the people concerned in my particular case. 

Sabine

(hoping not to have offended other PI's).