[blackcat]

I am wondering if anyone knows if it is stressful to work in a company as a R&D chemist.

How many hours per week work? Is it fast-paced in general? Any idea?

Thanks

[jeffmoonchop]

I work in R&D. It will depend on your company culture, manager, holiday allowance, pay etc.

I worked in England for 2 years and now in Canada. Overall in England you are paid less than Canada, which can add to stress, but you will have a more generous holiday allowance.

Now I'm in Canada and technically our holiday allowance is unlimited, but generally take over 3 weeks and you will need to have a good reason for taking more time off.

As I'm more senior now there is more work to do, which can add to stress, but I still work less than 40 hours per week, and the work is more interesting due to being in charge of my own projects.

In England many companies will have a 36-38 hour week as standard.

Overall I would highly recommend industry over academia, which is known for very low pay and much longer hours. For example, I just finished my PhD last year, and I earn double the average postdoc in Canada. It brings a lot of stress down when you're able to buy a house and provide food for your kids, along with job security.

[chenbeier]

Depending on the company. Research is normally seperated from production. So you have normaly stressless life. But if you work in production then you responsible for quality and on time finished products. Customer pressure etc. This ends in health problems.I had this experience.

[wildfyr]

I enjoy my job as an R&D chemist. Its a much better life than the quality team, engineers, and production managers. I don't have to care about dumb crap like wrinkled boxing or people not showing up for shifts.

[Enthalpy]

I can't tell for chemists, but as an engineer, having worked both in R&D and outside, stress is not a matter of workhours or holidays. When developing at the same time the contactless chipcard at my employer and a satellite in a club, I worked 100h in 7-days weeks. I did literally nothing else during that period, sleeping on site. That was not a source of stress.

Stress is when your boss understands zilch from technology so you project is meaningless, would better be completely scrapped, and your time better spent elsewhere. It's when your girlfriend stops talking to you without explanation because you asked for a clearance to work at a weapons industry. It's when you can't mention the blatant problems in your department because any random person will get worries except the source of the problems. And it's when the company has 40h-weeks and you must check in and out, justify when you worked too much, why you didn't take the mandatory break, check why your worktime was not accounted, and have to leave earlier because you exceeded the worktime.

Ah, and for a musician (I wasn't close to being a professional), significant stress is when you learn 5 days before a concert that you will play badly difficult pieces that you have barely read. I guess it belongs to the job.

[blackcat]

It is just one month I have started my R&D position in my company. I think it is pretty fast-paced. I am already doing experiments/generating data for 1-2 weeks.

Is this a normal expectation? In general, since low long should a new employee be expected to fully function in research?