Habib said: <....what would be the option (s) and hopefully best route (in terms of career development) for a metallurgist (with PhD and 1 yr post doc) who has been working in medical device industry for almost 4 years. What would you do? or if you are a seasoned materials scientist in industry, what would you have done differently if you were 4 years into your career? >
It all depends of course on where you want to be. Pick a timeframe, say 5 years, for looking ahead. Do you want to stay in strictly technical areas, or do you want to explore directing others and management? Does your position have a career advancement path and is that what you want? Only some firms have a technical value ladder, others require one to be a manager to achieve more pay.
Personally I was not interested in managing. I had a couple of stints sitting in for a boss while they were out for 1-2 months, and I didn't really enjoy it. Others I knew really enjoyed being able to make wider-ranging impactful decisions on resources and workers, and/or helping develop subordinates.
By the 4 year mark I had looked around at other firms but had not found a good reason for switching. If you do decide to shop around, keep in mind that if they find out you are looking, your own firm may take that one of two ways:
1 - XX is looking around, we realize that any person reasonably needs to keep eyes open for other opportunities, so we should try to increase our attractiveness to XX so that we can retain them, not have to retrain someone and incur the costs of job searching;
2 - XX is looking around, that is signs of a disloyal employee, we should fire XX immediately or make them miserable enough to leave so that we don't have to pay unemployment.
3 - or something in between.... So searches should not be done from the employer's computer system or telephone system. Seriously, get a separate phone and never do this searching on company time. ASM meetings are great places to network!
Firms that have tech ladders require one to show additional value, as advanced levels (senior, advising/consulting, principal scientist/engineer) and salary are tools for retention of high-value workers. As a PhD with postdoc time, you're as far in academic accomplishments as you can go, so can you leverage your knowledge and expertise within your firm to gain additional responsibility?
Finally, is medical device work continuing to provide job satisfaction for you, or is there some other field that is strongly attractive?
It is a good idea to occasionally look around, because no individual job is guaranteed to be permanent and unchangingly good. Businesses are bought and sold, management changes, life changes. I hope some of these comments are useful to you.
Paul Tibbals