Talk me out of mastering in Ecology

I know there are a few ecologist types on here.

Medical Sciences (BmedSci) grad here. So the government announced funding this year for masters courses and I’ve been thinking recently, do I really want to piss my life up the wall inside a white lab room, surrounded by whirring instruments whilst slowly being turned into a ghoul by the bright white fluorescent lighting. Everythings white, my lab coats white, the the floor is white, the sodding ceiling is white and some of my colleagues look like Zombies.

I love science – but on the whole it has dawned on me that the happiest I have been in relation to biology, is simply when I’ve been out in rain forest. I also enjoy and am pretty handy with statistics (a while back I passed a short course with a decent mark that covered proofs in regards to topics ranging from probability theory to Bayesian stats). I dream about being outside on my bike most of the time when I’m in the labs and I’m also considering at some point in my life, gaining some outdoor qualifications – eg ML Summer, Winter and maybe even one day…my MIA.

I’m thinking that I should have become an ecologist. Are there many jobs going, is this lunacy? I figure that if I can combine the masters with a solid grounding in stats, then it shouldn’t be too much of a waste of time – even if I don’t end up in the field.

Ideas?

Money’s shit for the first few years and the msc will only get you part way there, you’ll need to do the ieem, professional body schizzle to get on. Unless you stay in academia and do something proper good (rain foresty/antarctic type gubbins)

You think I did a biochem heavy course to earn lots of money? 😀 My pay is shockingly bad, I could earn more as a kitchen porter.

Thank god the missus is in banking. 😀

I’ve a degree in ecology and a marine masters and I’ve worked in the environment sector for over ten years. Down sides are there aren’t many ecology jobs and experience is key, without experience you’d be looking for a graduate level job which are quite hard to come by and the money isn’t great. On the up side if you are interested in ecology it’s obviously a great job, especially if you have the opportunity for field work. Have a look at ecology jobs to get an idea of salaries, I think I started on 17k about ten years ago. Everyone I know gets their professional body memberships etc whilst working.

If you can get some kind of additional selling point like a specialism or relevant experience it would be useful. I did some GIS as part of my degree and got a GIS job to get some more GIS experience so I could use it as a skill to get into the environment sector. I joined a consultancy as a GIS consultant with the aim of also doing some ecology work, however I got sucked into the GIS side of it full time. I still managed to go on quite a few surveys with the ecology team and have worked closely with ecologists since though which is good.

The public sector has faced a lot of job cuts and the private sector (eg environmental consultancy) has been quieter since the recession though has picked up since. Consultancy is largely reliant on people developing infrastructure, the less stuff is getting built, the less work there is and fewer jobs.

I’d say go for it if you want to, the chance to work in an area of interest is worth taking. You’ll never get rich as an ecologist but you’ll get to work on some interesting stuff.

Check out jobs and salaries here

http://www.environmentjob.co.uk/jobs?sector=49&last_filter=sector&last_value=49&url_update

Jobs are often filled by word of mouth and networking in consultancy, neither of the consultancy jobs I’ve had were advertised, just a case of my CV getting passed around friends in the industry. Also salaries tend not to be advertised, I started off much lower than I could have done I think, but I really wanted the job so went in low.

I’ve a PhD and subsequent career in the related field of soil biogeochemistry. My experience tells me that you have to be incredibly lucky to make a career out of it. Sure, being very good helps (you’ll get nowhere at all if you’re not in the top 1%), but I’ve seen many junior scientists who I’d regard as possibly having the potential to be better than many of my more experienced colleagues leaving science as there are no career prospects.

Also, I had similar hopes of spending lots of time outdoors. In reality I spend most of my time dealing with tedious admin, trying to win grants, and writing reports. There are far more lucrative ways to sit in front of a computer for 10 hours a day.

So, in answer to your questions:

Are there many jobs going

No

is this lunacy?

Yes

I figure that if I can combine the masters with a solid grounding in stats, then it shouldn’t be too much of a waste of time – even if I don’t end up in the field.

Possibly…

Having spent about 8 years sat in fields doing botanical aurveys I can confidently state that working outdoors isnt as great as you might think

Not an ecologist, but worked as an environmental consultant for 5 years (before doing a PhD and staying in academia so far). Consultancy will take on a small number of new graduates each year and train them up, which is good, but the pay will be rubbish. (I started on £17,250 as a Masters graduate, B.Sc. grads got around £13,000, pay hasn’t risen much in the time since.) How well you do from it depends on luck getting a good boss. IME the junior staff went on site 4-8 days/nights a month and spent the rest of their time writing reports, the more senior staff spent less time on site and more time chasing business and reviewing reports. There are charities, conservation organisations and academic vacancies too, be they are rare and get a huge number of applications.

+1 to get good at something like GIS. And think about volunteering weekends at bird reserves or county conservation groups. Although working abroad sounds great, consider the long term and whether or not you think you can juggle long periods away from family etc.

Having recently watched an ecologist from a well know large group of environmental consultants with 2-3years experience having to carefully hand search shoulder high vegetation with a high percentage of nettles for any sign of wildlife prior to it being mown, I can safely say its not my cup of tea. The area of was about the size of a football field and it was raining and it took him about a week.

They were charging him out at about £40 a hour mind however I suspect he wasn’t seeing much of that. depending on the size of site a Phase 1 / 2 habitat survey and run to a few thousand quid so if you can get sufficiently qualified for 5-10 years and strike out on your own then there is probably reasonable money and less hand searching to be done.

Just remember ecologists and great crested newts / bats are the bane of the construction industry so prepare to be dislked…

Just remember ecologists and great crested newts / bats are the bane of the construction industry

TBH it’s archaeologists we REALLY hate.

Don’t do it for the career opportunities. Do it because you can’t see yourself doing anything else with your life.

Mrs is having this issue, graduated 3 years ago with a Bsc in Ecology. Applied for plenty of jobs and everyone has said, you need more experience/you don’t have the experience we require etc.

Despite her volunteering for years within the environmental sector and working with an agricultural company and gaining such experience. There is always one person better and more experienced.

Shes even taught herself GIS and ended up teaching some of the classes in Uni as she overtook the lecturer…bit of an odd one that, but she’s nerdy and loves that kind of stuff, wizz with stats etc.

Most of our class mates decided to go onto do masters and PhD’s, some of them still haven’t found jobs 3 years on despite getting top class marks.

Do you like timesheets? Do you like accounting for every single second of your day? Would you like your utilisation (amount of chargeable work you do) being the only metric used to measure how good you are in your job? If so, welcome to environmental consultancy! The work is repetitive but at least the pay is bad.

If you’re good at stats and want to earn money then look at being a data scientist. That would swap the lab for an office though, not outdoors.. 🙁

They were charging him out at about £40 a hour mind however I suspect he wasn’t seeing much of that

Yeah the hourly rate is the killer for field work in jobs, my rate was about 60-70 an hour so didn’t get much of a look in. The real trick is to be freelance and be able to charge the 40 an hour that goes directly to you!

Do you like timesheets? Do you like accounting for every single second of your day? Would you like your utilisation (amount of chargeable work you do) being the only metric used to measure how good you are in your job? If so, welcome to environmental consultancy! The work is repetitive but at least the pay is bad.

I’d happily never hear the words timesheet and utilisation again, or feel that sensation of doom at 12pm on Friday when project managers won’t let you book to their project and you can’t book to overheads.

I’m convinced that timesheets are really of little use and can’t understand the obsession with them. No one uses them correctly making them practically worthless. It just forces everyone to watch their backs, collaborate less and generally be more insular. It’s like having consultancies within consultancies. Planning to leave the industry very soon!

Yeah timesheets can be hellish. The two consultancies I’ve worked for had very different approaches, the first was all about recording truthfully on the timesheet exactly what you did, no trying to hide meetings with project hours etc. Despite having a utilisation target on which things like bonuses and promotion relied there was relatively little timesheet stress as there was so much work we were usually over utilised anyway, and you never got in trouble for booking to meetings etc.

The second company was totally different, despite not having a formal utilisation target we were under pressure to maximise billability and hide meetings etc in project hours, however there were never enough project hours even for genuine project work and overheads were locked down. You were basically stuck in the middle between management and project managers, neither giving you time to book, and getting a weekly bollocking even though you’d been working your bits off. I nearly resigned over it and I think one person in my office was getting seriously stressed about it and ended up signed off.

I’ve learnt a lot in consultancy and worked on some really interesting big projects but it does get a bit like groundhog day after a few years. Also depending on the company it’s just damn hard work, endless deadlines, panics, late nights. I went for an informal interview with another consultancy the other week and they just had that consultant look, tired, stressed, burnt out.

my rate was about 60-70 an hour

Where I work currently that equates to quite a reasonable salary… top end of that range would be a senior with some management responsibilities

Where I work currently that equates to quite a reasonable salary… top end of that range would be a senior with some management responsibilities

That’s the rate the company charged me out to the client at – I took home a fraction of that, was on about 17k when I first started.

That’s the rate the company charged me out to the client at – I took home a fraction of that, was on about 17k when I first started.

Yeah I understand it was the charge-out rate. I compared it to our current charge-out rates. If your salary was pitiful then your employer was taking a large cut, or its overheads were sky high.

Ah sorry I hadn’t registered your username with that post. Yes I’m fairly certain they are the most expensive env consultancy, not going to name it but you might be able to figure it out from that! The most senior rates were well over 100 an hour. They were owned by an investment company which probably didn’t help but lord knows where the money went, expensive city centre offices and Partner’s bonuses presumably. It meant we were priced out of much of the UK market apart from big big projects.

I wouldn’t really recommend it. I and a bunch of other people I worked with got deleted in the last property crash. I swapped industries completely and I wouldn’t do ecology again.

1) It’s very hard to get a job. I’d spent a few years doing really grim jobs, and I was pretty motivated. I graduated top of my year at uni and was the only person to have a full time job lined up for when I left. Starting pay was £17k around 10 years ago, when a typical grad job would be 20-25k. The general expectation was that you would need to do a lot of voluntary work to gain experience before you could get a paid job.

2) It’s hard work. It’s not hard manual labour, but it’s a lot harder than a lot of jobs. Reptile surveys? Better be on a site damn early to catch things whilst they’re still trying to warm up. Bat surveys? Better not like sleeping. Newt surveys? Better not like sleeping and enjoy getting wet.

3) The hours are pap. Almost every decent summer evening where you would like to be out on your bike or in a beer garden are spent doing fieldwork.

4) The level of expertise / experience needed to progress is pretty high. In a lot of industries, if you turn up reliably, breath through your nose and not your mouth and don’t make any big cock ups, you’ll be promoted reasonably quickly. Most senior / management level ecologists are pretty expert at what they do, and that expertise was tough to gain.

The business is largely reliant on the building industry, and new sites coming on stream are the first thing to dry up when things slow down – bear in mind that most firms will be working on sites for years ahead of actually beginning construction. As a result the industry is very up and down. The fact that a lot of people are basically willing to work for free even during the good times means that things are very grim when companies start laying off.

I would expect the best jobs are in the public sector, as you’re protected from the cycles of the property market.

Some great advice here guys, I’ve just got back home – so I need some time to digest all of this.

I did something similar to you…

Did my undergrad degree in Sports Physiology, while working part time as a forestry surveyor (job was advertised in my 1st year, wasn’t keen on waitering, turns out I was only applicant so I got it). Decided I liked the forestry industry, so went on and did the 1 year taught M.Sc in Forestry at Aberdeen Uni.

Forestry is in a way “applied forest ecology”, and there are loads of things like environmental impact surveys etc that are part of the job. I spend half my time at a desk (mainly GIS-related tasks) and the other half of my time outdoors doing various types of surveys. I could if I wanted to swing things so that all my time was indoors, or vice versa, but I like things balanced as they are.

Loads of forestry professional jobs out there, shortage of students coming through. Decent starting salaries.

Best thing is, I’ve found some ace mtb trails while out doing field work, new one just last week, can’t wait till things dry up so I can go try it out!

I would expect the best jobs are in the public sector, as you’re protected from the cycles of the property market.

You may be right but my impression is they’ve had cuts after cuts, they are swamped with work and the salary doesn’t compete with private sector. I think the best job would be being a freelance contractor, doing work subbed out by consultancies, provided you can get enough work you can charge a good hourly rate and just do what you are good at rather than getting bogged down in all the usual corporate nonsense. I’ve always found our ecology subbies very happy interesting people, some a little odd perhaps but that might be why they don’t want to be in an office like everyone else.

Reptile surveys? Better be on a site damn early to catch things whilst they’re still trying to warm up. Bat surveys? Better not like sleeping.

I did a few reptile and bat surveys and enjoyed them greatly! Getting up at 3am sucks but for me getting paid to be out of the office and outdoors is a real treat.

obelix do you work for the FC?

The level of expertise / experience needed to progress is pretty high. In a lot of industries, if you turn up reliably, breath through your nose and not your mouth and don’t make any big cock ups, you’ll be promoted reasonably quickly.

I need to find out what industries these are…

No, am self-employed (sub-contractor, but pretty much full time for one business, am sure HMRC/IR32 wouldn’t approve 🙂 ). A lot of my survey work is for an FC contract.

I’ve thought of getting a full-time PAYE job (for lack of a better term), almost ended up in a large multinational, but turned it down. Earn more now than I would have had I gone for it, and can keep my own hours and wear trackie bottoms while writing forest management plans.