Saw this somewhere and thought it would be great to seek help from here as well - Is it normal to change several jobs in 5 years? Chem graduate here.

1st job was a part time chem job..worked 5 months, lab closed and no perm position, bo bian

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2nd job China company, failure analysis engineer job.. worked 3 months.. extreme OT culture till midnight on consecutive days, supervisor said it was no big deal compared to her staying till 5 am. Fellow colleague worked 2 days consecutive 36 hours without rest.. I resigned without a job.

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Out of job for 7 months.

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3rd job local company also doing failure analysis engineering, grossly underpaid , no increment, no bonus , extremely abusive toxic boss and colleagues.. survived here for 2 years.

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4th job US MNC, failure analysis engineering also, pay is decent, colleagues and boss are great. But location at tuas, and extremely physically demanding job.. worked for 1 year half.

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5th job.. back to NUS as an RA because previous mentor specially called me back to work on research project, and also I was sick of engineering field and wanted to bridge back to chem. But then RA is a 1 year contract job and I will need somewhere to move again after it ends..

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What should I do next? All these job transitions is really taxing.. I really like chem..and I am sick of the engineering jobs..but jobs in the chemistry industry really do not pay well because they are usually technician/ analysts level. And I do not wish to limit myself through further studies of PhD into a fixed field where it will be even harder to get job..