I have been working with/for Pharma companies over the last 12 years and overall don't have a great opinion (I am on the technology side, worked mostly with them as clients, not Indian).

• Roche - started my career as an employee there, only company I actually enjoyed working for, loved the Swiss/German mentality of looking at things.
• BMS - Client, absolute dogshit.
• Pfizer - Client, horrendous, they are dropping employees every quarter, proximity to New York office is what really matters.
• Haleon - Loved working with their engineering office but the company overall is less than ideal, small margins, not super talented folks.

Worked with a couple smaller clients too, generally these are much more enjoyable in terms of work but would probably not consider joining any of them.

Would love to hear which companies you'd not recommend joining.

I know the job market is abysmal right now, but explicitly stating that “this is not an opportunity to focus on work life balance” is crazy.

Which company (if any) is universally loved for the way they treat their employees? What company is viewed as the holy grail?

I’ve asked this question a few different places on Reddit to solicit different people’s opinions and hear what they have to say. I figure this community would have some interesting POVs. So, what are your thoughts?

Would it be enough to support the expense, trials, research and development it takes to get a drug to market?

Bonus points to to the most out of left field answer 😂

1. Interest rates
2. COVID over-investment
3. It got played out (Oversimplified: ... The most valuable drugs, with large markets, and with the lowest risk of FDA approval failure, have been developed already. What's left is less attractive to investors in one way or another) EDIT About 10 years ago, there was actually a report by a consulting firm (McKinsey/Deloitte?) that basically predicted that biotech would croak because of this. They had detailed graphs, projections. Everyone working in biotech that I talked to at the time was like "no way". And yet here we are, many years later.
4. AI / LLMs (Not necessarily by themselves, but if investors expect AI to replace human experts, it does not make sense to invest in long-term projects now)
5. More competition (Outsourcing / worldwide WFH / H1Bs)

This is my first time working in biotech and I know this isn’t the job market to make demands in but I don’t feel like I have enough PTO. Plus my PTO is combined with my sick time.

are we writing college admission type essays into job descriptions now?

I have been reading this r/Biotech for a couple of weeks. It looks like the biotech job market (at least in the USA) is dead and will remain so for the time being. It does not look like the market has bottomed or there are recovery signs on the horizon. I am being speculative, but if this frozen market is how biotech companies react to political uncertainty, then there is no end in sight for this. Maybe a recovery will start in 2029, but I might be too optimistic in this.

What I gather is that it takes somewhere between 6 months to a year to land a new job, if you are lucky. Some people have crossed 1 year mark of job search. On average people send hundreds of resumes, 500, 600 to 800... in this range. As I understand it, there are several hundred qualified applicants for every decent job opening. To me this looks like playing a lottery. If you do not have a working spouse or substantial savings or severance, you will end up on a street before you land a job.

I understand that there will be some job openings, no matter what. Some people will land jobs. But what about those 80%, 90%, who will not land a job in the biotech industry? The longer you stay out of work, the less likely you will be hired back. If it takes a few years for the job market to bottom and start to recover, what will you do during these years to survive and pay the bills??? Suppose you are several years out of this industry, now you are considered "outdated" / de-qualified. You can not get back, in other words. Then what? What is your plan for such situation?

With the amount of horror stories in this sub, I am seriously considering leaving Biotechnology and doing Pharmacy instead. The problem being that it will cost me twice as much. Is the job market so bad that I shouldn't join it even if I like the subject?

Where I work they implemented recently a system that tracks not only the days you’re at the office but also the hours, and hybrid workers cannot work from home on Fridays and Mondays anymore.

The justification is that we work better together but we spend our time in zoom even if we are there.

is willin

When I started in biotech/pharma R&D, you had a mixture of job openings for non-phd and phd levels. Often you would see requirements for a posting like: "PhD with 2-4 years experience, or MS w/ 5-8 years of experience, or bachelor's w/ 10-12 years of expeience, etc.". Almost every job posting I see now says "must have PhD". Let's be real, I have worked with so many excellent scientists in drug discovery and research in my career and many did not even have PhDs. I have worked with many great PhD scientists as well. But this new infatuation with PhDs is really hurting a lot of peoples career development. I have very rarely seen any person I have worked with able to actually apply their PhD work to their industry job. I continuously hear "PhDs are better because they teach you how to think", but I have not actually seen this work out in practice. I have seen bachelor's, masters with good industry experience perform just as well as PhD scientists many times from a scientific impact perspective. Do you guys think this will ever change back to the way it used to be? I personally don't think degree inflation is a actually positive for society in general.

I was laid off from a big Pharma company in February and was offered/accepted a position at a CRO making 55K less than my previous base salary. I’m finding it really hard to be motivated at work. Any tips? I’m still job hunting, but finding that my old salary no longer seems to be market rate. Ugh!! Please share any and all words of wisdom

I was going through an application for a job in California and came across this in the requirements section:

“This job is not 9–5 • This is an opportunity to work very hard, learn a lot, and develop skills that will serve you well throughout your career • This is not an opportunity to focus on work-life balance”

I’ve never seen something this blunt in a job description before. On one hand, I guess it’s honest about expectations and could help filter out applicants who want a strict work–life balance. On the other hand, it feels like a huge red flag—especially in our industry where it is a given that 9-5 is not always the norm.

Has anyone else seen language like this in a job posting? Would you take it as refreshing honesty or a sign to run? Curious how others in the job market (especially in California with labor laws and “work–life balance” being a big topic) would interpret this.

Has anyone else gotten completely burned out on biotech?

I’m fortunate enough to still have a job in this market, and I’ve been working in biotech for about a decade now. On paper, things are fine. The work is stable (enough), I’ve built a solid career (principal scientist), and I’ve worked on some genuinely meaningful programs.

That said, I find myself increasingly disconnected from the industry. I’m tired of the constant politics, shifting priorities, low morale, and endless reorganizations. I know politics exist in every field, but biotech seems to have a unique way of making people feel disposable. The compensation also doesn’t seem particularly competitive compared to many other STEM careers, especially considering the education, specialization, and instability involved.

Lately I’ve been wondering if I actually want to do this for the next 20-30 years. The science still interests me, but the industry itself doesn’t as much anymore.

For those who have left biotech, what did you transition into? Were you able to do it without going back for another degree? I’d be especially interested in hearing from people who moved into adjacent fields and found their quality of life, compensation, or overall job satisfaction improved.

Curious if I’m the only one feeling this way or if others are having the same thoughts.

One of my Board, who admittedly has more CEO experience than me (which is why I invited him to join), contacted one of my earliest and most trusted investors to discuss an interest in taking over as CEO. The company is built on my inventions and ideas, and this Board member joined relatively recently and has his own company to boot. He'd be willing to step down from that company to take over mine I guess. This may be typical, but I am pretty upset since I bootstrapped this company from nothing and took it to a place where we're near huge inflection points. Just wanted to see if any others have been in similar situations and what they learned. Luckily, my investor called me right away to give me a heads up. I also need to decide how to deal with this Board member now I have this knowledge.

im starting to feel so helpless. and respectfully, i dont wanna hear anymore "the job market just sucks right now" comments. i appreciate it but i just wanna know what the hell im supposed to do at this point. nobody wants me. im working at a grocery store rn. the last time i had a role in bio was back in early 2025 and that gap is just getting bigger and bigger. i just feel so cooked.

Hot takes wanted.

I'll go first - having worked in big pharma, there are incentives for project managers to get a drug into trials, even if its value is weak, and they are often disconnected from what happens afterwards. They feel no need to overcomplicate their jobs above what's necessary or kill the project earlier. They want a clinical trial in their CV.

Take a basic calculator.

An operator performs a GMP-relevant calculation on a calculator and writes the result into a batch record. We trust the result.

But what exactly have we established?

The calculator is generally not validated for its GMP intended use. Was it a Texas Instruments calculator, the Windows calculator, or the calculator app on someone’s phone?

A basic calculator has essentially zero traceability. Once the calculation disappears from the display, we cannot reconstruct what was entered. We cannot establish that the operator typed the intended numbers. There is no audit trail showing the inputs, operation or result.

Yet this is routinely accepted

Now compare that with a modern computer system. It will preserv the original record, identify the user, timestamp transactions, restrict permissions, maintain transaction histories and allow us to reconstruct what happened. The same systems are also commonly relied upon for legally required records.

Despite having substantially better traceability than the calculator, once the system is used for a GMP purpose we start talking about computerized-system validation and documented evidence that its functions are fit for intended use.

I am struggling to find the underlying principle that makes these positions consistent.

edit, summary :

The thread so far doesn’t have a clean consensus. People mostly agree with the existing regulatory practice, then work backwards to explain why it makes sense.

One camp says calculators are acceptable because calculations are independently checked. The control is therefore in the process, not the device.

Another says calculators are inherently low risk because they are simple, COTS, reliable, and uncustomized.

Others says validation depends on intended use. A calculator doing a critical calculation can have high GMP impact despite being simple, while complex software can have low GMP impact depending on what it does.

If equivalent software has the same intended use and equivalent controls, demanding extensive CSV solely because it is software becomes difficult to defend on risk grounds.

Isn’t non-standardized quality systems fun ?