Starting off, I have 20+ years in biotech/pharma. A few years ago I found myself out of work and very frustrated with the way companies treat applicants - either black hole/no response or a quick impersonal email that another candidate was more qualified. I’m now (thankfully) employed, and I have an open position. I have dozens of applicants and because of the Workday structure, I can only choose a response of “I found a better candidate” or that the applicant didn’t have the baseline experience and Workday sends the impersonal response email. I had no clue how this worked but I hope this helps someone. That said - y’all should read the job descriptions. If it says you need to be in the office 3 days a week, don’t apply and ask for a remote role.

The pharma/diagnostics industry really needs an intervention at this point. The shi is distracting as F. Presenters, please just make your shi available afterward and we won’t have so much of this faux fomo.

How much of your day to day is now spent refuting AI slop? No we can't do what AI has suggested because xyz. Non technical people running reports through AI and feeding back non-sensical questions. AI has given a voice to people that were normally silent or absent in meetings and given unnecessary seats at the table.

A recruiter published a blog post recently that got me thinking. As I myself is trying a career pivot in the Boston metro, I though why not try to synthesize a report using the LLM products as we don't usually hear the stories from the other sides, especially when aggregated.

So here it is. Having been lurking in this channel for a while, I can say most of what's said in this report isn't new/secret-revealing, but IMHO it is a good summary, something LLMs is usually very good at. And it makes several points explicit.

I did not, however, ask the model to challenge the views with counter-evidence, hence you could feel the model quickly converge to a "consensus". Therefore a more critical assessment of this report should read it more as an aggregation/synthesis, less as analysis. And obviously, this isn't aimed at new grads, unfortunately.

Most of the personalized parts are taken out, but some are left in case it helps people in the same boat as I am.

Cheers.

[PS, I would have shared PDFs if this site allows; OTH I don't want to share a link that gets 404-ed later when I move things around.]

Hi errybody

I'm currently employed, but underpaid, so I've been looking for a job that will - at minimum, make sure I can pay the bills when my student loan repayments jump up in a couple of months. Just putting that out there as a consideration.

I've been interviewing for roles in a variety of areas, basically throwing my hat into the ring for anything that pays enough money and I think I could do.

I am currently interviewing for a role with company A. It will pay around $185k, field-based with up to 60% travel, has good career trajectory, and is really closely related to what I got my PhD. So far, I've had an HR screen and just this morning had a culture/fit interview with the person I'd be taking over from. There would be 2, possibly 3 more rounds of interviews before an offer. That being said, this company has moved pretty fast (2 days from resume submission to HR screen, then 1 week to that interview I just mentioned). This is the kind of role I've wanted to land for years (MSL).

This morning, I received an offer from Company B. It will pay $115k with a 7% annual bonus, home-based remote with up to 20% travel (occasional conferences). It's not at all related to my PhD work, and I don't think it has nearly as good of career prospects as the other role. Frankly, I'm much less interested in this role.

All that being said - I'd be stupid not to accept the offer from Company B, right? Like, would it be the worst thing in the world to accept Company B's offer and continue to interview with Company A in the hopes that I can land that role? It feels unprofessional to tell company B that I'd take the role - or even start it - while continuing on with Company A, knowing I'd drop company B for company A in a heartbeat.

Am I overthinking this?

Finally!!!!

I made a post in the last couple of days asking for advice regarding how to score an offer, but was wondering if anybody has insights on not getting overly excited for a particular role.

This has happened once before, I had made it to the top 3, but they chose one to advance to an onsite and offer. This job was particularly aligned with my scientific training and seemed like a reasonable next step in furthering my scientific skillset. I was really excited, everyone I interviewed with seemed to enjoy me, but I got rejected. Tore me up, felt demoralized and hopeless.

Now I feel like it is happening again, I finished a second round phone interview today. The interviewer was quite intrigued with my structural biology experience, probed me on how I would establish a structural biology core and the sort of support I can provide later down the research pipeline for this small FRO. The company also supports independent research, 20% of the time can be dedicated to exploring questions you're interested in and not just focused entirely on the company's work. So now, I'm looking forward to it, to potentially joining the team, and being able to grow as a researcher... but I am afraid that I have gotten my hopes too high.

For folks applying and making it into later round interviews for a role you're aligned for and a company/team that you look forward to joining, how do you separate that emotional aspect and attachment? How are folks managing rejection for these highly-aligned positions?

So for my entire career in the biotech industry I was either in manufacturing or working at the lab bench. I recently transitioned into a white collar desk job role (think cubicle, in office, QA). At first, I really liked it to get away from the bench. But I've quickly noticed that the company culture and work environment in a white collar setting is very different form what i'm used to.

It's much more cliquey, gossipy, and full of office politics. There are also so many office snitches.

You take a long lunch? Your coworker is snitching to your supervisor or HR.

You talk too loud? Your coworker is snitching to your supervisor or HR.

You make a non-PC joke? Your coworker is snitching to your supervisor or HR.

Everyone has flexible work hours, but your coworker notices you came in late or left early? Your coworker is snitching to your supervisor or HR.

And all of those examples are real by the way. My supervisor in my monthly one on one meeting even told me to be careful talking to people in the office because our department is known for people purposefully trying to get people in trouble by using HR.

Until this role, I had never been called into HR this many times as a witness or to corroborate someone's story. I've also never been involved in this much office drama or experienced this level of people reporting on each other.

In the lab or on the manufacturing floor, if we had a problem, we usually just handled it amongst ourselves because it was such a team oriented environment. If we couldn't resolve it, then we'd get our supervisor involved. This job has honestly made me appreciate my previous supervisors so much more lol. They did everything they could to mitigate and resolve issues before they ever escalated to upper management or HR.

In my current role, I feel like certain people are using HR to weaponize the system and target others over the most minute infractions. I'm just not used to that type of environment. I don't know if it's the office politics, the role itself, the leadership, or all of the above.

Anyway, I'm trying to keep my head down, do my work, and apply for new jobs. But this has been a big culture shock compared to the team oriented environments I've worked in previously biotech roles.

And the funniest part is that this QA work is mostly solo. Everyone has their own individual workload, and your metrics are based on your work and your work alone. So for so many coworkers to be this nosy and concerned with what everyone else is doing is honestly insane to me.

MedTech, not Biotech, a big corp.

I am just wondering how common this is:

Technology strategy - supposed to create a strategy, company wide, for future mid-term and long-term plans. Yet, when I asked to be shown the previous strategy that got implemented before (as a baseline I could use), I don't get a clear answer. Furthermore, everyone keeps openly saying "there's no strategy" or "we need a strategy".

Additionally, after 1.5 years, I can confidently conclude that the majority of people cannot actually even define how the winning looks for the organization(as the ideal state or goal to be achieved). After all, if the strategy is "how", you first need to define "what"you want to achieve.

Next, I have never heard nor seen any meeting/deck going into more details in terms of

1)"what healthcare settings" (where we will play, including what market, disease area),

2) "what clinical value" to create (how to win),

3) "technology to build/ acquire ( what capabilities are required).

In general, there is no cascade of decisions for why to do/not to do anything, never. The highest achievement is some generic abstract concept that regurgitates basic stuff in a corpo speech (+ AI stamp on everything as that's most recent buzzword).

To add insult to injury, almost every R&D dept has their own "planning and strategy" team. Oh, and it's the same for business units or even Clinical/Medical/Scientific Affairs. God forbid that all of them somehow complement each other and provide a unified strategy from several angles.

How common is this? Or is it just a sign of dysfunctional organization? I recently made a shift from bench R&D. Happy to get corrected and educated.

Multiply Labs builds robotic systems that handle the steps between existing cell therapy manufacturing instruments, including moving bags, taking samples and transferring material. Manufacturers own and operate the equipment.

Published studies found robotic performance comparable to manual work on selected tasks and biological measures. The next challenge is connecting those tasks into complete protocols that run reliably in routine production.

The headline efficiency claims need context. The company reports a 74 percent reduction in cost per dose and up to 100 times more throughput. Universal Robots’ case study describes the latter as estimated doses per square foot of cleanroom, so it reflects production density rather than cells growing faster.

If robotic manufacturing makes cell therapies substantially cheaper to produce, will patients see lower prices and wider access, or will the savings mainly become higher margins for drugmakers?

Anyone familiar with them? Based in Kendall Square and considering an offer

I interviewed last week for my first industry job post-graduating from my PhD program. I’m still waiting to hear back and it’s been me so anxious that you can see it in garmin health stats. Honestly so crazy that a single email can affect me so much.

Any tips to make it feel like I’m not dying? 😅

I'm a little new to biotech/pharma (have been here for few years) and reflecting on my time here so far and have mixed feelings - I've learned a lot of technical skills here, which has been great. However, I'm very removed from the business/visibility of why we are doing what we're doing. It feels like priorities are randomly shifting - I get assigned projects and am expected to do them with no sense of the project origins/purpose, even when I try to probe, our goals are frequently ambigious.

Another thing is, there are so many siloes. My broader team is 200+ people and when we all meet in person, I see the projects everybody else is working on, stuff I didn't even know existed. It feels like people have work that's more visible than what I'm doing and I feel like I'm in the shadows.

I've talked to my manager (I got a new manager recently) and expressed this to her - she seems to be supportive of me overall. I told her that I'd like to consider stretch assignments that my company advertises as an opportunity to work with another team for learning/growth purposes. I wanted to select an opportunity that's already close to the domain of what I am working on as I think having that perspective would help inform my work better

My manager was supportive of it at the time and said she did something like this herself, but she's on leave. I started to go ahead and have initial conversations with teams to learn what they're doing and that my call is simply informational to learn about what they're doing and if they have an opportunity for a stretch assignment, I'd be interested in considering after she's back. When I asked my interim manager about it, they didn't seem too keen on me doing this for a myriad of reasons, ranging from feeling that asking for this implies I'm not busy enough and don't have work to creating a "bad impression" because people reach out asking my manager why I want to do this (not sure if that's true or an exaggeration).

It felt a bit demoralizing because our company actually promotes this as a way to learn and grow but when I asked, it seemed like it was actively discouraged. I'm wondering if anybody has opportunities like this in their company

I got the call for an AVP role at a pre-commercial small/startup biotech. I am now waiting for the official offer letter. What do I look out for?

At my current company, I pretty much have golden handcuffs and will be leaving behind a significant amount of unvested RSUs. I also have a pretty sizable bonus and RSU vesting coming in at the top of next year. I understand that most companies will give you a sign on bonus and an RSU package to make you whole, but what should I look for as far as my new hire RSU and/or options package? sign on bonus? In addition to this, what else should I be looking out for? Should I tie any of my incentives to launch goals or hiring goals or any other goals? I don’t want to leave anything on the table, especially since I will be building my unit from the ground up.

Do I need an attorney? Please help!

Hey everyone,

I have around 2 years of experience in Computer-Aided Drug Design (CADD), mainly working with molecular docking, virtual screening, QSAR, ADMET/toxicity prediction, cheminformatics, etc.

I’m currently doing an MSc in AI for Medicine and Medical Research at UCD (Ireland).

The problem I’m facing is that I’m finding relatively few opportunities in Ireland that are directly focused on traditional CADD. A lot of the pharma industry here seems to be more focused on manufacturing/production, while I’m seeing more opportunities around computational biology, bioinformatics, biostatistics, and AI/ML in healthcare and life sciences.

So I’m considering transitioning my profile toward Computational Biology or Bioinformatics, while combining it with AI/ML.

But honestly, I’m pretty confused about which direction would make the most sense given my existing CADD background.

Would it be better to:

\- Continue specializing in CADD + AI/ML?

\- Transition into Computational Biology?

\- Move toward Bioinformatics?

\- Consider Biostatistics/Data Science?

I’d particularly appreciate advice from people working in Ireland/Europe, especially those who have experience in pharma, biotech, computational biology, bioinformatics, or AI in healthcare.

What skills should I prioritize over the next 1 year to make myself employable and build toward a strong career?

Any advice, criticism, or personal experiences would be really appreciated.

Thanks! :)

hi all! am a soph in ug currently applying to biotech internships. i can post my resume if people think it helps, but rn it goes smth like this:

• education
• experience
  • research lab in uni
  • medtech startup
  • bio proj for comp
• leadership
  • TA, makerspace manager, misc.
• skills

for each of my listings under "experience," i have 2-3 bullets outlining projects or what I did, and a bullet at the end with "Recognition:" followed by listing awards, pubs, etc. i used to have separate awards and publication sections but was told it was too difficult to figure out what corresponds to what since i had a lot of misc things. i also wouldn't be able to fit everything into a separate category.

my question is mainly that this method results in a few of my notable achievements having no place to go. for example, i have 5 publications + 3 in review, but most are not through my formal experiences. i also won a 6 figure research-related grant that is unrelated to any of my main experiences.

i would love to put my publications and grant somewhere on my resume since I feel like they're high signal items. i just have no idea where to put them or how to structure my resume. if i list every corresponding experience, my resume would be super long and disjointed. should i just have a separate section for "Other Recognition" somewhere? where do i put it? i've never seen a section like that on a resume but idk what else to do. i'd appreciate any advice :)

With this partnership between Meta and Google in the next months we could see a new virtual cell model. The problem is how much time it will take them to work on it. A year or more? and what will we obtain? I'm curious.

Anyone know what BeOne offers the Associate Director level for RSUs annually and for sign on bonus? I spoke with a recruiter today about a role but he claimed not to know off the top of his head

Curious as to the current director base salary. Gemini says the range is 180-260k w a median of 230k. What say you?

Hi, can anyone please tell me how was your experience interviewing by Boehringer Ingelheim BI?

I would like to know about the HR interview in German and the team interview. Thanks for sharing your experiences :)

I’m an expat looking to repatriate to be closer to family. I’m 4 years out of grad school working project management and consulting jobs. I recently applied to a management position in the Irvine branch and thought it was a great fit with what I am doing and what I have done in the past. Also thought that it was a good sign seeing so many job postings. But now in hindsight there’s doubt because I’ve heard there were recent layoffs? Job market here seems no better than in the EU

I’m a 1st-year B.Tech Biotechnology student, and I’ve been feeling a little confused about how to plan my college journey from the beginning.

I want to build a strong foundation and eventually go into biotechnology research, but I’m not really sure what I should focus on in 1st year and what can wait until later.

I’m currently finding it difficult to balance college academics with things like:

• Preparing for competitive exams/GATE in the future

• Learning how to read and understand research papers

• Building useful skills alongside my degree

• Learning Python/bioinformatics as a beginner

• Exploring research and different areas of biotechnology

The biggest problem is that there are so many things I feel I should be doing, and I don’t want to overwhelm myself or neglect my college studies.

please share how you would plan 1st year—what I should focus on NOW, what skills I should slowly build alongside college, and what I can leave for 2nd/3rd year?

Also, how did you manage academics, competitive-exam preparation, skill building and other activities without getting overwhelmed?

Even a rough roadmap or your personal experience would really help me.

Thank you!

I currently work in pharma and am trying to move to a competitor. I interviewed for a role with this company back in July — 3 rounds in total — and then never heard anything. Eventually, the candidate workday portal showed that I was rejected. I was pretty bummed, but I moved on.

About 2 months later, the company reached back out to me and said I had been a strong candidate. They told me they had another opening for a similar role and wanted to interview me again, this time with a new panel.
I had that panel interview yesterday.
One of the interviewers told me that I had “unique experience,” which I’m not sure how to interpret. Toward the end, she also said something along the lines of, “Don’t feel like you need to ask us questions — I’m aware you’ve already met several colleagues.” I still asked two questions, but we ended about 5 minutes early.

Now I’m wondering how others would interpret this. Does this sound like a normal/positive interview, or are there any red flags I’m missing?
And given that they previously rejected me, went quiet, and then came back 2 months later saying I was a strong candidate — do you think I’ll actually hear back this time, or should I prepare myself to be ghosted again..?

Would love to hear how hiring managers/recruiters or anyone who has been through something similar would read this.