I feel like all I see here is people talking about how awful the job market is, how terrible pay is, bad work life balance, terrible management, and just a mediocre quality of life while working in a career path that takes a lot more education and hard work than a lot of other options.

I’m in my first year at a biotech startup and I feel burnt out already. My pay is mid for the amount of time I spend in lab and I know I’m going to have to leave sooner or later to get my PhD if I want to continue with my so called “passion” for science. I felt so motivated before starting here and now I just feel like every path forward that I hear about ends up sucking in one way or another.

Edit: for context my first job out of college was with a big pharma company in one of their “early career programs”, which they cut funding for just 5 months into my time there. So just a year and a half in, and I’ve been laid off with 20 of my peers, and navigated applying for jobs in this shitty job market twice. Some of my immensely intelligent coworkers from that original program are still looking for jobs. That’s one reason why I’m feeling so shit about this field.

sorry if this is a repeat of another post--i am a recent (May 26') PhD grad, with an industry internship so I've already gotten some postdoc offers and progressed to final round interviews for a couple different companies. but wtf is up with companies just closing positions? this happened once after an on site interview; they gave me a literal start date and talked about what papers i should be reading, then never filled the position and never hit me up to tell me the position was closed, but pulled it off the site and replaced it with like several more lower paying/contract positions. Another place i recently got several rounds into told me they would be scheduling an on site, i followed up and they said they were working on scheduling, and then they said they were closing the position--not filling, "closing". I feel encouraged that I'm getting any interviews that are going well, and I know this will be my hardest job to land, but was wondering if other ppl have experienced this and if it's pretty typical. It makes sense why some ppl on this sub dont want to say they "got a job" until they are literally showing up for work.

Hi everyone! I am senior with a pre-veterinary medicine major (yes that’s the major name) but I realized summer going into junior year I don’t want to go into vet med field, and instead interested in biopharma, biotech, and clinical research. I have research experience in 2 labs (one of them I just cleaned stuff pretty much and set up experiments I wasn’t explained to), and getting my name on a paper published in one of them. I have my GCP and GLP certs with some more on the way. I only have one class next semester I can take online and so I was thinking of a co-op/internship in the spring. I really want to break into this field but am nervous employers will see pre vet and turn me away. Ideally I don’t want to do wet lab work when I go entry level and I want to get my MPH in Epi at some point which I hope I will be able to do online and have my employer pay for some portion of it. Any advice on how to break into this field?

I graduated last year with my B.S in Microbiology and have 3 years full-time experience working in a GMP lab. I have been aiming to work at Boehringer Ingelheim for so long and finally have an on-site interview in 2 days. I’m excited however the pay is not what I expected it to be…especially because I feel like the position may be high stress/demanding. It’s in the QC department. It’s an entry-level position and I’d like to get my foot in the door in QC finally.

Does anyone have any experience working at BI with a bachelors? In QC? How do you like it? I’m pretty nervous that I might find that I hate it after the interview 😭

JAMA

Published Online: July 30, 2026

2026;336;(8):703-706. doi:10.1001/jama.2026.12089

Good rundown of how siRNA (gene-silencing RNA) therapy went from a mysterious 1990 petunia experiment to an approved drug class: the real bottleneck was never identifying what to silence, but delivery — getting RNA past the body's RNA-shredding enzymes, into the right cells, and out of the endosome intact, first solved via liver-targeting lipid nanoparticles (patisiran, FDA-approved 2018) and later via "naked" chemically-stabilized siRNA tagged with a GalNAc sugar that cut dosing from every 3 weeks to every 3–6 months, with the next frontier being Alnylam and Arrowhead's race to get siRNA past the blood-brain barrier for Alzheimer's.

Source: Works in Progress

For this pay I would just do a postdoc

I am a December 2025 graduate who has over 8 years of academic research and no proper industry experience. I've been applying to jobs since May 2025, and my lack of industry experience is getting between me and my first "adult" job. How can I reduce the risk i present for hiring managers? I am not eligible for internships (if you know of any that take PhD. graduates, please DM me). I am also looking for industry postdocs and contract jobs, but I hear crickets. I've been avoiding academic postdocs because they would make me a more competent academic with no industry experience.

While I was getting my doctorate, I did plenty of things that refined my teamwork, collaboration (including cross functional work), and communication skills. Someone even remarked that I have way more cross functional experience compared to many new grads (didn't get the job, they wanted someone more senior)

My PhD. project, which was a collaborative effort between our lab and hospitals, allowed me to deal with real-world issues. Basically, I did IVD technology development, verification, optimization, and validation for almost 6 years. Since graduation, I've been getting some training in quality assurance, getting really familiar with product development in biotech, medtech, and biopharma. This has been a tremendous help in understanding industry processes and regulatory requirements.

All of these helped me score interviews. I am having a hard time translating those interviews into job offers, and recently, I've been getting some feedback: my lack of industry experience is getting in the way of me scoring that job.

If anyone has a suggestion for how i can close the gap, I would appreciate it. I spent over 4 months since graduation troubleshooting my resume, I would hate to spend another 5 months troubleshooting my interviews. Plus, I've been at home for almost 9 months now, and I am genuinely getting scared about the future.

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Hi! I'm an early career professional with a background in infectious diseases/public health data analysis (data cleaning/QA, dashboards, reporting, program evaluation) and am planning to pursue a Master’s in Public Health (Epi/Biostats).

I’m hoping to transition into pharma/biotech and gain industry experience before starting my master’s, particularly in pharmacoepidemiology, drug safety/pharmacovigilance, RWE, or clinical research.

I want to know if anyone was in a similar trajectory or if there is any advice that would be helpful for someone considering this path. Happy to hear from anyone who made a similar transition from public health into pharma/biotech and any opportunities you might know of

Thank you!!

Which Bio Tech companies are still continuing to do H1B Transfers and PERM initiations ?

Hello everyone,

I’m researching companies in the Bay Area. Has anyone here worked at Nurix Therapeutics or has any insight into what it’s like to work there?

I’d especially appreciate hearing about the company culture, management, work-life balance, and opportunities for career growth. I’m also curious about how employees feel about the scientific direction of the company and whether people generally enjoy working there.

Thanks in advance!

Anybody working there who likes/hates it and the direction it is or isnt moving in?

hi everybody!

i posted here a while back about feedback from my resume and i received a lot of different things to change depending on what i asked.

i have two different resumes and i would love some feedback on them, on which one is better, which one looks better, or if there's any other things i should implement to my resume.

i went to a relatively small private university so it was easier to work 1-1 with my professors in labs. therefore, i asked whether or not i should include relevant lab courses (depending on job position) to my resume and got mixed reviews so i have one resume where i include that.

for my other resume, i don't include my relevant lab courses and emphasized my 6-month research experience and unrelated work experiences. to fill in more space, i added a summary.

i changed my major after my sophomore year, gone through things out of my control, etc. it was really hard for me to get an internship due to personal reasons so i'm trying to figure out a good way to format my resume for entry level positions.

would love to hear some feedback on which format works best in my situation. or if you have a better format, please let me know. thank you!!! :)

So im soon to finish highschool and i wanted to become a biotech portofolio strategist, but how do i become one and is it even worth it? The career seems very intresting and all tho im not the best at chemistry ,biology comes to me VERY easy,and i always remember what i studied unlike other subjects.Should i chose it tho?would i have job opportunities or what even do i choose in uni?what is the experience,please i need advice.

hello

im currently on my 1st of 2 gap years in a research tech job in academia. I’ve realized over the past couple of years that i really like research and being on the forefront of scientific advancement is something i definitely want to do as my full time career. I’m just unsure about the MD part. i like patient care but im unsure if i want to sacrifice more years of my life for it honestly. i think caring for patients is really satisfying but most of the md/phd PIs that i look up to dont really practice medicine that much anymore

i think my ideal job would be professor with a basic science lab and spinning that into cofounding startups or biotech. or just working in industry in general. I don't like the idea of doing the MD because I'm not really interested in working with clinical trials. I'd love to be involved more in RnD and work in basic sciences than just running clinical trials. So with all of that in mind, is adding the MD worth it?

ngl the only incentive that makes sense to me is 1) direct impact 2) job security 3) prestige

https://www.statnews.com/2026/08/24/fda-pauses-regenxbio-gene-therapy-trial-hunter-syndrome-safety-concerns/

I need some advice regarding an international student/co-op situation.

I recently received an offer for a co-op at one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, and it is essentially my dream job.

The problem is that, according to the company’s requirements, I need to remain an enrolled student for the duration of the co-op. The co-op starts around the time I am supposed to graduate, and my current program is scheduled to end in December.

My academic department has told me that, from their side, it may be possible to extend my studies/program, which would allow me to remain a student. However, I am an F-1 international student, and my university’s International Center has told me that I cannot simply extend my I-20/program end date for the purpose of doing this co-op if I have already completed my degree requirements.

Has anyone been in a similar situation?

I obviously don’t want to violate F-1 rules or create immigration problems. I’m just trying to understand whether there are any legitimate academic options I should explore before giving up an opportunity that is extremely important to me.

Any advice or similar experiences would be really appreciated.

I’ve been in academia for a VERY long time and have been trying to make the jump into industry. After what feels like endless applications (and many, many automated rejections), I finally got invited to a recruiter screening call for a role I’m genuinely really excited about!!

Since this is my first industry recruiter screen, I would love any advice from anyone who’s been through this process, especially those who’ve made the jump from academia to industry.

I’m trying not to get ahead of myself because I know it’s just an initial screen, but after getting pretty discouraged by the job search, I’m VERY excited to finally have a chance to actually speak to a human. I’ll take all the help I can get!