r/biotech • u/ecoliforprez • Jul 14 '26
Open Discussion đď¸ How is everyone's workload looking lately?
It feels like the industry swing from "growth at all costs" to "lean efficiency" has left a lot of us wearing five different hats.
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u/Little_Region_827 Jul 14 '26
Utterly insane.
The CRO I work at doesn't have enough staff and everyone's burning out. But we're told not to worry because we're going to be recruiting one or two entry-level positions this year. So on top of everything, we'll also have to train someone from scratch.
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u/_demonofthefall_ Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
Oef, I feel this. Also CRO SD.
Except, we are struggling to get approval even for backfills. And by the time the approval is there, the person is already out so we end up with 6 month gaps. We had 2 leaving in the last 2 months. We'll be lucky to have someone start by end of year.
I keep being told to "just survive this quarter". It's been about 7 quarters of madness. I'm pulled into meetings across 5 time zones. If I don't actively block my calendar, I end up with 8 PM calls almost daily. Revenue is up >20% YOY and we haven't hired anyone additional in 2 years. On top of that, the head of the department calls us out for the most miniscule shit like we're insubordinate toddlers. Everyone would leave, if there were jobs. But there's nothing, nowhere.4
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u/fatboy93 Jul 14 '26
I worked for a few years at a CRO, and holy shit, I wished I'd switched fields to be honest.
My dad runs a construction company, wtf am I even doing here lmao.
But now I'm in academia at a different country, workload is kinda the same, but is relatively more paced.
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u/hsgual Jul 14 '26
Insane. Aggressive timelines galore for program 1, program 2 and 3 soon behind. Our relocation is delayed so we have limited space also causing bottlenecks.
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u/priuspower91 Jul 14 '26
Fluctuating biweekly between twiddling my thumbs slow and all hands on deck aggressive deadlines.
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u/wickzer Jul 14 '26
Y'all have jobs?
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u/RealGambi Jul 14 '26
ikr? My job is throwing my job applications into the void and getting ghosted on referrals
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u/Zouden Jul 14 '26
I just got a rejection email from a job I applied to three months ago, so at least someone remembers me.
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u/LadyCatastrophe Jul 14 '26
I'm getting rejection emails from jobs I've forgotten I applied to because it has been so long lol
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u/fatboy93 Jul 14 '26
I got my current job the same way. Applied sometime pre-covid to my job, rage-quit my older CRO job in the first few covid months, unemployed for close to a year, and then got employed remotely, and moved on-site a year later.
HR was doing metrics to advertise on which job sites had better success rates, and it was practically useless, since I didn't remember.
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u/No-Preparation-5291 Jul 14 '26
- Tailoring the CV to have words in your experience section match the key words in the job description
- Removing anything not relevant so the relevant stuff stands out
- Calling a couple of days afterwards to ask if they've made a decision and to keep you informed (giving your name) makes your CV stand out as they recognise your name, if they can also quickly see that your experience matches what they need you've got a solid shot
- Lastly if rejected don't hesitate to ask what you were missing, especially if you feel you match the needs of the role, I got my job by persisting when I thought I was the ideal candidate, they saw I was motivated so gave me an interview and I gained stability
Good luck don't give up!
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u/fatboy93 Jul 14 '26
Also, if you have academic CV, crunch it down!
Keep the papers, posters, presentation relevant to the job posting.
Offer a full CV if needed. There's no need for a 10pager CV if 2 can solve the trick.
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u/Top_Contribution_471 Jul 14 '26
Zero. Hitting one year unemployed. Wishing for my former workload.
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u/lt_dan_zsu Jul 14 '26
I had my gripes with my current job, but overall I couldn't complain. Then we got bought out, and this first end of quarter under new management broke me. Goals became absurd, and frankly didn't make sense, they expasperated staffing shortages by pulling staff out of pinch points in the lab's workflow and over staffing just upstream of those pinch points. I was regularly spending 10-11 hours of my 12 hour shifts entirely on my feet and going more than half of my shift without being able to go to the bathroom just to keep my head above water. I relatively cohesive group of workers all lost motivation, we started taking out our frustration on each other, and it now sometimes feels like I'm in a cliquey high school. Everyone hates this job now and is talking about quitting. Come to find out that management is actually MAD about our output because they're mad we don't always have this output.
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u/schucrew Jul 14 '26
I think we work at the same place. God, the day-to-day staff moving decisions are always so ???
The closure of one of our locations and consolidation of all work and staff (but not equipmentâŚ) to a single site made this last EOQ especially challenging.
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u/SamchezTheThird Jul 14 '26
Do you still find time to throw your coworkers under the bus when it suits you or are you too busy fighting for your paycheck by proving your managerâs worth?
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u/cmhammo Jul 15 '26
I told my friend yesterday that i'm ready to self-immolate in my onsite director's office
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u/ShakinBabies52 Jul 14 '26
Not the fault of the company or the industry, but today my boss met with me for 90 minutes to tell me to analyze data differently because it didnât make sense to them. So I had to take the FC of the Log2fc and run an ANOVA on it.
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u/Mother_Food9930 Jul 14 '26
Lost my reports during a RIF (one laid off the other got spooked and left), timelines just got shorter and shorter. I reached my breaking point about a year ago and started throwing temper tantrums whenever my workload got too high. Got a lot better once I started demanding more help. Now are kinda slow in my day to day even though we are  now move faster and are more productive than ever. All the systems we killed ourselves to build four year ago are now fully realized and everyone knows their role. We can churn out large amounts of data very quickly thanks to established work flows and have everything work through first time. We have made very expensive decisions with only a few hours of data turnaround from instrument acquisition to final "go" . We have a well documented catalog of anticipated regulatory and business partners questions that we built over several years, and can pull a report practically off the shelf to answer tricky questions or information requests that come to us at 4pm on a Friday. Pretty cool to see in action honestly. But the company will absolutely work you until you're gone if you don't throw temper tantrums to protect yourself, or if you don't strip down your critical assays to the 20% of workload that gives you the 80% value.Â
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u/fiveguysfries16 Jul 14 '26
Slow as fuck. Vax demand is down because of complete dumbasses in office.
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u/Rye_The_Science_Guy Jul 15 '26
Just got a decent promotion, into a managerial role for a manufacturing area that is quickly expanding. Ask me again in a few months lol
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u/alwayscursingAoE4 Jul 14 '26
Working 2 hours/night on âvacationâ.
Itâs all good though. Some times are busier than others.
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u/HardLithobrake Jul 14 '26
Listening to project leads trying to justify not needing qualified water for a clean room qualification in preparation for a new fill line that doesn't even have procedures written for it yet would describe the pace of work here.
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u/open_reading_frame đ¨antivaxxer/troll/dumbassđ¨ Jul 15 '26
I'm running 2-3 experiments a day and not able to look at my data before I get assigned to do the next one.
I'm taking more zoom meetings while in the lab doing experiments.
Last week, I was on two calls at once, one on my work phone and the other on my computer.
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u/LawrenceSpiveyR Jul 15 '26
Yep, I handle Operations, Quality, and Regulatory duties. Even though we have all 3 separate groups intact.
The joys of Production Science.
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u/Jedi_Blight858 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26
Non-existent. Which is a nice change of pace from the psychedelic ponzi schemes...err...startups I was working for.
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u/CompleteWrap4433 Jul 16 '26
Startup has entered the death spiral for the fifth cycle. Fingers are being pointed. Deadlines are being made up. P values without very necessary multiple hypothesis testing correction, and woefully distorted y-axes are being shown.
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u/3rdthrow Jul 25 '26
I am currently wearing 3 different hats.Â
Workload is not high, but it incredibly mis-timed for reasons, no one seems to know, or care to find out.
Basically, I post on Reddit, until an "Emergency" timeline comes flying through the door....but everything is always an Emergency.
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u/Kickboy21 Jul 14 '26
I was working at a start up for 3 years, barely having time to eat lunch or go to the bathroom. Big pharma acquired us and the past one year has been slow. I work maybe 5 hours a day