Caveat: my current company is bonkers. Weirdest place I’d worked in 10 years of industry so far. This is probably not a typical scenario.

I opened a summary report last month from a department I have little faith in, and it’s 9 pages long of highly detailed, well argued points made using expressive language and surprisingly nice formatting. Oh. But it’s filled with: ‘this is not X, it’s Y’ and just the sort of language and supposition that has up to now escaped the abilities of this team.

It’s complex. I spend four days analysing it, recalculating all their parameters and finding weird, illogical inconsistencies as if someone pasted four different ways of calculating the same value. I write an email to the lead author, highlighting my concerns.
Two mins later, I receive an essay. Again, highly detailed, filled with AI verbiage. Someone responds. Another AI response. Another email.

So here I am, trying to work through what makes sense versus the ‘you’re right to call me out, I missed this. When I said X I should have also considered Y’ nonesense. Not to mention the reference hallucinations. It’s now a war of attrition. Who will give up first, the person copying and pasting my email and asking AI to refute it, or me staring at another email sent 5 mins after my own that is the length of a novel.

I’m not a Luddite. Ai has its place; I use it when writing R code to simplify my own code, after checking it. I use it to poke holes in my arguments to see where I need to check and reconsider. But I just cannot process the idea of your entire output: email, study reports etc being entirely AI.

I thought the worst thing about the upcoming revolution would be losing my job. Instead I think it might actually be worse to keep it and instead argue with people who do not even understand the arguments they’re making.

There’s no point to this post, except to rant. Soon I expect all emails from this team will be entirely AI generated, and I will lose the will to communicate with the same AI chatbot with 7 different authors.

Between this and China - give me a reason to feel optimistic.

After 1 year of unemployment, I finally found a job which I was super enthusiastic about. My PhD and PostDoc background was in nanomedicine and cancer cell biology, whereas my new job is heavily relies on genomics. It was different from my background, but I always wanted to learn genomics and I was so grateful that a company finally offered me this opportunity.

I started the new job 8 months ago and I feel like I'm drowning ever since.

I was assigned a project from day 1 and I am trying to keep up ever since. Needless to say that a few months into the project, my findings weren't adding up and started questioning myself as a scientist, if I actually deserved my PhD, is this imposter syndrome, how do you really know if it is imposter syndrom or you are not fit for the job? Is there an end to this feeling, will I ever feel like I can finally swim?

So while I am pondering on the purpose of my PhD diploma, can anyone share their stories how was their first job experience in biotech and any tips in staying afloat? Because at this point, although I know what I should study to catch up, I don't really have time at work for self studying, and by the time I get home, my energy levels are equal to that of a couch potato.

How do my fellow structural biologists feel about their overall job security in the face of AI?

I don’t remember feeling the slightest bit concerned when AlphaFold first dropped, but sadly protein structure is simply a function of sequence and maybe this was always inevitable.

I still have a job for now, but how long until Biotech realizes that tokens are cheaper than salaries + reagents + synchrotron time + Krios maintenance?

Have over 20 years of experience.

Just joined a company and 8 people reporting into one manager. Upward mobility seems limited.

Manager reviews from current and past employees are not great. I have experienced it but can sniff it a bit in the talks.

Been 2 months into the job. Just getting feet wet.

How early or late is it okay to quit and jump the ship if a new opportunity comes along?

im currently in my final year of biochemistry and a little unsure about my job prospects. ive got wet lab experience from volunteering at my professor's research lab, a systematic review project, and i recently completed a qa summer internship at a cannabis prod. facility. ignoring this subreddit's doomerism, i just wanna know if anyone has any advice on what i can start doing right now to get an entry-level job in qa or qc (not just cannabis but also biotech or pharma). i've really only started connecting with professionals/recruiters on linkedin who work at mid-size or small biotech companies, but that's just me being too hopeful. im trying hard not to make this into a typical "chance me" post, but i've been pretty nervous about my post-grad life.

Really hoping to get some career advice from someone with more experience. I'm an AD of PV for a small biotech (cell & gene therapy), for about 3 years now. We have one marketed product and one in phase 1 start up. I have 13 yrs of PV experience. I manage everything PV related for the company, it's a department of one. It can be quite stressful, just knowing that such an important function entirely rests on my shoulders. However, it's not a super busy role, with less than full time hours required, fully remote, and decent pay. I know I'm super lucky to have this position. My main concern is that I have no one to discuss PV best practices/concerns with, I have no one to learn from. I think I'm in a position where I still need to be learning. I'm not sure what would be best for my career at this point, should I look for something else where I'd be lower on the totem pole at a larger company and have someone I would ideally be able to learn from? Should I hold onto this role? I go to conferences, but it's always just these very general talks, not really the more hands-on discussions of real time concerns with others in similar situations that I'm hoping to find. I'm not sure what else I can be doing.

I’m looking for some career advice from people who have worked at Thermo Fisher Scientific, Alcami, or in pharmaceutical services sales.

A little background: I have 10+ years of business development experience, primarily selling consultative staffing and recruiting services to pharmaceutical, biotech, and life sciences companies. I also have a biology degree, an MBA, and I’m currently completing a certification in drug discovery and development.

The recruiting industry has been brutal lately. My company has a pretty good culture, but the market has slowed significantly, leadership is getting stricter, and my income has taken a hit. After a recent divorce and splitting assets, I’m currently running about $1,800 negative each month.
I genuinely like my company, but I’m struggling to justify staying somewhere I’m working harder without seeing the financial return. There’s also some concern about potential layoffs due to profitability.

I’ve started interviewing for business development and account management positions in pharmaceutical services. I’m currently interviewing with Thermo Fisher (Pharma Services) and Alcami. I’ve also interviewed with Bio-Techne.

The compensation opportunities look promising, and I’m genuinely interested in transitioning into the pharmaceutical industry. However, reading employee reviews on here has made me nervous about leaving a relatively good culture for a potentially toxic sales environment.

My biggest priority is finding somewhere I can build a long-term career, earn a strong income, and not have to jump companies every couple of years.

A few questions:

Does anyone have experience working in sales or business development at Thermo Fisher Pharma Services or Alcami? How are the culture, management, quotas, and earning potential?

Is transitioning from life sciences staffing sales into CDMO/pharmaceutical services sales a smart long-term career move?

Would you prioritize a large organization like Thermo Fisher or a smaller company like Alcami for stability and career growth?

Are there other companies you’d recommend considering with my background?

Once established in pharmaceutical services sales, what does the long-term career path typically look like?

I’m not necessarily chasing the highest salary. I want financial stability, reasonable earning potential, and somewhere I can see myself staying for the next 5–10 years.

I’d really appreciate any firsthand experiences or advice.

I’m on the sponsor side figuring out the contracting and I just can’t believe how they’ve been making rude demands and making it clear they think they call all the shots. It’s clear that they know they have monopoly and can get away with being awful.

Been in industry for about 7 years, with experience on the bench, project management, commercial, and portfolio strategy. Although I have an MBA, I have a lowly BS in a life sciences discipline. Something I still can’t wrap my head around is the job gating for PhDs for non research specific roles.

External/internal innovation, search & evaluation, new product planning, corp VC, institutional VC, R&D strategy, and even the more finance or generalist roles like Biz Ops even require PhDs at many biotechs. At least in the JD.

Then I’ll look on workday (at the big pharma at work at) or on LinkedIn and they’ll have a PhD in like Engineering or Physical Chemistry and be on the S&E team for Immunology. Half of the CVC team at my company have non-life sciences PhDs, but they do all have a PhD. Is this just an arbitrary academic gate?