American in my early 30s with a non-traditional career path. B.A. in a liberal arts field, then spent a few years as a technical/legal writer, then went back for my MSc in biology in Europe. Lived in Europe for an additional 3 years after getting my degree and got a bit of work experience as a lead biotechnologist at a biotech startup in the Netherlands. I then moved to Sweden and got a temp job doing quality control at a chem company (I had moved there for my partner and found that the job market was dead, so I had to take whatever I could find). After the temp job ended and my relationship also ended, I spent a few months job searching there and found almost no job openings to even apply for, so I decided to cut my losses and move back to the U.S., living with family temporarily in the Midwest. As there are again almost no relevant jobs in this area, about 95% all of the jobs I've applied for are out of state.

I have now applied for over 200 jobs in QC, research, technical writing, and whatever else I might be qualified for, mostly in states like PA, NJ, and MD, over the course of three months and have only been interviewed for one role (rejected after the second round). Had a screening call for another entry-level role, but there were red flags popping up all over the place - company was very desperate to hire and posted the job about 6 times but still claimed that they had a lot of applicants with 4-6 YoE clamoring for it. Pay was barely livable and would've required relocation to a remote area.

Since I'm currently living with family, I at least have very low living costs, and I have fairly significant savings left, but I can't go on like this indefinitely. At what point do I give up on trying to use my degree and just take whatever shitty retail job I can find? I could then try to get some kind of certification or education in a different field.

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.

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?

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.

I'm doing a MSc biomed (Netherlands) but getting really worried about job prospects, even if I manage to become PhD holder. I think I excel most at translational thinking: talking the complexity of the human body into account and thinking about repurposing or explaining toxicity of existing drugs. I would def be open to working in industry or start-ups.

I know MD-PhD js the golden ticket here, but I'm not gonna live forever and frankly would prefer not to work 4+ years at a salary below that of a construction worker (no shade) after having spent that many years in school already.

I'm also worried about AI. It does any job a biomed grad does 100x faster, with the exception of labwork, which is quickly becoming automated as well. MD is a legally protected title with excellent job security.

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.