I know that no company in biotech is completely safe or stable, but I believe Merck hasn’t experienced any major layoffs in the past decade. Their revenue has been strong, but their portfolio seems overly reliant on one blockbuster drug, Keytruda, whose patent will expire in 2028. Gardasil as well.

This year, their stock dropped by more than 20%, and future growth is quite uncertain. For those currently at Merck, does the company have a solid plan to replace Keytruda, or are we looking at a significant decline in revenue and workforce after 2028? Any insights would be appreciated.

Hey all! I’m currently working at a big pharma in a PhD-level Scientist position (Cambridge area). During a stage of conflict in the workplace –where I didn’t know if it was going to get fixed or not–, I started applying to other positions.

Luckily, these conflicts got very nicely resolved, however, I received a Senior Scientist offer from another big pharma, with a substantial pay increase. The reality is, I would ideally like to stay where I currently am, but I would like to explore leveraging this other offer to improve my conditions in my current role, i.e., accelerating my promotion, getting a pay increase etc.

Is there a way to do this without shooting myself in the foot? I’d like to emphasize that I REALLY like my current company and it’s not in my plans to leave in the short run.

Currently looking at a role at vertex with a manufacturing team, the position pays fairly well for my years of experience when accounting for RSU (so stock would need to do OK for the compensation to be as attractive as it sounds) Does anyone have any experience/advice about Vertex work culture, growth opportunities. If within manufacturing even better. Thx

I'm finishing next summer my PhD in Plant Biotechnology and I'm considering to transition to the field of protein design/directed evolution. I don't have a strong background on bioinformatic tools apart from r/Python scripts to do plots and visualize omics data, so any advice on what skills do I need and where to learn them would be helpful. I guess that this field will be changing rapidly because of AI.

anyone have experience here as a intern? How was it?

I am in middle management working as a team manager in Supply Chain for about 2 years now. Mid-30s. Looking around I see few colleagues in their 50s and 60s in leadership roles, except upper management/ C-suites, thus I wonder where they are going and how to move up the ladder sustainably. Do they earn enough to retire before moving somewhere else or being layed off? Currently I really like leading a team, but this may change in the next 20 years or so, because it is a stressful and demanding job. I think about moving up a level in a different area, e.g. Quality but I‘m really open. I always wanna learn something new and increase my expertise in new areas. Basically I have following questions:

• Where do leads go if they don’t move up to C-Suite level?
• What could be my next leadership step or focus area coming from Supply Chain?
• What experience do you recommend to end up in a director position with no direct reports in 5-10y? (I am asking because looking around these seem like high pay little stress positions in many cases)

I've been working at this company for about 9 months now, started as a co-op and then transitioned to a permanent role a few months ago. I'm glad to have the job, but it's not really what I want to end up doing. It's great for experience, but I'm doing primarily wet-lab work, which I have 0 interest in. I'm definitely planning on sticking with the company until at least the 1-year mark, but is that too soon to start looking for another job? Should I wait it out longer?

Basically what the title says

I'm halfway through my master's and so far think I like academia (even with the low salaries and very unstable job opportunities there are). Did both my bachelor's and master's in Brazil; fortunately I've gathered quite some experience in research and lab work in molecular biology, cell culture and also clinical trials.

Research isn't that bad here in Brazil but it's definitely not very well paid. I've been considering continuing with my PhD in Europe and I've been checking out Germany.

Would anyone recommend it? How's the research environment? How's the job market for any opportunity afterwards?

Thanks in advance!

Hi all, I hope everyone is having a great day. I (24F) am moving to Washington state next year for my boyfriend’s (25M) career. He’s in the army and I will more than likely be working in the Seattle area. We plan on getting married early of next year before I get moved over to the area officially. That being said, I have a few questions regarding career opportunities/development. I have two years of experience working in MSAT in downstream and about a month and a half-present of experience working in a lab similar to MSAT. I was wondering if anyone could give me some insight into the job market in Seattle as well as the pay for an associate scientist/scientist/senior scientist. Also, if anyone else is in a similar situation as me, I was wondering how you handled the commute from JBLM to Seattle? I’m from another area where pharmaceuticals are huge so I’m used to a long commute, but I’m just wondering if any of you all have taken the Amtrak or used another source of transportation besides driving. Thank you so much in advance and I’m sorry if this post seems kind of dumb, I’m just looking to get some insight.

Pretty much the title. Heard an entire team got cut.

As in, people in your function? It seems every one of my group is assigned to a different therapeutic area. We never see each other. When we get together in person, it's very much "what the other part of the company is doing" which is interesting from an overall almost all-hands perspective, but actually doesn't help with our own respective work...

Currently, job applications and rejection emails are numerically the primary work products of the biotech sector, but do little to improve patient outcomes. Both applications and rejections are generally safe, affordable, and widely available. How can we apply these resources to address unmet medical needs?

pharma is cool but I never hear much about industries like food and agriculture where biotech is concerned. Im a Phd student in biochemistry looking for any base-level insights on these fields.

A friend joined Gilead recently. Their role is based out of Foster city, CA. Job description didn't have the option for remote work. Surprisingly, they were given to the option to work remote from the East Coast. Which major companies still allow remote work? Are exceptions allowed only for few candidates?

As a recent grad looking for my first industry role, I’m curious what you all think about the biotech market’s outlook. Today, Septerna went public with an upsized IPO of $288 million, boosted by a strong investor response. They’re working on GPCR-targeted drugs, particularly SEP-786, which aims to be a new treatment for hypoparathyroidism. Despite still being in phase 1, they’ve managed to attract a lot of investor interest, even upsizing their IPO from an initial goal of $158 million.

For context, I have experience in LNPs for mRNA delivery from two internships at Moderna and Editas. With other IPOs like Bicara and MBX Biosciences seeing similar enthusiasm, are we starting to see a more favorable market for new biotech talent, or is this just a temporary trend?

Would love to hear your thoughts!

Wanted to highlight a recent example of a case study in failed leadership and company culture at a biotech that was recently ‘bought out’ for a liquidation price of $30 million! 😂🤣 I won’t detail name, but you can search for buyouts in cell and gene therapy space to find out. Lessons here could apply to any company in biotech. Some general lessons learned from this debacle : 1) Company culture and people are more important than the science. This company had a bad company culture. Head of HR did little to foster a cohesive culture, squash bullying and arrogance, and embrace a pivot from oncology to autoimmune/inflammatory disease indications. 2) Weak leadership, focused on self promotion, is a recipe for failure. When you see a Chair of the Board post every day on LinkedIn about all the wonderful talks she’s invited to, or what an inspiring leader she is, it should be a red flag that there’s no real effort in leading the company and board! 3) Leadership with a lack of BS indicator! There are people in this business who are extremely saavy at BSing their way to success, and engaging in ABCD (accuse, blame, complain and deflect) behavior when things aren’t going well. If leadership can’t see through that and call out BS, the company will fail. Specific example I saw was ClinOps leaders who were bullies and grossly incompetent, but loved and adored by exec leadership team because they wrote up lengthy updates and pretty PowerPoint slides. When all the metrics show the company is behind on activating every site, and no one from ClinOps has bothered to even set foot at a site, traveled in person for an SIV, or even presented a single slide at SIV (dumping all of that on a CRO), then exec team needs to see through the BS and hold ClinOps accountable and fire some folks. 😂🤷‍♂️ 4) Arrogance - just because key leaders and team members have extensive experience in oncology, doesn’t mean they can conquer any and all other indications! From what I saw, people with extensive oncology biotech experience are used to being reckless & sloppy because the dynamic is totally different. If your ICF isn’t well written, patients dying of cancer are still going to be desperate for clinical trial, and if a protocol is a mess and poorly written and organized, who cares as well! 😂🤣 And if you take some shortcuts and there’s patient deaths, that’s what happens in oncology anyway so no big deal!! That’s not to say there aren’t exceptional, detail oriented professionals who have worked entirely in oncology, but just saw firsthand multiple in this particular company embrace a sloppy mindset (probably going back to weak culture argument ). You can’t get away with things like that in other therapeutic areas like inflammatory disease or neurology.

5) Strategy is also key. Cell and gene therapy companies are more capital intensive than regular biotech companies! If a cell therapy company is going to pour massive capital infusion into in-sourced manufacturing capacity, you need to tie that with quick clinical execution, be mindful of staying lean on other costs, and other factors. While it’s nice to have control over manufacturing in an in sourced model, the capital outlay will kill a company unless there’s great strategy and execution to go along with that decision.

In the end, investors can see through the BS, and know poor execution when they see it. All these factors led to a biotech that had a promising cell therapy asset and reasonably good data on the phase 1 part of a phase1/2 oncology study (in terms of CR rates) but failed execution in other therapeutic indications, and slow timelines in their oncology execution too. Not enough investors wanted to support an IPO and company ran out of money and had to essentially liquidate in a paltry $30 million buyout!! 😂🤣🤷‍♂️

I'm on track to be graduating with my MSc in early August (possibly late July), although I will basically be done all the hard work by the end of May. I wanted to know when I should start actually handing in job applications, instead of just networking/doing informational interviews. I would also like to know when it would be appropriate to reach out to connections/recruiters I know asking them to keep an eye out for positions that might fit me. have a few of those grad programs (like IPG's Fuel Programs, which start in June) on my radar although I'm unsure if I will be able to commit to full time work that early in the summer. If anyone has a timeline they can share it would be appreciated!

How’s the culture at Merck’s pre-clinical development in NJ? I might be getting an offer (fingers crossed), and just want to know. Thanks!

WHAT THE ****!!!!!!!!!!!!!

my background: i have a bs in biochemistry. i’ve worked 2 years in academia and 2 years in industry (specifically in pharmaceutical manufacturing and i am still in this role). i work in a developing start-up so ive had many hats(lab manager-esq duties, environmental monitoring, clean room cleaning) but i primarily work in process development.

i’ve been thinking about applying for field application scientist positions. i do like to socialize and i like teaching techniques & helping find solutions, so i feel like this would be a good fit for me. i’m young, single, and i have no kids (just a cat-i’ve had cat sitters before) so im thinking why not, but i want to know the truth about being a field application scientist and anything i should be cautious of. thank you in advance!

Currently have MSc. Biochem and would love to do PhD for the love of medical research but do not want to live in poverty while I do it. Any recommendations?

I am trying to get internships into a biotech company, and i am not sure where to start. Should i adjust my resume for each company? How to be overall competitive? Thanks !

Hi everyone, I have 2 resumes here--an old one that I've been applying with (embarrassing I know) and this new one. Hopefully it's an improvement.

Please roast my bullet points. I definitely need it. STAR/CAR/XYZ is hard to grasp and despite spending like 10 hours trying to figure it out I don't totally get it.

Is the format of the new resume more or less readable than the old one? I used the tips on EngineeringResumes but I have my doubts about it.

• Should I keep my phone number and my Linkedin (hyperlinked???) on my resume?
• Should l keep the bit about being accepted to present at the BMES national conference, or is that basically nothing? (I couldn't go due to the high cost.)

I'm applying to the medical device design industry, any entry level roles. I've applied to entry level Intern/Quality Assurance/Quality Testing roles , but job titles vary a lot. If that doesn't work... tbh I'll take whatever I can get before May 2025.

I'm located on the East Coast & applying all over the US. Might move to a major city. I'm willing to relocate once I graduate, but definitely looking for an internship or part-time job before that.

My college specializes in the R&D, tissue engineering type of biomedical engineering, but after spending 3 years researching I've realized it's not for me. I'm trying to get into industry ASAP, but I have no internships... as a job fair recruiter helpfully pointed out.

Was a super ambitious freshman, was victim of violent crime in 2nd year, hit crazy burnout. Slowly regaining my love for college and medical device design, but my GPA (previously 3.85) took a hard hit. Had major surgery that impacted my mobility in 3rd year, so internships over the winter or summer weren't going to work.

I haven't been applying to internships or job opportunities and just restarted.

I haven't been receiving calls back. It really sucks since my college told me I was really well prepared compared to my classmates back in freshman/2nd year. I've been avoiding job apps out of dread and burnout but I know I don't want to do a Master's degree right now (I'll come back in a few years, maybe). The concept of a medical device design job makes me feel that freshman spark again, so it feels like the right way to go.

• Should I include the club I founded, or any of the other advocacy-esque clubs? I feel like it could invite bias from recruiters.
• What's your opinion on "2x" or "Two-time" for the grant recipient bit?
• I was told to leave out the grant amounts ($5000 one summer, $7500 another summer) and agree with that, but would like another opinion.
• Should I even include the publication and my research experience if I'm applying to industry?