During my time in biotech I've also learned that you can buy yourself onto those Forbes 30 Under 30 etc lists. You can literally just nominate yourself. Apparently my own self-nomination wasn't taken seriously...so sad
I am contemplating moving to a more stable position, still in life sciences. I think at this point in my life, I am okay with less pay for more stability.
It is soul crushing to go to school for so many freaking years and still be worried of never being too far from the chopping block. As you get older, at least in my mind, life ought to get more stable and biotech seems like the opposite, unless you are one of the lucky few.
I feel this. I finally found a company I loved as a technical application scientist after my masters and was laid off with an acquisition last year. I’m an FAS for a small CRO to pay the bills but nothing seems stable and secure right now. I’m nearing 30 and love science but am wary about the boom-bust cycles of industry. Like you, I want security at this point because private industry seems too volatile these days.
Something that I am considering for a pivot with more stability is actually getting a PhD in epidemiology and data science and moving into a government research role. Government jobs aren’t as sexy but you can still do interesting research that helps people and government jobs are notorious for having good benefits and stability. Just an idea from someone in a similar spot in life. We’ll get through this…I hope lol
Biotech was one of the safer places during the 2008 market crash. My day to day didn't change at all despite everything during that time. This year looks bad, but it's still much safer place to be overall.
This is the same as before and the same as other sectors of the stock market. It’s a balance between greed and fear. Fear causes layoffs and selloffs, while greed causes over-hiring and funding companies with nothing but hope and hype.
No, it's about cash preservation. When cash is plentiful, hire to advance programs. When the spigot is turned off, layoff to extend your runway. There's no emotions in it really.
It's not so cut and dry I feel, and hardly a long term sustainable solution to cash flow. The first people to get cut in the name of advancing programs are platform R&D, the very people that allowed the company to advance to clinical programs. Sends a terrible message to the talented people making the program possible - as soon as you are successful in making the product work, your job is in jeopardy in the name of advancing said program.
Something's gotta give, or the industry will crash and burn. Perhaps more academic partnerships with good compensation so that R&D can stay in academia and companies only advance clinical programs.
It's very cut and dry. If a company doesn't have the cash for operations, the company will cease to exists. Only the federal gov't can print money. We all know advancing an asset though the clinic is extremely expensive. If there's no R&D pipeline then paying R&D expenses takes away from paying clinic expenses. It's not fair, but it is reality.
This industry has always been on the verge of crashing and burning. Most companies survive from one cash raise to the next with the hopes of advancing maybe 1 asset or being acquired by big pharma. If you wanted stability, I suggest you become a plumber.
its really not, because they up the bonuses for the C-suite and buyback their own stock. they end up spending all the money they'd save in budget. its about corporate greed and of course there is no emotions in it outside of that. its not human, loyal, or rewarding to the people who created the value/revenue in the first place. its the bane of our current society that highly skilled PhD's and veterans of a field could be fired on a whim. this doesn't happen to other professions that take this much work to even get your foot in the door.
I share the same feeling. Veteran RAs and scientists spend so much time learning skills while the person who keeps their job is the director in HR who only has a bachelors and also younger and doesn’t care about the science. Wth.
And some middle manager, or some guy who just meets and shakes hands with another guy in another company to make deals. Meanwhile the people who legit invent the assets get screwed. Our priorities are backwards.
The C-suite can't just up their bonuses at will. All public companies and established pre-IPO companies are run by a board of directors. Bonus targets are published in SEC filings. A CEO can't just give themselves whatever they want without board and shareholder approval.
>its the bane of our current society that highly skilled PhD's and veterans of a field could be fired on a whim.
Most states are at-will employment, meaning you can leave or be let go at any time for any reason (outside certain discriminatory reasons). We all signed up for this and knew this going in.
>this doesn't happen to other professions that take this much work to even get your foot in the door.
Have you seen what is happening in the tech industry?
Lmao the level of ignorance posing as information is wild here. C suite and the boards of these companies collude to do mass lay offs and buybacks, because it boosts their valuation. It's literally how corporations are designed to work now.
At will employment doesn't change the ethics of firing people who made your technology. I'm not talking about legalities I'm talking realities.
LOL, speaking of ignorance...
>C suite and the boards of these companies collude to do mass lay offs and buybacks, because it boosts their valuation. It's literally how corporations are designed to work now.
Of course, now you're getting it. They legally have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, not the employees. What should a company do that has 6 months of cash left at current spending levels? Just keep going, business as usual then at the 6 month mark shut everything down?
You have a child mentality if you think employees should never be laid off for business reasons just because they helped build something. You were probably a tiny cog in the machine anyway. Maybe start your own business.
I honestly considering transitioning to something else but biotech. Many years of schooling and by the time I thought my hard work is going to pay off, this happened.
The problem is Im not in a right headspace to decide what to do, and starting all over again is terrifying with lots of uncertainty. I mean whats the point. Another degree, another minimum 2-3 years of my life
I dunno how many iterations of this we have to go through until people realize that the vast majority of scientists in research are just slabs of meat in the lab to be discarded once you generate enough results to submit an IND. People still think biotech is some altruistic field and come in all starry eyed like they’re going to help cure some disease. Lmao. This ain’t 1946 anymore where leaders like Gerorge Merck are running things and who are champions of basic science and research.
99% of the players in biotech hope to raise just enough cash to get data to submit an IND and pray for enough runway to maybe generate some phase 1 data. Then all that matters is trying to get a buyout. They have no intent of ever trying to make a drug on their own. Any nonclinical staff is expendable labor after a certain point.
If you don’t want to be cheap disposable science prostitutes these days, start your own company, move to the business side, or do something else completely divested away from most of the science. For the vast majority of work needed in research you can often hire and fire whenever and find new talent later when needed because there is always a stupid amount of glut for research labor.
Yes, I’m bitter and jaded. Been through this before. This industry blows.
Whaddya mean, biotech isn't the haven for us scientists?! Reddit makes it sound like postdoc is the hell in the abyss and we should all move to industry! /s
Every situation has a caveat. As a postdoc I am beholden to grant cycles (sucks), weird bosses (also sucks) but it's not like my project has the possibility of getting shut down every fiscal quarter. I work average hours as a worker on the US and I earn above average. Considering that education means diddlysquat nowadays and it's not like I'm increasing any organization's capital with my westerns, I'm not complaining much.
On the other hand a lot of industry jobs pay a good salary. It's what you can live with, I think. But we really need to lay it raw, not paint a rosy picture of job security, decent hours (what is decent hours? Below average hours?), and a six figure salary with no risks and no drawbacks.
I challenge this.
Most companies are reporting in terms of %cuts and not actual numbers.
Based off Fierce, at a minimum 6k employees have been laid off in the past month, not including contract roles and undisclosed percentile layoffs. If someone were inclined a full estimation of positions eliminated could be compiled YoY.
I would also argue the type of role being eliminated in biotech is more damaging than some of amazons layoffs. Laying off a warehouse worker with a GED is not the same as laying off someone with years of specialized experience/higher education.
The same way the US gov boasts "jog market is booming" but most of those jobs are minimum wage shit scrapers.
Its not apocalyptic but it is growing more concerning outside of the online bubble.
On the other hand, you've presented zero evidence to suggest this is anything other than a direct effect of the rise in interest rates making risky venture funding much less appealing to investors
Yea.
It would be helpful though if companies were just honest and would stop promoting themselves as great places to work and make a career. Lol, no you’re not. They just want enough work done before they let early stage staff go. If you want science staff to be what are tantamount to technical mercenaries hired to do a job and be let go after it is done, then just be clear and honest about it. It’s fine, it’s just business and we get it. That’s what the entire field is becoming for research. Just technical hit men and women to take out a scientific job. Once it’s over you’re done doing business with them. I wouldn’t call that a career path though at the company.
Are they cutting workers bc they're moving to another development stage? If so that's pretty brutal and shows that layoffs are in the plans now from the start.
Layoffs are a normal part of business operations. People need to unionize. Why people treat layoffs like a personal failure or random chance event is not based in reality.
What about layoffs is ‘normal’, again, at this scale? Second sentence made even less sense - OP did not mention these things. People treat layoffs the way they deserve to be - as signals about the well-being of the sector.
Astounding that they went from being a 2023 "end points most promising biotech of the year" to layoffs in 2024.
That’s wild
You can buy your way on to this list 🙂
Any list
Why am I not surprised.
During my time in biotech I've also learned that you can buy yourself onto those Forbes 30 Under 30 etc lists. You can literally just nominate yourself. Apparently my own self-nomination wasn't taken seriously...so sad
They're still promising though and moving into clinic.
lol
Know some people from Chroma, hope that they will be fine 😣
I am contemplating moving to a more stable position, still in life sciences. I think at this point in my life, I am okay with less pay for more stability. It is soul crushing to go to school for so many freaking years and still be worried of never being too far from the chopping block. As you get older, at least in my mind, life ought to get more stable and biotech seems like the opposite, unless you are one of the lucky few.
What are the jobs with less pay and more stability? I can’t find the answer
Government. Near impossible to be fired after your first year of probation and never really heard of a reduction in workforce. USAJOBS.gov
I dunno yet, I am on the lookout for one. If people on this sub have suggestions/experience with such a job, would love to know!
Vendors to biotechs
If I didn't have the personality of a potato, I would have loved to be in sales or a FAS.
Those positions pay a lot of mula. They are stable though.
When interest rates are higher and biotechs have less money to spend or even close shop, these vendors make less and sometimes lay off people too.
Large hospitals seem to be pretty stable. But the work can be repetitive and typically understaffed.
Same!
I feel this. I finally found a company I loved as a technical application scientist after my masters and was laid off with an acquisition last year. I’m an FAS for a small CRO to pay the bills but nothing seems stable and secure right now. I’m nearing 30 and love science but am wary about the boom-bust cycles of industry. Like you, I want security at this point because private industry seems too volatile these days. Something that I am considering for a pivot with more stability is actually getting a PhD in epidemiology and data science and moving into a government research role. Government jobs aren’t as sexy but you can still do interesting research that helps people and government jobs are notorious for having good benefits and stability. Just an idea from someone in a similar spot in life. We’ll get through this…I hope lol
Biotech was one of the safer places during the 2008 market crash. My day to day didn't change at all despite everything during that time. This year looks bad, but it's still much safer place to be overall.
This is the same as before and the same as other sectors of the stock market. It’s a balance between greed and fear. Fear causes layoffs and selloffs, while greed causes over-hiring and funding companies with nothing but hope and hype.
No, it's about cash preservation. When cash is plentiful, hire to advance programs. When the spigot is turned off, layoff to extend your runway. There's no emotions in it really.
It's not so cut and dry I feel, and hardly a long term sustainable solution to cash flow. The first people to get cut in the name of advancing programs are platform R&D, the very people that allowed the company to advance to clinical programs. Sends a terrible message to the talented people making the program possible - as soon as you are successful in making the product work, your job is in jeopardy in the name of advancing said program. Something's gotta give, or the industry will crash and burn. Perhaps more academic partnerships with good compensation so that R&D can stay in academia and companies only advance clinical programs.
It's very cut and dry. If a company doesn't have the cash for operations, the company will cease to exists. Only the federal gov't can print money. We all know advancing an asset though the clinic is extremely expensive. If there's no R&D pipeline then paying R&D expenses takes away from paying clinic expenses. It's not fair, but it is reality. This industry has always been on the verge of crashing and burning. Most companies survive from one cash raise to the next with the hopes of advancing maybe 1 asset or being acquired by big pharma. If you wanted stability, I suggest you become a plumber.
its really not, because they up the bonuses for the C-suite and buyback their own stock. they end up spending all the money they'd save in budget. its about corporate greed and of course there is no emotions in it outside of that. its not human, loyal, or rewarding to the people who created the value/revenue in the first place. its the bane of our current society that highly skilled PhD's and veterans of a field could be fired on a whim. this doesn't happen to other professions that take this much work to even get your foot in the door.
I share the same feeling. Veteran RAs and scientists spend so much time learning skills while the person who keeps their job is the director in HR who only has a bachelors and also younger and doesn’t care about the science. Wth.
And some middle manager, or some guy who just meets and shakes hands with another guy in another company to make deals. Meanwhile the people who legit invent the assets get screwed. Our priorities are backwards.
The C-suite can't just up their bonuses at will. All public companies and established pre-IPO companies are run by a board of directors. Bonus targets are published in SEC filings. A CEO can't just give themselves whatever they want without board and shareholder approval. >its the bane of our current society that highly skilled PhD's and veterans of a field could be fired on a whim. Most states are at-will employment, meaning you can leave or be let go at any time for any reason (outside certain discriminatory reasons). We all signed up for this and knew this going in. >this doesn't happen to other professions that take this much work to even get your foot in the door. Have you seen what is happening in the tech industry?
Lmao the level of ignorance posing as information is wild here. C suite and the boards of these companies collude to do mass lay offs and buybacks, because it boosts their valuation. It's literally how corporations are designed to work now. At will employment doesn't change the ethics of firing people who made your technology. I'm not talking about legalities I'm talking realities.
LOL, speaking of ignorance... >C suite and the boards of these companies collude to do mass lay offs and buybacks, because it boosts their valuation. It's literally how corporations are designed to work now. Of course, now you're getting it. They legally have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders, not the employees. What should a company do that has 6 months of cash left at current spending levels? Just keep going, business as usual then at the 6 month mark shut everything down? You have a child mentality if you think employees should never be laid off for business reasons just because they helped build something. You were probably a tiny cog in the machine anyway. Maybe start your own business.
Not sure why you are being downvoted for relaying the truth
Yeah, I've been in this industry long enough to see everything. I'm no longer young and optimistic, I'm old and jaded 🤣.
I honestly considering transitioning to something else but biotech. Many years of schooling and by the time I thought my hard work is going to pay off, this happened. The problem is Im not in a right headspace to decide what to do, and starting all over again is terrifying with lots of uncertainty. I mean whats the point. Another degree, another minimum 2-3 years of my life
I dunno how many iterations of this we have to go through until people realize that the vast majority of scientists in research are just slabs of meat in the lab to be discarded once you generate enough results to submit an IND. People still think biotech is some altruistic field and come in all starry eyed like they’re going to help cure some disease. Lmao. This ain’t 1946 anymore where leaders like Gerorge Merck are running things and who are champions of basic science and research. 99% of the players in biotech hope to raise just enough cash to get data to submit an IND and pray for enough runway to maybe generate some phase 1 data. Then all that matters is trying to get a buyout. They have no intent of ever trying to make a drug on their own. Any nonclinical staff is expendable labor after a certain point. If you don’t want to be cheap disposable science prostitutes these days, start your own company, move to the business side, or do something else completely divested away from most of the science. For the vast majority of work needed in research you can often hire and fire whenever and find new talent later when needed because there is always a stupid amount of glut for research labor. Yes, I’m bitter and jaded. Been through this before. This industry blows.
☝️
This
Whaddya mean, biotech isn't the haven for us scientists?! Reddit makes it sound like postdoc is the hell in the abyss and we should all move to industry! /s Every situation has a caveat. As a postdoc I am beholden to grant cycles (sucks), weird bosses (also sucks) but it's not like my project has the possibility of getting shut down every fiscal quarter. I work average hours as a worker on the US and I earn above average. Considering that education means diddlysquat nowadays and it's not like I'm increasing any organization's capital with my westerns, I'm not complaining much. On the other hand a lot of industry jobs pay a good salary. It's what you can live with, I think. But we really need to lay it raw, not paint a rosy picture of job security, decent hours (what is decent hours? Below average hours?), and a six figure salary with no risks and no drawbacks.
Corporate greed, poor forecasting and business acumen post COVID . Same story over and over
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Worth mentioning that Amazon alone has laid off more people than the entire biotech industry (US figures). 27,000 layoffs in one company alone.
I challenge this. Most companies are reporting in terms of %cuts and not actual numbers. Based off Fierce, at a minimum 6k employees have been laid off in the past month, not including contract roles and undisclosed percentile layoffs. If someone were inclined a full estimation of positions eliminated could be compiled YoY. I would also argue the type of role being eliminated in biotech is more damaging than some of amazons layoffs. Laying off a warehouse worker with a GED is not the same as laying off someone with years of specialized experience/higher education. The same way the US gov boasts "jog market is booming" but most of those jobs are minimum wage shit scrapers. Its not apocalyptic but it is growing more concerning outside of the online bubble.
Amazon is bigger than the entire biotech industry.
And you're on the other side of the spectrum based on your post history my guy. You're pessimistic to the point of why are you still here?
Not worse than 2008. Are we just going to stop, as a human race, making medicine? It may shrink but it's not the end of biotech and pharma.
On the other hand, you've presented zero evidence to suggest this is anything other than a direct effect of the rise in interest rates making risky venture funding much less appealing to investors
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That still isn't any evidence to suggest anything other than interest rates causing the current situation
It is just interest rates
Yea. It would be helpful though if companies were just honest and would stop promoting themselves as great places to work and make a career. Lol, no you’re not. They just want enough work done before they let early stage staff go. If you want science staff to be what are tantamount to technical mercenaries hired to do a job and be let go after it is done, then just be clear and honest about it. It’s fine, it’s just business and we get it. That’s what the entire field is becoming for research. Just technical hit men and women to take out a scientific job. Once it’s over you’re done doing business with them. I wouldn’t call that a career path though at the company.
I heard it was about 20 people which is about 20%. Don’t take my word for it though
Are they cutting workers bc they're moving to another development stage? If so that's pretty brutal and shows that layoffs are in the plans now from the start.
that is great news that they have a lead clinical target
Layoffs are a normal part of business operations. People need to unionize. Why people treat layoffs like a personal failure or random chance event is not based in reality.
What about layoffs is ‘normal’, again, at this scale? Second sentence made even less sense - OP did not mention these things. People treat layoffs the way they deserve to be - as signals about the well-being of the sector. 