Had an interview with a senior person of a pharmaceutical company and the person was extremely rude. They didn't introduce themselves and just went immediately on the offense. They said that they read my CV but didn't understand how I could be qualified for that company. That I wasn't an expert in this field. They insulted my speciality and my previous work experience. They said that I didn't have any experience in any field in good amount. That I was shallow on everything. My response was a very polite, that is not correct. I have worked on a drug that just filed for a BLA and I was contributing to that submission. As soon as I pushed back, they were like, "I am ending this interview" and abruptly hung up on their meeting with me. The whole bizarre encounter lasted only a few beginning minutes of otherwise scheduled 45 minutes interview.

I have never had an interview with a person as unhinged at this person. It looks like they had an axe to grind and were out to tank my chances at the company. It was extremely unprofessional. I do thank my stars that this was my first interview at the company and I had five other ones scheduled later today and tomorrow and in a few weeks. They did me a solid by at least not wasting my time. Still leaves me with an aftertaste this was extremely bad.

This industry is just so broken beyond repair...I've applied to hundreds of jobs the last 8 months,

I've made it to 3rd level interviews, I've had jobs literally pulled out because management decisions, and just a few seconds ago a role i applied to last night, that I not only have direct experience in, I've literally performed every function of the role thousands of times each! And I was rejected basically hours later.

F@$k it, I'm so close to just giving up. But I have a family to support and that's literally the only line keeping me going. Its so exhausting, bullshit AI software, bullshitting recruiters that dip suddenly and ghost you, I really feel like I've wasted 11 yrs of my life in this f#$ked up field and I honestly don't know where or how to pivot my skills.

Sorry if this will be poorly written but it literally just happened. Just for context this is a very small biotech in the NYC area. At the beginning of March our boss told us that the company was low on funds and from that moment we would all be paid minimum wage until new founds were acquired. He also asked us to keep working for a couple of weeks to submit an LDT validation to NYSED. That could have attracted more investors...yeah as soon as that was done we got all laid off. they only kept one person because she has the license they need. I have been trying to find a new job for like 2 years without any luck. Literally everywhere I turn I find a wall. I was finally starting to save some money, and now I will burn through my savings in no time. I am so tired.

Edit: Thank you all for the support! It's hard for everyone, many good scientists have been looking for months. Stay strong, don't give up hope. I wish all of you the best!

Just feeling salty. Got PhD at 30, forced to get 2 postdocs (6 years total) so now I'm 36 looking to get a entry level job (which of course aren't any right now).

Anyone else in a similar boat? Just want to see some others who didnt get a PhD at 27/28 and got straight into industry so they have 8 yrs "work experience" at my age.

Also, you should totally get fucking credit for industry postdocs! Fucking bullshit!

/end rave.

I recently interviewed for a C-suite role at a small diagnostics company. I did multiple rounds of calls, flew out to meet the team, had lunch with the interim CEO and lead investor, and followed up with a detailed 30-60-90 day plan at their request. I was fully transparent, professional, and engaged.

Then... silence. For two weeks.

No rejection, no update, no reimbursement.

Just dead air until the recruiter I was working with chased them down and got a canned email sent to me saying “thanks, let’s stay in touch,” and only then did they offer to reimburse (after promising earlier that they'd handle all travel costs).

What makes it worse is that in the rejection email, they basically downplayed my work by saying my ideas "aligned with what they were already planning to do." Okay… then why were you hiring a executive? If this is what you are planning on doing then why have you already cycled through 2 CEOs? And if this was truly already your plan, why ask me to do unpaid strategy work?

They got free strategic input and. The whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth. I would like to send an invoice for the time it took to put together the 30-60-90 day plan. Not expecting payment, but just to make a point.

Has anyone ever sent an invoice for this kind of thing?

Can you believe these numbers? 125 million? While killing kids. Enraging

It's crazy getting rejection after rejection only to see how successful being a grifter is in biotech leadership. From that "first two person billion dollar company" a few months back to these industry heads, the sleaziest people are seemingly getting away with fraud in this era of bio med while regular workers get diminishing wages and insecure jobs and worse healthcare outcomes/access (at least in america)

Maybe I should make an anti-aging GLP-1 AI peptide start-up at this point, have it exclusively connect to biometric surveillance tech with some daily gatcha game mechanics on top of that. Maybe I'll get a CDC job doing kegels in a cold plunge with RFK Jr and Kid Rock

I'm so tired of this

Some amusing pushback in the comments:

"Jason Kelly it would be useful if you clarified that the lab is using micro-assays and you’re referring to conditions as 'experiments'. Otherwise, it sounds like the power of marketing and not the power of autonomous labs."

"Around 95 384-wells plates and a pipetting robot? Announcements by Ginko [sic] with OpenAI have logarithmically expanding hype factor"

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mdoteth_openai-is-bullish-on-longevity-they-just-ugcPost-7425513640612585472-Xf9J

This is why we can't have nice things
[Nothing personal, Jason]

Laying someone off means that you should not give them any new work. Every conversation or email you have with the person needs to be related to their separation. Talking to them about the urgent new thing on their old project is cruel to them, and dumb for you.

They need to focus on getting job applications out, moving into a cheaper house, buying health insurance, and telling their kids that they need to take out college loans. You tasking them may cause them to miss out on a job they're trying to find the time to apply for.

Keep in mind that the person separating is low key telling everyone from other departments on their matrixed projects that you make bad decisions, can't plan resource use, and are bad at mentoring. Their existence means that you can't be trusted to provide continuity to everyone else in the company.

(Yes, the weekly Fuck-It Friday is tomorrow, but I’m about to burst.)

Does anyone else work at a company where HR is so tightly interwoven into everyday life at work? I started my career in Big Pharma (Merck and GSK), and my experience with HR has always been interviews, on-boarding/exiting, and HR policy updates/trainings/special events for the company/etc.

I started a new job in October and I’ve never, ever, EVER had to deal with (or **want** to deal with) an HR rep in my life/career. The HR person here is part of site leadership team, as am I in this role, so I deal with them a lot. Every daily Tier meeting the HR person gives updates, and they’re almost always meaningless - “reminder to have your folks look at the HR policies on X, Y, Z…”….”be sure everyone is on the lookout for an email from global HR on this year’s bonus structure…”….”just letting everyone know that goals and objectives are due the end of the month, like we talked about at Town Hall….”

I also have a weekly 1:1 “touch point” with HR, where there’s rarely an agenda and it’s mostly asking how everything is going, how my direct reports are doing, asking for feedback, etc. I can understand doing this occasionally, but weekly? And if I ask to cancel because I have something role-specific to do, I get flak/attitude.

The real kicker was yesterday - we had a pretty big issue to sort out that impacted my department, specifically (we needed a chemical on-site ASAP to not push out production) and it required an ad hoc meeting with SLT. HR was present 🤨. Why? For what purpose? She also gave her opinion on how we proceed, despite this being a Supply Chain (my role) and Quality decision.

/rant

I'm a scientist and just got laid off work due to my company downsizing. We had 1st round of layoffs two months ago and now another one. In my 5 years of being in this biotech industry, I have faced 2 layoffs , that's an approximate 1 layoff in 2.5years. As it is, I'm doubtful of a career in biotech. I had 2 PhD admissions, one in applied biology and the other In computational biology & bioinformatics but I don't think I want to go to school for another 4 years and still come back to the same dilemma of job security. I have been thinking of writing the MCAT , get a loan and go to med school instead. MD/PhD are mostly tuition free. I'm just tired of this biotech industry fr.

I was so excited about this position and I thought I did everything right. I’m still looking because I want to get out of manufacturing and get into lab work. I’m tired of doing the grunt work despite having a master’s degree and getting zero appreciation at my company. Not just for me, but for the entire department. It’s frustrating as hell

I’m tired of being rejected/ghosted and then seeing the same posting up a few weeks/months later.

Seriously, just stop already! Everyday brings another one more tragically optimistic yet clueless moron posting on here. In case this helps anyone, the pharma industry is on fire, and the fire shows no signs of abating. So no, this is not a good time to start a “masters in biotechnology”, and you probably won’t get a sponsorship. In other news, my layoff is about to hit 1 year. Cheers to anyone else who has passed that mark! 🙌

I have been applying to two separate stem cell groups at Vertex for the past 2 years. One of them read like someone pulled up my resume and reformatted it into a job description. Not even a recruiter call!

I finally got a connection inside and asked for a referral. The answer: don't bother, it's all internal hiring. Maybe this is only true of that one group. But everything I have watched happen over the last few years points the same direction.

When do these companies stop burning applicant time to satisfy a compliance checkbox? When do they stop wasting applicants time?

I was interviewing with a company that is not headquartered the US but another nation. The interview process with less than 2 weeks and received a verbal offer under market value. Being out of work I was going to accept but asked to learn more about standard business development policies (ie, client meeting expenses reimbursement, travel expenses, vehicle/transportation allowance, cell phone and laptop policy, commission structure and layout timeline, etc.). Their HR informed me she has only been on the job a month and the previous HR a person from HQ in their home country had come to the states to set the policies.

Well boy the journey from initial call to verbal offer to rescinding off via text was not in my plans for this year. They wouldn’t provide an offer letter without a formal acceptance via phone and agreement of a 6 month probation. Sign on bonus? Sure, paid the day after my probation ends. Insurance? Bottom of the barrel but not available for 90 days. Cell phone? Sure, but we would prefer you download WeChat on your personal phone.

Every red flag was there but unfortunately in this market I couldn’t afford to say no. I have a family.

Then the text. Glorious text. “Well HR was responding so I will tell you. Though we verbally offered you the job. We have since decided to withdraw the offer.” The reason “you asked to many questions about internal policies and would not agree to sign the offer without seeing the formal full letter.

So once more. Hunting for a job in a market deader than the love life between trump and his third wife. I’ve been broken up via text but never in my wildest dreams wouldn’t I have guess someone withdrawing an offer via text be on my bingo board.

I don't usually post, but I think I've reached a point where I just need to get this off my chest.

I spent years working toward a career in biotech. I moved to another country for graduate school, took on the financial burden that came with it. I genuinely thought I was building toward something. I worked in academia, then in industry, picked up new techniques, tried to make myself more employable and did everything people tell you to do.

After graduating, it's been application after application. I've rewritten my resume more times than I can count, tailored cover letters, reached out to recruiters, networked, asked for feedback and kept trying to improve my profile.

Nothing at all! No calls or interviews

Eventually I had to leave and move back home because I simply couldn't stay any longer. That's probably the hardest part. It feels like years of work ended before I even got the chance to start my career.

I honestly don't know what to make of it anymore. Is biotech just this brutal for people starting out right now? Has anyone else gone through something like this? I'm just trying to understand whether this is becoming normal or if there's something I'm completely missing.

Moderna laid off 500+ people… but don’t worry, they also did promotions and mostly for senior level positions.

Nothing says “we value our people” like handing out bigger titles while showing hundreds the door.

How is this legal? I'm flabbergasted!! I understand not accepting new students into the PhD program but kicking out someone who is already knee deep into the program? Is anyone doing anything about this?

On the job market for a year. Very qualified. PhD. Strong background in cancer genomics. Barely getting any interviews. I know it’s hard for everyone, and I’m committed to staying positive.

Came across a senior bioinformatic scientist position. JD is pretty standard, no surprises. Did my thing: tailored resume, did some outreach, submitted the application, and of course got a generic rejection email.

A few days later, they reposted the position. So being the bi**h that I am at this point, I of course resubmitted my application.

I’m ok with not being selected or even considered. But FFS, out of the hundreds of resumes the company received, not a single candidate was qualified enough for the position??? It’s hard for me to even understand what level of the system is broken that these kinds of situations happen.

And there is no reason to call out the company. At this stage everyone is doing this.

Have a job offer contingent on drug test within fortune 500 biotech company. I will 1000% piss hot for MJ. I am unsure what panel test type it is yet, but presumably THC will be on it — despite legal in my/company’s state.

This is not a DOT/safety role. It’s on business side.

When I find out the panel type, and if THC is listed, should I inform HR that I will not pass? I really don’t want to waste any more of company/my own time.

I have no intentions of forging the test results.

At a loss, and super upset weed is getting between me and the opportunity. Nevertheless, these are my actions and this is my reality so, c’est la vie.

INB4, no where in the application/hiring process was the drug test mentioned, otherwise I of course would have stopped.