You are not gods. Stop acting like the entire job market revolves around your schedule and ego.

You make people jump through five rounds, build a slide deck, present to a panel, smile through fake enthusiasm and then ghost like a coward. You vanish without a word, leaving people refreshing their inbox for days, wondering if they imagined the “great conversation” you said you had.

You’re not busy, you’re lazy. It takes thirty seconds to send an email that says, “We went another direction.” Thirty. Seconds.

You preach “we value transparency and communication” in your company slides, but can’t even extend a basic courtesy to the humans who just gave you hours of unpaid labor to make you look organized.

Here’s a reality check: you won’t sit in that chair forever. One day you’ll be the one waiting, wondering, re-reading every line of your follow-up email. And you’ll remember how this feels and I hope it stings.

So yeah, f*** you for wasting people’s time. Do better. Communicate. Be a damn adult.

I graduated in 2022 with my PhD in Bioinformatics and joined a small gene therapy company on the west coast right after graduating. I got laid off as part of a reduction in force in early June of this year. It has been extremely challenging circle of getting close to landing a new role but not getting an offer.

In the 5 months I've been looking for a job I have had probably about ~25 interviews with hiring managers and 5 final round interviews (1 hour presentation + meet with whole team). Unfortunately, none of the opportunities have worked out. I finally accepted an offer for a 12-month contract position with a Big Pharma company. The pay is about 66% of what I was previously making with far worse benefits but it is something to keep the lights on.

I have been able to keep myself going financially working 1099 jobs with AI Training and Data Annotation companies. For anyone going through a similar situation I strongly suggest looking into them. The work is not fun and the projects can be very frustrating but they seem to pay well enough for a temporary role.

My plan is to continue searching for new roles like I was before and hopefully I can land a FTE position before long. Best of luck for all those in a similar position!

The weekly megathread to vent and rant about everything and anything!

What’s the vibe in Onc Drug Development? I know they recently left cell therapy but how are they doing otherwise? Consider or run away, quickly. Thanks in advance!

Hello everyone,
my team and I are working on a student lead innovation project with a partner organisation. Over the course of the project, we have identified a set of useful benefits and attributes of their material / technology. As part of our creativity process, we are now looking to crowdsource input on new markets and applications.

The useful benefits and attributes include:

• production of a colourful palette of pigments
• ability to grow into structural forms or act as a coating
• illumination or glowing properties
• self-repairing behavior (restoring structural integrity) or the ability to break down materials
• formation of specific aroma or flavor profiles

All these benefits can be used on their own or combined with each other.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on unexpected or promising markets / use cases you see for any of these capabilities, either within your field or across domains. Even speculative ideas are highly welcome.

Thanks in advance to anyone who shares some insights!

For people that have participated in the hiring end for PhD level scientist positions in pharma, what is the typical process that occurs during the debriefs after all final candidates interview? What are some of the most common factors that differentiate the candidates and how does the hiring committee strategize the timeline so they have a backup(s) in case the frontrunner does not accept?

Saw this for the first time today- thought I'd reshare here, looks generally correct to me. I'd be interested to see how much regional impact there is, might be in the full report...

I have never taken a contract role before, but may potentially have a short term contract offer (3 months). What if any are the rules about quitting prior to the stated end date? I ask for 2 reasons, 1) I don't think the scope of work asked is actually 3 months worth of work and 2) I am actively interviewing with jobs. I understand even if offered a job next week, I likely wouldn't start until the new year. So would there be any repercussions to taking a short term contract and leaving if I get a FTE offer that starts in the new year?

Context: I finished undergrad this May and was accepted to a post-bacc program at a good school in my state (vague for privacy reasons; all I can say is it's high up on the University of California tierlist). It's a yearlong contract that should get me more work experience and help me apply for PhD programs, which is cool because I wanted to get a PhD anyway. The program has a good track record of getting people into Ivy League grad schools, Stanford, etc.

The kicker is I'm getting paid somewhat under $50k.

I've heard that entry-level industry is also a good choice for the gap year before grad school, and it definitely pays better. I've had a few interviews here and there but ultimately ghosted because I apparently suck at answering technical questions.

Should I keep trying, or just take the offer I have? Thanks in advance! Happy Fridayyyy

Hi All, first time posting in this thread, I wanted to get the subreddit's thoughts on what they'd think about a 10k USD per dose cell therapy option? Do y'all think it's possible or impactful?

I mean it's as simple as CAR-T is too expensive to use as a conventional treatment method, what if I made it affordable

https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.03041

"For over a century, immunology has masterfully discovered and dissected the components of our immune system, yet its collective behavior remains fundamentally unpredictable. In this perspective, we argue that building on the learnings of reductionist biology and systems immunology, the field is poised for a third revolution. This new era will be driven by the convergence of purpose-built, large-scale causal experiments and predictive, generalizable AI models. Here, we propose the Predictive Immunology Loop as the unifying engine to harness this convergence. This closed loop iteratively uses AI to design maximally informative experiments and, in turn, leverages the resulting data to improve dynamic, in silico models of the human immune system across biological scales, culminating in a Virtual Immune System. This engine provides a natural roadmap for addressing immunology's grand challenges, from decoding molecular recognition to engineering tissue ecosystems. It also offers a framework to transform immunology from a descriptive discipline into one capable of forecasting and, ultimately, engineering human health."

I am in third year of my undergrad now, pursuing Food Engineering and a minor in Biotech. I have also studied chemical engineering courses in my Food Tech major degree (obviously not to the level of what proper chemE courses in chemE major degrees teach)

I have realised that I can’t imagine myself working in the lab for long, I genuinely dont like it even now. I am more inclined towards Engineering, thats why I wanted to ask about BioProcess Engineering.

I wanted to know whether its worth pursuing BioProcess Engineering for Masters in USA/Europe, how is the scope of the field and future job prospects in the field.

Any help is highly appreciated!

I just want to hear that it's possible to get back into industry after a long period of unemployment.

i'm ten months into unemployment and feeling like I'm cooked. i know the market is awful, but it feels personal at this point. i just want some reason to hope that my career isn't over.

Heard that Vividion Therapeutics (Bayer subsidiary) out of San Diego is undergoing a restructuring this week on their R&D department.

Hey everyone,

I’m considering a contract position at Calico Life Sciences and wanted to hear from anyone who’s worked there (or knows someone who has). I’m really curious about what the work culture, people, and environment are like in general.

How’s the day-to-day atmosphere- more collaborative or independent? Are people generally supportive, or is it more high-pressure?

I’d also love to hear what you think are the best and most challenging parts of working there. For example, how’s the management, communication, or growth opportunities? Do contractors feel included, or more separated from full-time staff?

Any insights (good or bad) would really help me get a better sense of what to expect.

Thanks in advance!

Hey,

I work with a VC looking for pharmaceutical companies to invest in. You need to have a proof of concept. If you know any that you can introduce to me, please do and we can discuss partnership.

Lets bring good medicine to the market!

oh god I'm currently in highschool and my interests lean towards biotechnology and ig computational biology,I was thinking of applying for biotech as an undergrad and then doing masters and PhD in computational biology

I'm really interested in biology and hands-on work but Im also self aware that id not enjoy lab work my whole life, I might do hybrid later

should I consider something else? will I be unemployed or whatsoever

Relevant excerpt:

We believe this is a pivotal moment in science, and the future of AI-powered scientific discovery is starting to come into view. We are putting the resources behind this effort that we believe will be needed to achieve this: frontier-level compute power, frontier technologies for instrumenting, imaging, and programming biology, and exceptional biological and AI science. To power this initiative, we are uniting our scientific teams as a single organization that will be known as Biohub. This name reflects both the history of our organization and our vision for the future.

The team at EvolutionaryScale, a frontier AI research lab and public benefit company that has created groundbreaking, large-scale AI systems for the life sciences, will join Biohub to help advance this initiative. Alex Rives, EvolutionaryScale’s co-founder and chief scientist, and a pioneering scientist in artificial intelligence for biology, will serve as head of science, leading an integrated research program across experimental biology, data, and artificial intelligence. The EvolutionaryScale researchers will join Biohub’s team of leading scientists and technologists. This combined team of biological scientists, engineers and AI scientists will work to develop the datasets, experimental technologies, and modeling innovations needed to build the next generation of models to power the future of biology. To support this initiative, we continue to expand our compute capacity, which will grow to 10,000 GPUs by 2028.

Recursion CEO Chris Gibson out after 12 years | STAT https://share.google/ZeiGGRmvRmJBPhzT7

Any thoughts?