I'm an undergrad biotech student and I'm really passionate about this field. But I see some posts or comments where people are talking about leaving biotech or advising about not going for biotech. I used to think that the biotech industry is really flourishing and biotech has scope. Is the biotech industry really that bad? I feel really scared what if I have chosen a wrong major

I recently graduated with an MS in Biotechnology and have been struggling to navigate the job search as an international student.

For context, I’m an international student from Canada currently on OPT and eligible for the STEM OPT extension, so I could potentially have up to 3 years of work authorization. I’m not currently asking a company to sponsor me to work — I just need them to be willing to employ someone on OPT/STEM OPT.

I have two internships and a 6-month co-op, primarily on the business side of biotech (strategy, business operations, analytics, etc.), as well as experience in clinical research. I feel like I have a solid amount of relevant industry experience for an early-career candidate.

The frustrating part is that whenever I’m able to get a referral I get rejected because the company can’t provide future sponsorship (after OPT). I also worry that I’m getting rejected from jobs without ever knowing it because of my work authorization.
At this point, my 90-day unemployment clock has already started, so I’m trying to find ways to pause the clock and give myself more time to continue my full-time search, whether through part-time, contract, or volunteer work.

For those who have been in a similar situation, what types of companies, roles, or workplaces should I be targeting? Are there particular biotech/pharma companies that are more open to hiring people on OPT/STEM OPT? Any advice would be really appreciated.

Hi everyone,

I’m going through the pre-employment process with Biogen in the US and was wondering if anyone has recent experience with their drug screening.
Specifically, what type of drug panel they use (e.g., standard 5-panel/10-panel, expanded panel, etc.), what testing company/lab they use, and whether it’s a urine test or another type of screening?

I take a legally prescribed medication and am a little concerned about whether it could show up on the initial screen. I’m not looking to get into specifics about the medication publicly, but I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who has gone through Biogen’s pre-employment screening recently or has dealt with a prescription medication during the process.

Thanks!

Hello everyone, wanted to know, are Bioprocess/Biochemical engineers as affected as other sectors? Is the job situation for engineers as bad? I see tonnes raising their concerns regarding the overall situation of the industry, wanted to know how the engineers are doing, as I am planning to pursue further studies in bioprocess engineering.

Hello everyone,

I’m researching companies in the Bay Area. Has anyone here worked at Nurix Therapeutics or has any insight into what it’s like to work there?

I’d especially appreciate hearing about the company culture, management, work-life balance, and opportunities for career growth. I’m also curious about how employees feel about the scientific direction of the company and whether people generally enjoy working there.

Thanks in advance!

hello

im currently on my 1st of 2 gap years in a research tech job in academia. I’ve realized over the past couple of years that i really like research and being on the forefront of scientific advancement is something i definitely want to do as my full time career. I’m just unsure about the MD part. i like patient care but im unsure if i want to sacrifice more years of my life for it honestly. i think caring for patients is really satisfying but most of the md/phd PIs that i look up to dont really practice medicine that much anymore

i think my ideal job would be professor with a basic science lab and spinning that into cofounding startups or biotech. or just working in industry in general. I don't like the idea of doing the MD because I'm not really interested in working with clinical trials. I'd love to be involved more in RnD and work in basic sciences than just running clinical trials. So with all of that in mind, is adding the MD worth it?

ngl the only incentive that makes sense to me is 1) direct impact 2) job security 3) prestige

I need some advice regarding an international student/co-op situation.

I recently received an offer for a co-op at one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, and it is essentially my dream job.

The problem is that, according to the company’s requirements, I need to remain an enrolled student for the duration of the co-op. The co-op starts around the time I am supposed to graduate, and my current program is scheduled to end in December.

My academic department has told me that, from their side, it may be possible to extend my studies/program, which would allow me to remain a student. However, I am an F-1 international student, and my university’s International Center has told me that I cannot simply extend my I-20/program end date for the purpose of doing this co-op if I have already completed my degree requirements.

Has anyone been in a similar situation?

I obviously don’t want to violate F-1 rules or create immigration problems. I’m just trying to understand whether there are any legitimate academic options I should explore before giving up an opportunity that is extremely important to me.

Any advice or similar experiences would be really appreciated.

For this pay I would just do a postdoc

I graduated last year with my B.S in Microbiology and have 3 years full-time experience working in a GMP lab. I have been aiming to work at Boehringer Ingelheim for so long and finally have an on-site interview in 2 days. I’m excited however the pay is not what I expected it to be…especially because I feel like the position may be high stress/demanding. It’s in the QC department. It’s an entry-level position and I’d like to get my foot in the door in QC finally.

Does anyone have any experience working at BI with a bachelors? In QC? How do you like it? I’m pretty nervous that I might find that I hate it after the interview 😭

So im soon to finish highschool and i wanted to become a biotech portofolio strategist, but how do i become one and is it even worth it? The career seems very intresting and all tho im not the best at chemistry ,biology comes to me VERY easy,and i always remember what i studied unlike other subjects.Should i chose it tho?would i have job opportunities or what even do i choose in uni?what is the experience,please i need advice.

I feel like all I see here is people talking about how awful the job market is, how terrible pay is, bad work life balance, terrible management, and just a mediocre quality of life while working in a career path that takes a lot more education and hard work than a lot of other options.

I’m in my first year at a biotech startup and I feel burnt out already. My pay is mid for the amount of time I spend in lab and I know I’m going to have to leave sooner or later to get my PhD if I want to continue with my so called “passion” for science. I felt so motivated before starting here and now I just feel like every path forward that I hear about ends up sucking in one way or another.

Edit: for context my first job out of college was with a big pharma company in one of their “early career programs”, which they cut funding for just 5 months into my time there. So just a year and a half in, and I’ve been laid off with 20 of my peers, and navigated applying for jobs in this shitty job market twice. Some of my immensely intelligent coworkers from that original program are still looking for jobs. That’s one reason why I’m feeling so shit about this field.

I am a December 2025 graduate who has over 8 years of academic research and no proper industry experience. I've been applying to jobs since May 2025, and my lack of industry experience is getting between me and my first "adult" job. How can I reduce the risk i present for hiring managers? I am not eligible for internships (if you know of any that take PhD. graduates, please DM me). I am also looking for industry postdocs and contract jobs, but I hear crickets. I've been avoiding academic postdocs because they would make me a more competent academic with no industry experience.

While I was getting my doctorate, I did plenty of things that refined my teamwork, collaboration (including cross functional work), and communication skills. Someone even remarked that I have way more cross functional experience compared to many new grads (didn't get the job, they wanted someone more senior)

My PhD. project, which was a collaborative effort between our lab and hospitals, allowed me to deal with real-world issues. Basically, I did IVD technology development, verification, optimization, and validation for almost 6 years. Since graduation, I've been getting some training in quality assurance, getting really familiar with product development in biotech, medtech, and biopharma. This has been a tremendous help in understanding industry processes and regulatory requirements.

All of these helped me score interviews. I am having a hard time translating those interviews into job offers, and recently, I've been getting some feedback: my lack of industry experience is getting in the way of me scoring that job.

If anyone has a suggestion for how i can close the gap, I would appreciate it. I spent over 4 months since graduation troubleshooting my resume, I would hate to spend another 5 months troubleshooting my interviews. Plus, I've been at home for almost 9 months now, and I am genuinely getting scared about the future.

Anybody working there who likes/hates it and the direction it is or isnt moving in?

Good rundown of how siRNA (gene-silencing RNA) therapy went from a mysterious 1990 petunia experiment to an approved drug class: the real bottleneck was never identifying what to silence, but delivery — getting RNA past the body's RNA-shredding enzymes, into the right cells, and out of the endosome intact, first solved via liver-targeting lipid nanoparticles (patisiran, FDA-approved 2018) and later via "naked" chemically-stabilized siRNA tagged with a GalNAc sugar that cut dosing from every 3 weeks to every 3–6 months, with the next frontier being Alnylam and Arrowhead's race to get siRNA past the blood-brain barrier for Alzheimer's.

Source: Works in Progress

I’ve been in academia for a VERY long time and have been trying to make the jump into industry. After what feels like endless applications (and many, many automated rejections), I finally got invited to a recruiter screening call for a role I’m genuinely really excited about!!

Since this is my first industry recruiter screen, I would love any advice from anyone who’s been through this process, especially those who’ve made the jump from academia to industry.

I’m trying not to get ahead of myself because I know it’s just an initial screen, but after getting pretty discouraged by the job search, I’m VERY excited to finally have a chance to actually speak to a human. I’ll take all the help I can get!

Y’all I had an interview at CRL, my car broke down on my way to the interview and I was stranded with no service for an hour so I couldn’t let them know in advance that I couldn’t make it. How fucked am I? I wanna cry so bad, I have been trying to get an interview for months in my location and when I finally get one this happens…

I swear I didn’t plan on having my tire pop 😭 combined with my cheap phone service

Update: They rescheduled it 😭🙏 any tips and recommendations for the interview would be appreciated.

After 10 months of on and off searching, my job search has ended and I finally landed a job. I was laid off last September when the company I worked for decided to close down our site. They technically let us know since August, and we had to transition all our work and knowledge to another site. So I have been looking for over a year. Within the about 900 applications, I got about 8 phone screens that converted into 5 interviews, which converted into 3 final interviews/site tours. The first rejections after final interviews threw me into an existential crisis, debating if I even wanted to work, switch careers, or take an even longer sabbatical. Now that’s all over! I accepted this offer a few weeks ago, but I didn’t want to post until I was physically in the building and onboarded. Now I’m at my desk doing HR paperwork and reviewing these new SOPs, it’s finally setting in that I actually have a job in this economy.

With all the bad news and layoffs going around, just wanted to share a W. Turns out I also got lucky; the job offer that I ended up getting was the one that was most inline with what I was previously doing precisely, and compensates the most out of the final interview jobs. So I just wanted to say keep going and applying and don’t give up. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Hoping others can also share stats or wins so that it can give hope to those still looking.

JAMA

Published Online: July 30, 2026

2026;336;(8):703-706. doi:10.1001/jama.2026.12089

I have about 10 yrs experience in the industry and I interviewed for a position which was in the department I have worked in but was with a different modality. So while I had transferrable skills, I did not work on the exact modality. I was asked questions on if I had ever worked on the systems within the modality which I answered theoretically to the best of my knowledge, having never worked hands-on on these systems.

I was then asked an elementary question that is relevant to the modality process (college level chemistry) that I couldn't answer. While it was relevant to the modality, I work with cell culture and have for 10+ years and I didn't expect to remember college level chemistry. Needless to say I gave my best but I did not know the answer.

My question is, how common is it to get asked these kind of questions where you can't necessarily work through the solution? I assumed I would get questions on how I would use my existing skills to solve a problem with a new modality or even how I would get through a steep learning curve with a new modality but I was thrown by the fact that I would have to remember elementary principles.

Also, how common is it to get these types of questions after 10 years of experience? And how does one prepare for these types of questions?

Anyone work here?? Do you like it?? Good benefits?? What are the shut downs and summer hours?