I'm currently facing a difficult decision and wanted to get the opinion of people who are in North Carolina biotech.

Here's the background to my situation keeping some things vague to nature of the situation: I have been at one of the largest biopharma companies in R&D specifically translational medicine (not in NC) for just under 2 years after I was a postdoc in academia for 3 years. I was given a very right place right time great opportunity to go from a bench role to an almost pure managerial role within 8 months of starting where I am the head of a lab due to the manager that hired me leaving and duties being split. This was a "soft" promotion however and I still hold my same band title of senior scientist. My current manager is wonderful and I am on the track to make the jump to associate director ideally within the next year. The issue that I am facing is my wife who's current job (associate clinical microbiology director) could only be described as a dumpster fire on a sinking ship that is killing her mental health with no potential for growth. She was reached out by a recruiter for a position with a private medical company in Charolette offering her ~100k more than she makes now on top of a better work life and massively accelerating her career. She's hit a point after interviewing in person where they essentially are asking for what will it take for her to say yes in an offer. I will also mention my job has a strict 60% in office rule and given the nature of my current position a fully remote job is out of the question.

With that my questions are:
What does the current job landscape look like for middle management positions in North Carolina as a whole? I am willing to commute as through my research it appears Charolette is primarily manufacturing and QA, which I do not have experience in (current position is R&D vaccine and antibodies for infectious diseases) and the majority of R&D is located in the RTP.

Is it even possible to get a management position with having only 2 years experience in industry? I am worried this would be a major setback in my career, but realize I am not in that 5+ range of experience yet.

Are their specific resources outside of LinkedIn and the ncbiotech/rtp websites for positions? I haven't had a single recruiter reach out to me on LinkedIn after changing to open to work, which is the opposite when I was on the job market prior to getting my current position.

Lastly, has anyone else been faced with a similar situation where you had to potentially sacrifice a great career/opportunity for your spouse and how did it turn out?

Any other advice/help is much appreciated.

For example -

Let's say a small pharma company took a promising drug to the end of Phase 2 trials, but it didn't have enough money to take it through a long and expensive Phase 3 trial. Would Big Pharma try to scoop up the company "on the cheap" if the drug seemed really promising, and the only reason that the startup failed was because it just ran out of money to continue funding the development of the promising drug? I've read that it can cost $X billions just to take a drug from Phase 1 to Phase 3 to FDA approval and it would be terrible if a really promising new drug just ceased to exist because a small company ran out of money

Hi,

I was wondering if it is worth it to apply for industry postdocs if I will need visa sponsorship. Foe eg: I am looking into the Regeneron postdoctoral program and I was wondering if they provide visa sponsorship for postdocs and if so what kinds it is.

If somebody has experience with this, please let me know if you have any suggestions!

Hi friends, I'm a recent bio grad and I recently landed a job as a lab manager for a small cancer lab. I have some experience with microbio techniques and now ill be learning flow cytometry. I'm treating this year as my gap year. I've always planned to go to school again after undergrad for a higher pay. I never had a strong interest in one research field or another so I'll just go where the money's at (that's why im looking at the biotech industry). I'm planning to get a masters in something, but a brief glance at a couple reddit threads, people say get a job first. What do yall think?

Work or grad school, either way, my mentor recommends going mainland since biotech is there, not where I'm based (Hawaii) and my family. I prefer to stay for now on island since I have almost no expenses living with my parents. My mentor said if I wanna work in biotech, I need to get experience in biotech first. Does it look bad for future employers if I go get a job at a biotech company in Hawaii (idek what my chances are of landing one lol) instead of a mainland company? Or get masters first?

Hi, so I moved to Korea 6 months ago. I started teaching English but so far, although I love the kids I am not a fan of the method and the work hrs. I worked as a Med. Lab tech at a hospital for 3 years before that but I would like to enter the Biotech Industry since it was always an option. I tried looking for a subreddit or online but I wonder if anyone knows of better web sources to find jobs related to the field here. ^^

THIS IS A VENT. I’ve been working at the makers of Humira as a contractor in R&D for almost 2 years. In my department, the only opportunity for contractors to convert to FTEs is when an FTE employee leaves or gets promoted. In my 2 years here, there have been 2 openings. For the most recent opening, many competent, seemingly well-performing contractors have been with the company for a similar amount of time as myself, competing for the single FTE position. Management has conducted interviews for several months, and from what I have heard from my manager, they may be leaning toward an external hire. This opportunity was presented as a contractor-to-hire role. It seems near impossible to get hired at an FTE in a timely manner.

Based off request on my last post to upload my resume for advice - here it is.

Please ignore locations/weird names as I did that for my privacy.

https://preview.redd.it/mjj4hepwu6yd1.jpg?width=805&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4f209fa55c4c13655ada513efea5e4511cfe0c5c

https://preview.redd.it/m4iqcc5xu6yd1.jpg?width=817&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d11f6c062a6f8ddd0968d4db1c61412f4d0b7891

I'm graduating from undergrad in May 2025 with a BS in Genetics and Plant Biology. I'm interested in both Bioinformatics/Genomics and Biotech. Originally I was interested in academia but I might prefer industry. I'm not sure where to start? I'm applying to Internships but other then that does anyone have general advise? What was your journey in Biotech like?

I'm currently a college student in the internship application process and despite cold-calling and meeting with 10-20 people and sending out countless applications- I've not really been able to find myself any interviews.

Any tips?

Too specific for non-scientist roles? Not specific enough? No pubs yet but planning 2 by graduation. TIA.

Ні, I am a 2nd year Pharmaceutical Science student looking for a job. I'm not sure what job titles to search for that will help me gain experience and build my resume. I am currently looking for both part time and full time positions. Thank you

Do they contribute to your 401(k) account at the end of each pay period? At the end of calendar year? Do you work for some that plan to only deposit towards the end of next year (and why is that)?

I landed a position as a senior scientist at a startup earlier this year not too long after finishing my PhD, and things have generally been going well enough. I'm getting exposure to a lot of different aspects from product development to sales to my bread and butter, R&D. I'm not necessarily unhappy at the company or with the position - I'm generally left alone to do my job as I see fit, I'm learning a lot and getting a much better understanding of the "business side" of biotech/medtech, I'm meeting people and making a professional network.

But that doesn't mean everything is sunshine and rainbows. I know that I'm pretty underpaid compared to both my predecessor and others in the area with similar positions at more established companies. The company obviously doesn't have very mature processes, which while expected at a startup, is still frustrating to deal with. The core of my responsibilities aren't really what I want to be doing, at least not entirely, as a career path. I'm pretty silo'd from the rest of the company in day-to-day work, which while being a contributor to being left alone to do my job as I see fit also comes with the downside of not feeling part of the greater company - I feel more like a contract employee than a "real" employee, despite being an employee and not a contractor. Additionally, my wife and I would like to relocate from our current location to a more metropolitan location at some point in the not too distant future (1-2 years).

Eventually, I'd like to either land at a more mature "startup" or with one of the big players in the area, likely in a role with a more routine workflow and better defined processes. Again, I'm not looking to jump ship tomorrow, but I do like to plan for the future. To that end, I'm wondering what everyone's thoughts are regarding how long one should stay in this kinda first role before looking to make a change. I feel like 1 year is kind of the "absolute minimum", but I've also read that staying less than 2-3 years can be a problem. On the flip side, this company is a startup, which I feel lends itself to shorter stays with reasons like "Company ran out of funding" or failed to meet milestones or the company pivoted to a different direction, things like that.

So in trying to at least sketch out a plan for the future and make sure I'm maintaining a course that meets both my life and career goals, I wanted to get your thoughts on opinions on what a normal or acceptable duration for an early career scientist to stay with a startup would be

Watchmaker Genomics marketing team went hard this Halloween 🎃

But I have to ask - Why is the Goblin naked and jacked? For a second I thought I was scrolling through booktok rather than LinkedIn… 👻

I just got a phone call to tell me I was u successful in my application to a medical affair position at a big pharma company. The feedback was all positive ‘you were amazing, so passionate, knowledgeable, spoke and presented really well’ but unfortunately we went with someone else. How am I meant to grow from this? Or learn? Probs an internal candidate. I’m angry and sad and want pastries.

I received an offer from Zymeworks in Redwood City and will need to relocate. Before making such a significant move, I want to weigh all my options.

I’ve heard little about the company, except that there were layoffs last year with no severance provided. If anyone currently works or has worked at Zymeworks, I’d appreciate your insights on potential cons to consider. Specifically, I’m curious about the company culture, work-life balance, any relocation assistance, job security.

Thank you for any information you can share!

I talked to many people working in industry and they all said that soft skills are equally or even more important than technical ones. So I spent one section in my CV (1/4 page out of 2) for them (adaptibility, collaboration, etc.). However, from what I’ve seen in this thread, most CV posted here don’t have those.

I’m just wondering if they’re really important or a waste of space.

Any input will be appreciated. Thanks a lot!!

Hi! I am planning to apply for the masters in biotechnology at brown and wanted to connect with people who are planning to apply. Anyone pursuing the same course or have graduated, can you please give me an idea how your profile looked like and some important things to have in profile to get into brown? Any suggestions are really appreciated.

i’ve been working for a biotech for the past 4.5 years. i was promised a promotion earlier in the year that didn’t happen and it’s due at the end of this year. but at this point im pretty fed up with management and the only friends i had in my job have left so i don’t have anyone im close to. i’m planning to leave march next year after my bonus is paid out but im not sure what to do next. i have a bachelors in biomedical science and this is the only company ive worked for since graduating. i work in drug development specifically protein expression and characterisation and genetic characterisation. i also have previous experience with ELISAs and working to GMP. i enjoy being in the lab but im not sure where i would want to go next or what im truly passionate about. all i know is i want a fresh start. i want to be in a job where i have friends. i even want a bit of a salary increase when i move to my next job. the company i work for is quite good and im sure if i had friends here and got promoted sooner i would be inclined to stay. the salary and benefits are good. the office and lab space is good. the people are nice although its purely a professional relationship and we never do anything outside work. and i have a very varied job role so it’s never boring and im learning constantly. i am really unhappy in my job though. i dont know if its because i lost my sister earlier this year and have felt unsupported and isolated in my grief and i feel like it negatively impacted my career. i dont know if changing jobs will improve how i feel or if the grass will be greener. i am also worried about job security as my current job is very safe but elsewhere people are getting laid off left right and centre. i think it would be a good time to leave after my bonus because i wont get a promotion again for maybe another 2-3 years if im lucky. also i feel ive learned everything i need to know to do my job well. also i’m young and dont want to commit to one company at the age of 26. should i consider changing jobs or not?

I’m curious about your experiences applying for university research positions. How many applications did it take to land your role? How often did you get interview invites, and how many rounds did you usually go through? What can you say about the process in general: is it hard? Would be happy if you can share your story.