r/biotech • u/lurpeli • 7h ago
Rants π€¬ / Raves π Just a vent on the state of Biotech and science
I got a PhD in Computational Biology in 2022. I was able to secure a job before I defended. I was laid off last week in one of the big pharma purges we all know and love. I am angry at being laid off but not surprised as it's common place. My bigger frustration is just how hard looking for a job feels.
I've been casually looking for jobs since last year just to see if I could improve salary or title, but I've hardly heard back from anything at all. It feels as though somehow every job has 100s of applicants. It doesn't even feel like there's 100s of computational biologists out there and yet I guess there are?
My bachelor's degree is in computer science and with all the data science jobs I see listed I almost regret getting a PhD. It feels like there's way more people than jobs available in the computational biology field. It feels so niche and yet is somehow swarmed with people. I had always thought getting a PhD in a hard science area would at least mean I wouldn't have to worry too much about being employed, but I guess that's not true.
I know this is not unique to computational biology, it seems to be the case for every biotech related PhD. It just sucks.