4 ms·

There's a huge glut of PhDs and postdocs in the life sciences compared to the number of jobs available. 8K new biology PhDs each year compared to maybe 2K in C

There's a huge glut of PhDs and postdocs in the life sciences compared to the number of jobs available. 8K new biology PhDs each year compared to maybe 2K in CS in the US; probably 25-30K biology postdocs today compared to 1-1.5K CS postdocs. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=37 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=37 Big pharma is cutting R&D left and right, and there aren't enough small companies to provide jobs for all these scientists. There are very few tenure-track positions available, so a career in academia isn't really an option either. Compare this to CS where by the sounds of it there are far more open positions than qualified candidates (not my field, but i hear this all the time) If you are a smart software engineer who just wants to write good code and have good work / life balance, you can make low to mid six figures at a big company. If you are a smart biologist who just wants to do good science and have a good work / life balance....you don't really have many options. You can be an eternal postdoc, but the work life balance isn't that great, and you're making $40-60K, even in your 30s

tschwimmer 8y ago
Why is big pharma cutting R&D?
- jchallis 8y ago
  The past decade of commercial research has failed to deliver the market successes needed to justify the premium. If you look at the biggest winners for pharmaceutical companies over the last decade (immunotherapy is the poster child), most of the research happened in academic labs. Cheaper to license the winners than do basic research yourself.
  - aaavl2821 8y ago
    That's partially true (big pharma r&d has failed to deliver returns) but it is not true that most of the research happened in academic labs. Most of the research and early development happens in small companies. Most of the later stage development happens at big pharma companies
    - Fomite 8y ago
      There's also a melding of those two - there's a big push for university researchers to do commercialization and start startups. Those small companies bear a lot of the risk of early stage development, and then get bought out when they get something promising.

tschwimmer 8y ago

Why is big pharma cutting R&D?

jchallis 8y ago
The past decade of commercial research has failed to deliver the market successes needed to justify the premium. If you look at the biggest winners for pharmaceutical companies over the last decade (immunotherapy is the poster child), most of the research happened in academic labs. Cheaper to license the winners than do basic research yourself.
- aaavl2821 8y ago
  That's partially true (big pharma r&d has failed to deliver returns) but it is not true that most of the research happened in academic labs. Most of the research and early development happens in small companies. Most of the later stage development happens at big pharma companies
  - Fomite 8y ago
    There's also a melding of those two - there's a big push for university researchers to do commercialization and start startups. Those small companies bear a lot of the risk of early stage development, and then get bought out when they get something promising.