Pharma, you're not a good place to go

Just visited an old-favourite blog of mine – the excellent "In the pipeline" by Derek Lowe.

By going though the last 5 or so pages, it's clear what's the hiring state in the industry that once was

Merck Cuts Chemistry
Layoffs at Takeda
AstraZeneca Cutting Back Again
Layoffs at Medimmune

To balance that there was one positive news
Merck Expanding on the West Coast

The blog posts are for the span between July 2016 and Sept 2016.

Now, this is no hard numbers but gives me an "anecdotal nudge" that field/industry is in atrophy. When is the last time you saw any of the computer-science shops with similar headlines? "Google cuts down on software engineers", "Facebook re-organizes and lays-off data scientists",  anybody? It simply doesn't happen, not at this scale.

If you're a young student, grad or post grad in life sciences, consider your options carefully. Academia is marred with fierce competition over small resources. There is a saying in starcraf2 "when ahead, get more ahead" – when you know how to code, get better at how you code.

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