Wednesday, November 8, 2017

A few bits of bad news...

Amgen, Genentech cutting some staff (via Endpoints News's Brittany Meiling)
Two biotech giants — Amgen and Genentech — are laying off a combined 330 people at California facilities, both citing “organizational changes” as the primary reason for the cuts. 
Amgen is shaking up its R&D department, eliminating 200 positions at its Thousand Oaks, CA and South San Francisco facilities by the end of this year, STAT reported Saturday. An Amgen spokesperson tells me the company is making organizational changes across the globe in regards to its R&D departments. This round of layoffs, however, mostly impacts facilities in California.... 
...For Genentech, the layoffs are concentrated at its Vacaville, CA manufacturing facility, where about 1,000 people are employed. Genentech (owned by Roche) is cutting 130 positions....
Also, in the news in Indianapolis (via WBOI's Annie Ropeik):
At Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, 2,300 employees will take buyouts as part of the company’s effort to save money by cutting at least 2,000 jobs in the U.S. by the end of the year. 
It’s unclear whether layoffs are still in the works in the Hoosier state. 
Lilly said in September it would aim to save $500 million by cutting 3,500 jobs out of its more than 41,000 worldwide, with at least 2,000 cut in the U.S....
 Best wishes to those affected. 

5 comments:

  1. I left pharma this year for something I felt to be more stable, albeit still in lab. I am curious CJ's and other user's thoughts as to what they feel is a more stable, or even, a growing branch of chemistry yet still being a bench chemist, for example, coatings, fine chemicals, petro, etc.

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    1. I’m currently working as an ink chemist and I have colleagues who have been here all their careers (>30 years). They say is stable, I’m not so sure. However, I think the most exciting field is drug discovery because of the impact it has on people’s life’s.

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    2. I agree that any pharma-based job seems to attract the most chemists and the highest pay, but it is also more volatile. While the chemistry was more exciting in pharma, I'll take a more stable career 8 days a week. I don't going to work every day wondering if I will be axed today.

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  2. I don't LIKE* going to work every day wondering if I will be axed today...

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  3. This would be a great blog post topic. Which positions are more stable within chemistry? (At all levels BS, MS, PhD)

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20