I'd have to wholeheartedly agree here. At my company, I have yet to meet a single person who has been fired or let go. There are many people in my therapeutic area (oncology) and functional area (early clinical development) who have been here for over a decade, and there are those who have left on their own accord. I think this varies greatly based on your functional area and company. Being in early clinical development with a large company and large pipeline, you're upstream of the affects of most drug trial failures, though the performance and health of the company as a whole definitely affects our stability. With a small company, it is high-risk, high-reward, but with a large company it's certainly less risky with great salary too. And as
@Jbrl mentioned, if you are already employed in a major hub, you have plenty of opportunities with other companies there. And it's kind of insane how often you get reached out by recruiters. Since April 1st, I've had 7 recruiters reaching out to see if I was interested in clinical development roles with their clients.
Personally, I find the work more enjoyable and exciting in industry, and I love the employee culture of most companies in industry. In terms of the work I do, it's really freaking cool to have one of my patients with metastatic, relapsed or refractory pancreatic cancer go on our investigational product and experience a duration of stable disease of over 100 weeks in a phase 1 trial. And regarding the culture, I love the flexibility to work from home, the celebrations for new product approvals, the focus on the science, and the highly collaborative environment. There are plenty of things I don't like here, but for me, the pros vastly outweigh the cons, and I prefer this setting to most other traditional pharmacist settings.