>I know quite a few bio/chem people working in pharma as well. That industry is booming but mostly for the people that own pharmaceutical companies not their employees. There's a reason that most biologists from good school would rather be bad data scientist that good lab workers in pharma/bio tech. The pay is much worse and pharma/bio tech don't treat there employees nearly as well as big tech companies do.

yep, that's why i left the industry. the companies know that the science staff are willing to work for less, so long as they have the opportunity to do what they're interested in. so they end up working for much less.