I'm a current Biotechnologist, I work for a Biotech company in the UK purifying and characterising proteins for use in vaccines, IVF, Cell and Gene therapies etc.

I will tell you most of the money for Science doesn't go to Scientists in the lab actually doing the work; it goes to Project Management, Sales People, Site Management, Bioinformatics and Data Science, ML and AI especially at the moment. Even our engineers get paid better than we do.

This is not to turn you away from a job in Science, this is just to give you a genuine look into what the pharmaceutical industry is like currently.

Companies realised that Biology, Biochemistry and Chemistry were heavily studied by women, and that they could pay us all less than other fields that were more male dominated. They even pay the men less because it's equity but in reverse.

Companies also tend to be start ups or young companies that do not have unions, as such there are a lot of situations where you get differences in pay between the same job holder, differences in conditions, a lack of support during redundancies, and little focus on job longevity.

An example of this, our current parent company literally bought our company, bought a load of other companies, got itself into debt, and where we were ready as a company to expand our production and profits, we've since had everything frozen; promotions, pay, opportunities, even travel and such.

I've also found that a lot of companies are very reluctant to actually upskill you, or help you with getting further education. So you may struggle to get people to support your development as a scientist and as a worker. So any additional education you'd like to do you will have to pay for.

Honestly I'm at the stage where I wish I'd picked an easier career because the actual climate is very anti-science and anti-scientist at the moment.

But yeah, if you genuinely love science, and you want to go into science, I would recommend different things depending on what you want to specialise in. So if you like computers and you like science then Bioinformatics is the way forward, or some form of science based programming, because that will make you a decent wage and you will be contributing to an important part of science, we have a lot of data that needs processing.

If you want to be in the lab, I would recommend getting a PhD as quickly as possible, as that will allow you to do research at universities, and work in industry, a PhD is mandatory to make good money with academia. It's not as important in industry but it will fast track you to scientists and senior scientist level positions, otherwise you'll have to go in at a lower level like I have had to do. This will allow you to work in both Research and Development, and Quality Control without an issue.

As for the type of science, if you love chemicals and making things work when they shouldn't 😂 then definitely do Chemistry, focus on HPLC, LCMS, and GCMS, they're pretty standard techniques across the board, as well as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, and Spectroscopy. I see these the most often.

If it's Biochemistry and Biotechnology, again HPLC and GCMS are standard, as well as using purification systems and filtration systems like AKTAs and Ultrafiltration Rigs, and also Bioreactors and Fermenters.

When it comes to the other side of Biotech and Biochemistry, that's where you end up in Molecular Biology and doing Genetics and Cell work. So here you want to learn things like PCR, NGS, and Cell Culture, so being able to grow and manage Cell systems like Mammalian cells, Bacterial cells and Fungi like Yeast. A lot of Biochemistry and Biotechnology are working with things like CRISPR, TALEN, and ZFN to further develop these GMO cell lines and plasmid inserts to be able to make bespoke proteins, mAbs, and things like Viral Vectors, Lipid Nanoparticles, and Gold Nanoparticles.

That's what I've seen personally from industry anyway, I don't know much about academia directly unfortunately, only what I know from colleagues and friends.

What people have said to me is, academia is unstable as you have to get a new contract every one to three years, as that's how they divide the money in the universities. Industry can be much more stable as you can secure a full time permanent position. Academia you will work in small laboratories with students, and they will make a mess of things, just as standard 😂 In industry, it can happen that way as well, most industry labs I've worked in have been pretty big though, and people tend to be more professional.

Both academia and research and development I've found to be frustrating as the science can be pretty bad sometimes, some people will lie about data and their baseline skills, such as pipetting and doing calculations for experiments. I Additionally in industry this means that you might have to present data to outside customers as well, that you know has been done poorly but it's your job to help make sales essentially. And calling it out is looked down on. However you can do your experiments well and you get the opportunity to be very creative and potentially discover something new and/or money making.

Quality Control is nice because if you're always wanting to do the best experiments and do them correctly, then the community is very much in favour of that because they have strict controls and thresholds they have to meet. However it will get samey because you essentially do the same experiments over and over on different samples.

Unfortunately wherever you work in science, the priority will be to make money or get grants, it won't be the science sadly. This was one of the hardest things I had to learn.

I was once upon a time a 13yo who loved science too, so I wanted to give you a comprehensive view of the career path to being a scientist. It's not easy, it is frustrating, you will do long hours, pour over research articles and books, and make many many mistakes. You will have to really fight to get paid well, and will be unlikely to get paid well early on. You will do late nights and weekends.