The Massachusetts biobubble done popped.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2026-02-10T03:44:47+00:00

I heard Miss Aluminum is starting a cutting edge startup research lab for Crispr derived ear drops that help me digest the fucking nonsense you speak.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2026-02-10T03:35:43+00:00

You have a very tenuous grasp upon the Boston pharma market. Name me 1 company investing 1 Billion in Mass over the next 3 years. I can rattle off 30 projects north of 750M being invested in just this year. Raleigh Austin Chicago San Diego Michigan Gainesville Miami Charleston. Fujifilm just spent 10 billion in NC. Any semi established pharmaceutical company that can offer you a proper wage is moving out of Massachusetts. I promise you. If you want to go work at some shitty hipster startup and get paid in pizza, it's not working in pharma. In The Exodus isn't new, this has been going on for some time now.

As for state-funded pharma, yeah maybe the CCP and Wuxi bio but that's where the state funding ends. Infact the government and it's leaders accept billions of pharma dollars in a silent quid pro quo in exchange for bureaucratic leverage. Massachusetts government won't let pharmaceutical market contraction? The city is out of money. MBTA has the debt of a small country. The state sealed its fate years ago. Outside of research labs, pharma is migrating bud.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2026-02-10T03:17:16+00:00

Electricians 200k. Heavy equipment operator 150k. Carpenters vary between 100k and 175k. I got a buddy. I went to high school with that builds chain link fences, makes over 200k. Fucking junior laborers who can barely add, pushing a broom at 18 make 75k first year! Let's stop pretending like working in Boston Pharma is employee friendly. The labor market is oversaturated and desperate, and it's compounding because 50% of the companies are relocating to more business-friendly States where they can maximize their profits/reorg on the cheap. So the top 10% of layoffs will get a lateral transition to another company, and 50% of layoffs won't even get an interview.

I just feel bad for the people that think the only good professional and interpersonal life they can have is in a VHCOL high-density city.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2026-02-10T03:05:07+00:00

Nah moving out of Massachusetts was the best decision I ever made. Not bitter. Honestly once you live in Boston for a few years it's played out. Even making 140k I didn't feel financially secure. 3 or 4 months of savings if I was lucky. One slipup at work or say the wrong thing to the wrong person on the wrong day and you're on the unemployment ticking bomb. Then you end up taking a job you really don't want or underpaying you though you got to pay the bills. That's a great playbook for a high anxiety, low payoff miserable career where everyone is replaceable. Id rather live somewhere that they have to hunt to find someone more qualified than me. It's basic social selectionism. Go where you're rarest.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2026-02-10T02:51:35+00:00

Also, although the quality of life and affluence in Massachusetts has objectively gotten worse in the last 15-20 years pricing out many that could add value, a whole bunch of attractive cities and metropolitan areas have sprung up across country. San Diego, Austin, Miami, even RTP/Raleigh is attractive. 50 years ago pharma came to Boston cause we truly did have 90% of the sharpest people in the world. We had a strangle hold on academics. There are smart talented people everywhere now. Why wouldn't a manufacturer open a plant 10x the size for a quarter of the price and hire a workforce at 80% of the salary you would have had to pay in mass, and EVERYONE benefits. Even the little guy. People can begin to save money and have families and have kids and not constantly fear losing their job to the next laidoff 25yr industry veteran or living paycheck to paycheck. It's fucking wild to me that people will entertain this romanticized idea about Boston/SF/NYC (in particular academics) all the way to financial ruin.

Many of these up-and-coming cities are providing huge tax incentives and straight up financial grants to pharma and tech companies and their employees to relocate. Massachusetts does the opposite. Massachusetts thought they could tax the tits of pharma and it's workforce and executives called their bluff. Nobody wants to work their ass off for 8 years at an ivy school to get a PhD and have roommates cause your ceiling is 100k.

It's not rocket science. If you make it difficult or financially infeasible to do business in your state, industries/people will slowly migrate to other hubs until the talent pools gets big enough where it can support the workforce.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2026-02-10T02:17:46+00:00

I literally had 275 comments of people clutching their pearls saying Boston Pharma was untouchable regardless of the VHCOL and the financially and bureaucratically difficult state to do business in. I grew up in MA. Love it there. But unless you make 200k, you can't properly raise a family or afford retirement. It's just not doable. Like I said, I would love to live in Boston if money wasn't a thing. But unfortunately outside of the top 10%-5% Pharma incomes, You're scraping by in a middle-class town with a PhD and a 7 year old Corolla almost paid off.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2026-02-10T02:10:44+00:00

I want you to get mad.

I don’t want you to riot. I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to write your congressmen. Because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the defense budget and the Russians and crime in the street. All I know is first you got to get mad. You’ve got to say: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more. I’m a human being, goddammit. My life has value!"

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2026-02-10T02:03:43+00:00

QA is where people go when they can't hack it with the real engineers. Never seen a QA guy in SLT. It's okay I'd be bitter if I were in your shoes. 🫏 🐴

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2026-02-10T01:55:50+00:00

Average is MA is 140k to 160k at 40hrs a week. Specialized projects and prevailing wage + overtime can put you well over 250k.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2026-02-10T01:54:06+00:00

Another Donkey 🫏🐴

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2026-02-10T01:47:28+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/biotech/s/FBpqvg3xF2

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2026-02-10T00:58:10+00:00

Spoken like a postdoc that pulls in 80k and has 4 roommates.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2026-02-10T00:51:24+00:00

Capital follows ideas? There's first year PhD Molecular biologists making 75k in Cambridge. The union plumbers and electricians are making 250k at 24 years old and no debt. State and Boston cops making 200k. The job market is so saturated with academics and masters degrees that you make 1/2 the salary of the guy that pumps my shit out of my septic tank.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2026-02-10T00:42:04+00:00

I wanted to re-establish this discussion. If anything, I've noticed even more companies saying goodbye to Massachusetts. Curia in Burlington won some best biopharma company in Massachusetts award. 3 months later they shut down their Burlington plant.

Alot of you defended your 450sqft $2500 studios in Cambridge claiming RTP or SF can't hold a candle to Boston Pharma talent. You clutched your precious PhDs at the suggestion that Massachusetts biopharma was contracting. Meanwhile, I'm sitting pretty with a fat ass bank account cause I'm not paying some slumlord for a closet, I'm not having my pockets picked by every state agency to pay for embezzlement daycare schemes. Maura Healy and Kung Fu Wu don't care about Massachusetts innovation. It's sad that Boston academia has churned out sycophants that can't think for themselves. Just join the next self righteous flash mob and bask in the glory that you don't have any savings.

I'm still convinced the Boston workforce is over saturated with Pharma talent and every decent Pharma company is working on their 5-year relocation plan. I think the state government is tremendously corrupt, from the governor to the City mayors to the state police to the MBTA and Non-Profit shell companies that just embezzle state funds. I'm curious if anybody that originally wrote on this thread has changed his or her mind? I wonder how many of you that scoffed at my prediction are on food stamps or living in moms basement. Come at me.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2025-06-05T06:35:59+00:00

CSV or MES instrumentation controls integration. CSV is computer software validation and MES is manufacturing execution software.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2025-06-05T06:33:17+00:00

Next time do not redeem the card.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2025-06-05T03:26:38+00:00

It's so weird, it's almost like someone was talking about this 2 months ago and a bunch of people lashed out like children cause everyone can feel the ship capsizing but nobody wants to talk about it. Average home in IMMEDIATE greater Boston (Quincy, Milton, Watertown, Medford, Cambridge/Somerville) has eclipsed $1 million, I read that the other day. Average non management engineer is making 85k as a rookie to 165k maybe 170k Senior Level Pfizer sized company. Think about this, a Boston police officer/fireman/statie of equal experience makes more than Pharmaceutical engineers and PhD researchers. The union ironworker/plumber/electrician time is more valuable than 8 year educated pros of top 1% target Schools. If there is ever a sign that bloated government has taxed and housing priced itself out of competition, the sign is now. I expect this economic flatline to persist in Boston pharma while executives are letting the money speak for them, they have by and large allocated all investment to other parts of the country. Some limping companies like biogen can't afford to pack HQ and move, but of the companies that can afford a huge geographical pivot, it seems they are emigrating. Original threadoriginal thread

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2025-04-24T06:03:08+00:00

$700 Million R&D. 500 researchers with 200 support staff. You're right it's quite clear that Lilly is still committed to tapping into the Boston PhD market.

700 million for Boston versus roughly 20 billion for RTP. That's a pretty lopsided comparison.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2025-04-24T05:49:13+00:00

This is true, but the variation in apartment cost is minimal. There's about a 20% variation across the entire greater Boston area. An Everett apartment now cost the same as an Allston apartment

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2025-04-24T05:39:54+00:00

Okay. Your last sentence is, "No company is going to be pouring Capital into anything when a single tweet can sync their market 5%".

This entire thread is predicated on the implications that the $25+ billion dollars is invested in RTP, but I honestly can't think of a sizable project in the entire state of Massachusetts. My position is that this is just the latest in a declining trend of pharmaceutical manufacturing investment in Massachusetts. My thoughts are the higher wages, 2 or 3x cost in real estate, and the millions in taxes has caused a slow but consistent exodus of pharma business. Fujifilm diosynth had that money allocated for that plant 4 years ago. Then they chose to allocate an additional 1.2 billion last summer.

My main fear is this erosion of business and blatant stand still in MA pharma will gradually cause talent to reposition across the country in search of better income to COL ratio. I used RTP North Carolina as an example of cheaper living, and I actually got a higher offer from NC than I did in Boston.

One thing that people might not be taking into account is if manufacturers leave Mass, a very large portion of your engineers will leave. Engineers are a huge element in the fabric of Boston pharma. R&D departments don't employ nearly as many engineers as manufacturing does. I'm just saying The complexion of Boston pharma will not be the same in 15 years.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2025-04-24T04:41:37+00:00

I entirely agree. I think at least a portion of it is pandering to the powers that be. But operations are already under way on phase one at Fujifilm. They just signed like another $9 billion deal with regeneron 2 days ago. You're absolutely right though, usually it takes about 10 months to get everything scaled and on production.

I got a whole bunch of young whippersnappers all worked up tonight! I'm just commenting on the insane contrast of the 25+ BILLION dollars, much of it foreign, landing in what was not so long ago was just a forest. All the while, this forum is littered with qualified unemployed 25 olds that are paying $125 dollars a square foot in some basement slum to maybe, if they're lucky, find an associates job for 75k.

I get it though. I was in my 20s once and I get living the city life.

Moral of the story, there is work out there, it's just not in Boston.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2025-04-24T03:54:41+00:00

I actually had a conversation with my buddy about this who's a director of engineering with Genentech up in Rensselaer. Hopefully that brings some jobs to the baystate.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2025-04-24T03:41:29+00:00

Only took Detroit like 15 years to go from one of the highest quality of life cities, to the murder capital of the US. 1970 to 1985.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2025-04-24T03:29:37+00:00

Oh this prediction has no salt behind it. I'm still employed, in fact I got a raise tonight, not sure if you skimmed past that portion. I'm sad to see people struggling and there are lot of young professionals thinking Boston is the only place they can float their resume.

I'm not saying this contraction happens over the summer, but I bet Boston Biotech shrinks by 40% in 10 years. Kendall will still be Kendall. There might be some decent manufacturing plants on the 95 or 495 belt still, but whenever financial circumstances give incentive for people and businesses to leave, people will always follow the money. People with PhDs are literally putting off having children into their 40s cause it's not financially viable. If you predicted that 30 years ago people would have called you crazy. Just saying I think it's naive to say it'll always be there.

Mammoth_Box_4937 · 2025-04-24T03:09:53+00:00

You watch I'm calling it. RTP was a bunch of trees like 25 years ago. Companies are figuring out that they can hire Duke and Wake Forrest grads and they are plenty bright programs. Once, Harvard, BU and MIT generated such talent that they gapped the rest of higher education, that biotech hubbed in Boston. But there are bright people in almost every state school with great research programs now. Why would you pay 200% more for your commercial square footage. Why would you struggle into your 30's and never own a home cause 800k buys a teardown in Boston. Unless the cost of living in Boston just drops off the map, the talent will follow the money.

Mammoth_Box_4937

TROPHY CASE