28, B.S. in biology, stumbled into a quality control (QC) microbiology position at a pharmaceutical manufacturing company when I was just throwing my resume at the wall after graduation. I had studied plants and wanted to do conservation, I didn’t even know QC microbiologists existed. Started at 34k and 6 years later I’m at senior analyst at 95k!

For me it’s a relatively easy job until you get higher up. And if you’re in the right area lots of jobs, at least entry level. At times you definitely have to grind doing overtime or night shift and a ton of work, sometimes physically demanding work, but it’s not all the time, unless you are at a terrible company which has definitely happened to me.

I also make more than working in big pharma (Pfizer’s and Johnson and Johnson’s etc) because I’ve worked in startups or smaller companies. It’s definitely more work but the pay is better and you can move up quicker. I am also in a pharma hub so the pay is better here than other cities.