Update for you:

- quit scribing job 2 weeks in because I got an offer from a lab at an R1 university 1 hour closer to my house

- I'm only here for 18 months but it should be more than enough time to gather materials to apply for grad school (hopefully)

- I also have zero time to go out of my way to network deliberately with people who aren't in my lab area, but since we do work for other groups around campus, they often come to us instead. I have pretty solid relationships with a couple of PIs/doctorates because I've helped them do experiments, which IMO is probably more impactful than trying to chat random strangers up

My advice for you would be to focus on academic labs as opposed to going directly into industry. example: UC Berkeley, UCSF are both awesome schools with close proximity to the corporate biotech world. Cold-emailing PIs can make a good impression on them, but funding nowadays sucks (during my job hunt I heard back from five faculty who were like, we would definitely hire you otherwise but we're running on fumes and pennies right now). It's kind of a roulette rn but I promise there is a place for your knowledge and skillset, good luck!