The AbbVie Culture Change Continues: 100 Scientists Will Be Laid Off

[Anonymous]

Heard this as well from my DM. BMS, Genentech, Merck are pursuing immunotherapy drugs that will revolutionize CA therapy. Abbvie R&D is still working on old approaches and we won't have a market should any of our drugs get approved in the next ten years. Facts are facts and I am not drinking the Kool Aid anymore. Be informed and take care of you and your family FIRST!!!! I am going to interview with companies that have a pipeline!!!!!!!!

So sorry to tell you companies that have a pipeline aren't interested in hiring a pod monkey. Your chances are very slim sunshine unless you are coming to the table with legitimate medical credentials. Maybe you can work the Vitamix blender display at Costco.

 

[Anonymous]

So sorry to tell you companies that have a pipeline aren't interested in hiring a pod monkey. Your chances are very slim sunshine unless you are coming to the table with legitimate medical credentials. Maybe you can work the Vitamix blender display at Costco.

If I do, I will definitely see you sweeping the floors, PhD Moron!!

 

[Anonymous]

Dear R&D: Welcome to the REAL WORLD!! The sales force has been cut repeatedly over the past 5 years because on NO NEW DRUGS!! Families and careers were NEGATIVELY AFFECTED!! Now it is your turn to pay for your lack of productivity!!!!! Cry a few more tears for me, you LOSERS!!!!

 

[Anonymous]

Dear R&D: Welcome to the REAL WORLD!! The sales force has been cut repeatedly over the past 5 years because on NO NEW DRUGS!! Families and careers were NEGATIVELY AFFECTED!! Now it is your turn to pay for your lack of productivity!!!!! Cry a few more tears for me, you LOSERS!!!!

R&D has had layoffs every other year since 2007. Do you really think that sales people are the only ones who have ever been let go at Abbott/AbbVie? At least you don't see the others whining constantly about it on these boards like some of the sales folks do.

Every pharma company has shed thousands of sales jobs in the last 5 years, including companies that are have much more robust pipelines than AbbVie. The reason your jobs are going away has more to do with changing regulations/ethics and the boom in technology. Direct to consumer advertising, something Abbott never liked to do in the past, is also replacing face to face interactions with doctors. Why pay you when they can pay for a 60 second slot that gets run over and over again on the Lifetime Channel? Let the patient do the selling.

The other reason is that, frankly, doctors never really liked interacting with you, and now that you can't bring them stuff they don't bother. It must have been hard to accept that the only reason they tolerated you was to get free food and pens. Now that you can't give them anything, they don't have time for you. That *gotta* hurt a little, maybe make you feel a bit like a whore?

Large sales forces no longer provide the cost benefit they once did. The game changed, and slowly you are becoming obsolete, at least in the US. Blame the scientists all you want, more drugs won't mean more sales jobs, just more commercials, iPad apps and magazine ads.

 

[Anonymous]

R&D has had layoffs every other year since 2007. Do you really think that sales people are the only ones who have ever been let go at Abbott/AbbVie? At least you don't see the others whining constantly about it on these boards like some of the sales folks do.

Every pharma company has shed thousands of sales jobs in the last 5 years, including companies that are have much more robust pipelines than AbbVie. The reason your jobs are going away has more to do with changing regulations/ethics and the boom in technology. Direct to consumer advertising, something Abbott never liked to do in the past, is also replacing face to face interactions with doctors. Why pay you when they can pay for a 60 second slot that gets run over and over again on the Lifetime Channel? Let the patient do the selling.

The other reason is that, frankly, doctors never really liked interacting with you, and now that you can't bring them stuff they don't bother. It must have been hard to accept that the only reason they tolerated you was to get free food and pens. Now that you can't give them anything, they don't have time for you. That *gotta* hurt a little, maybe make you feel a bit like a whore?

Large sales forces no longer provide the cost benefit they once did. The game changed, and slowly you are becoming obsolete, at least in the US. Blame the scientists all you want, more drugs won't mean more sales jobs, just more commercials, iPad apps and magazine ads.

OMG! IS this your thesis paper for a PhD?

 

[Anonymous]

R&D has had layoffs every other year since 2007. Do you really think that sales people are the only ones who have ever been let go at Abbott/AbbVie? At least you don't see the others whining constantly about it on these boards like some of the sales folks do.

Every pharma company has shed thousands of sales jobs in the last 5 years, including companies that are have much more robust pipelines than AbbVie. The reason your jobs are going away has more to do with changing regulations/ethics and the boom in technology. Direct to consumer advertising, something Abbott never liked to do in the past, is also replacing face to face interactions with doctors. Why pay you when they can pay for a 60 second slot that gets run over and over again on the Lifetime Channel? Let the patient do the selling.

The other reason is that, frankly, doctors never really liked interacting with you, and now that you can't bring them stuff they don't bother. It must have been hard to accept that the only reason they tolerated you was to get free food and pens. Now that you can't give them anything, they don't have time for you. That *gotta* hurt a little, maybe make you feel a bit like a whore?

Large sales forces no longer provide the cost benefit they once did. The game changed, and slowly you are becoming obsolete, at least in the US. Blame the scientists all you want, more drugs won't mean more sales jobs, just more commercials, iPad apps and magazine ads.

RRRROWWRR.....we've got quite the little cat fight going on at ol' AbbVie. Look, folks, we're getting squeezed at both ends. R & D because companies hope to save billions by getting compounds from someone else's work, and the salesforce because so many mass market drugs have gone generic or lost their cachet due to clinical failure. The gobbling up of private medical practices by corporate medicine also means it all comes down to the bottom line. Every minute a physician spends with a rep is a minute no revenue is being generated. Doctors are being held to performance standards that hurt them financially if they don't meet them, and reps slow down production.
Maybe everybody could put the claws away.

 

[The Ghost of Andre Pernet]

The problem is that companies *don't* really save money by purchasing their assets externally. Discovery is actually the inexpensive part of the R&D equation, and the success rate for in-licensed compounds that aren't already on the market isn't much greater than internally developed ones. Abbott/AbbVie spent just short of $1B total with Reata to get Bardoxolone and IP rights to targets. We won't get anything from that transaction. That's probably 5 years worth of Discovery spend down the drain in one clinical failure.

With everyone in the industry trying to buy clinical compounds, most of them with much deeper pockets, the cost for in-licensing continues to rise. How does AbbVie compete with the likes of Pfizer for clinical assets when they have $30B sitting in the bank to spend? By being smarter? C'mon. The new CSO/R&D head better be a miracle worker.

You want to know why AbbVie Discovery isn't more successful? No good targets to work on. That falls squarely on Sullivan and his predecessor Norbeck. Starting a dedicated area solely to find new targets was something they needed to do 5-7 years ago, not last year. The cupboard's bare, and that's management's fault. The best scientists in the world can't turn bad targets into gold.

But, by all means, let's fire the bench scientists and keep the managers. That'll help.

 

[Anonymous]

The problem is that companies *don't* really save money by purchasing their assets externally. Discovery is actually the inexpensive part of the R&D equation, and the success rate for in-licensed compounds that aren't already on the market isn't much greater than internally developed ones. Abbott/AbbVie spent just short of $1B total with Reata to get Bardoxolone and IP rights to targets. We won't get anything from that transaction. That's probably 5 years worth of Discovery spend down the drain in one clinical failure.

With everyone in the industry trying to buy clinical compounds, most of them with much deeper pockets, the cost for in-licensing continues to rise. How does AbbVie compete with the likes of Pfizer for clinical assets when they have $30B sitting in the bank to spend? By being smarter? C'mon. The new CSO/R&D head better be a miracle worker.

You want to know why AbbVie Discovery isn't more successful? No good targets to work on. That falls squarely on Sullivan and his predecessor Norbeck. Starting a dedicated area solely to find new targets was something they needed to do 5-7 years ago, not last year. The cupboard's bare, and that's management's fault. The best scientists in the world can't turn bad targets into gold.

But, by all means, let's fire the bench scientists and keep the managers. That'll help.

No, let's just fire everyone, top to bottom and with the savings buy a whole new drug co. that actually works, or better yet let's all quit and get jobs at a drug co. w/ a pipeline.

 

[Anonymous]

RRRROWWRR.....we've got quite the little cat fight going on at ol' AbbVie. Look, folks, we're getting squeezed at both ends. R & D because companies hope to save billions by getting compounds from someone else's work, and the salesforce because so many mass market drugs have gone generic or lost their cachet due to clinical failure. The gobbling up of private medical practices by corporate medicine also means it all comes down to the bottom line. Every minute a physician spends with a rep is a minute no revenue is being generated. Doctors are being held to performance standards that hurt them financially if they don't meet them, and reps slow down production.
Maybe everybody could put the claws away.

I'm only a CC rep so what does cachet mean? How dare you make excuses for R&D, I am going to be AXED because R&D has done nothing for two decades!! Go suck on a dog turd!!

 

[Anonymous]

I'm only a CC rep so what does cachet mean? How dare you make excuses for R&D, I am going to be AXED because R&D has done nothing for two decades!! Go suck on a dog turd!!

Agreed. While R&D has done nothing over the last 10 years. Here is what other companies have produced. It's a total travesty.

Company Number of new drugs
Johnson & Johnson 13
GlaxoSmithKline 11
Novartis 10
Pfizer 10
Bristol-Myers Squibb 9
Merck&Co 9
Hoffmann-La Roche 8
Amgen 5
Bayer 5
Genzyme 5
AstraZeneca 4
Boehringer-Ingelheim 4
CSL Behring 4
Eisai 4
Forest 4
Genentech 4
Lilly 4
Shire 4
Takeda 4
Astellas 3
Baxter 3
Biogen Idec 3
BioMarin 3
Gilead 3
Mylan 3
Regeneron 3
Sanofi 3
Schering-Plough 3
Wyeth 3
Amylin 2
Aventis 2
Cangene 2
Celgene 2
Ferring 2
Lundbeck 2
Novo Nordisk 2
Salix 2
Sanofi Aventis 2
Schwarz 2
Teva 2
Vertex 2
Source: InnoThink Center for Research in Biomedical Innovation, FDA

 

[Anonymous]

Wow! Were is Abbott on this list??? No wonder they canned Leonard and I heard that there will be a major house cleaning in R&D. The report card is F-!! Man, I am angry now! I bust my butt to sell our drugs and what did the R&D people do?? Eat bagels?!?!

 

[Anonymous]

Agreed. While R&D has done nothing over the last 10 years. Here is what other companies have produced. It's a total travesty.

Company Number of new drugs
Johnson & Johnson 13
GlaxoSmithKline 11
Novartis 10
Pfizer 10
Bristol-Myers Squibb 9
Merck&Co 9
Hoffmann-La Roche 8
Amgen 5
Bayer 5
Genzyme 5
AstraZeneca 4
Boehringer-Ingelheim 4
CSL Behring 4
Eisai 4
Forest 4
Genentech 4
Lilly 4
Shire 4
Takeda 4
Astellas 3
Baxter 3
Biogen Idec 3
BioMarin 3
Gilead 3
Mylan 3
Regeneron 3
Sanofi 3
Schering-Plough 3
Wyeth 3
Amylin 2
Aventis 2
Cangene 2
Celgene 2
Ferring 2
Lundbeck 2
Novo Nordisk 2
Salix 2
Sanofi Aventis 2
Schwarz 2
Teva 2
Vertex 2
Source: InnoThink Center for Research in Biomedical Innovation, FDA

Abbott/AbbVie arrogance leaves no room for discovery. When I joined R&D what did I hear from some bombastic pompous manager..."oh you worked at some little companies". My little companies are all on this list and they launched many drugs in the last 10 years while all Abbott R&D did was write up busywork procedures to follow, create dozens of ass-covering metric charts to complete, and direct subordinates on which other asses to kiss in order to get ahead. What an annoying & fruitless snooze it was to work here.

 

[Anonymous]

Abbott/AbbVie arrogance leaves no room for discovery. When I joined R&D what did I hear from some bombastic pompous manager..."oh you worked at some little companies". My little companies are all on this list and they launched many drugs in the last 10 years while all Abbott R&D did was write up busywork procedures to follow, create dozens of ass-covering metric charts to complete, and direct subordinates on which other asses to kiss in order to get ahead. What an annoying & fruitless snooze it was to work here.

You should take Sullivan's job!! This is the first time I have seen this list of companies and how can Miles and Gonzo still keep their jobs with this embarrassment - no excuse me, criminal incompetence!!!!!!

 

[Anonymous]

I'm only a CC rep so what does cachet mean? How dare you make excuses for R&D, I am going to be AXED because R&D has done nothing for two decades!! Go suck on a dog turd!!

Sorry, Sluggo, but I'm a CC rep, too. You have a college degree and don't know what "cachet" means, or how to find out? Sounds like you were lucky to ever land a pharma job to begin with. After June 26, maybe you can get a job cleaning up dog turds.

 

[Anonymous]

You should take Sullivan's job!! This is the first time I have seen this list of companies and how can Miles and Gonzo still keep their jobs with this embarrassment - no excuse me, criminal incompetence!!!!!!

Thanks! I would but Gonzo probably wouldn't hire me because I have a college degree and it's a BA not a BS. I never majored in BS like the chiefs of this horse and phony show.

 

[Anonymous]

While they are at it, they should cut the HEOR group. There's way too many of them, and just what do they do anyway?

 

[Anonymous]

While they are at it, they should cut the HEOR group. There's way too many of them, and just what do they do anyway?

Pretend to bring value! LMAO!!!!!!

 

[Anonymous]

I am amazed that it has taken this long for management to actually realize our investments in R&D hasn't returned a single penny for shareholders!! Shouldn't the board of Directors been aware of the money hole that is R&D and cleaned house at least 10 years ago! Who is managing the future!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

 

[Anonymous]

We are the future! We can do it together, as one!

 

[Anonymous]

We are the future! We can do it together, as one!

OH No!!! Are you saying they are going to layoff everyone but ONE person and that person will be stuck with all the freakin work? WTF!!! You have got to be kidding... Who will the chosen one be? Not I said Me and the little red hen. Will it be Ricky? Sure hope so.