SEATTLE, Wash. — Biotech giant Amgen is shutting down its Seattle-area sites, slashing hundreds of jobs.
It’s just the latest high-profile company to announce big cuts after Microsoft announced 1,350 job layoffs in the Puget Sound alone.
Amgen, which Bloomberg News calls the world’s biggest biotechnology company by sales, is well known for its arthritis drug Enbrel.
Scientist Gary Means told KIRO 7 he’s proud of his work on the drug and feels a sense of loss.
“I’m disappointed,” he said. “I think a lot of good science has come out of the Amgen Washington site.”
Means has worked for Amgen for more than a decade. Before that he worked for Immunex, which was bought out by Amgen.
The 660 Amgen employees at the site just off Elliott Avenue and at Amgen’s smaller site in Bothell will now hold their breaths for a few months.
Select people will get relocation offers. Layoffs will begin at the end of 2014 and continue through 2015, when the site will close down for good. The company will also encourage voluntary retirements.
It'll leave hundreds of scientists looking for jobs at the same time. Means admits there's some fear among his co-workers.
“Seattle has a biotech industry but it's not limitless,” he said. “There's not a limitless capacity to absorb good people, so I think there will be good people who ... it’ll take them a while to figure out what’s next.”
Amgen does not have a recent merger for motivation, as is the case with Microsoft’s layoffs, but both companies are looking to cut costs.
Amgen is leaving Colorado as well to focus on pricey research at its sites in California and Massachusetts instead. The company is headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California.
Its decision to leave worries employees at the Subway franchise down the road, which depends on nearby workers.
“We usually have like 150 orders by the time lunchtime is done,” employee Alice Strassburger said. “We're going to lose a lot of business.”
As for Amgen’s massive waterfront site, a spokesperson told KIRO 7 the company is working with business partners to try to find new occupants, but no company is lined up right now.
KIRO
