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| What would a similar chart from the pharma world look like? Image credit: Falk & Rogers, Harvard/Kennedy School of Government |
It would be really interesting (to me, anyway) to know how many people are voluntarily leaving the pharmaceutical and/or biotech worlds. Where are they going (and why), I wonder? I remember a very promising young bench chemist from my Big Pharma days who decided (months after they were given an internal research award) to start over and head off to the intellectual property world. I sincerely hope that gave the senior management something to think about.
What would be my top 4? Job stability, ability to 'make a difference', company bureaucracy, the outlook for the industry easily come off the top of my head. Readers?
While I don't doubt that the most of the reasons are fairly obvious or well-picked over, it would be a good idea for someone in this industry (or ACS, as if they didn't have enough to do) to find out the numbers, track these folks down and interview them. Scientific data (or pseudo-scientific data) would be enough, I'd think, to end a lot of old arguments and start a lot of new ones.
I want to leave already and I'm in grad school! Ten years of job cuts is seriously a good sign no one wants me to make a difference.
ReplyDeleteI've seen a surprising number of chemists leave the pharmaceutical industry over the past 2-3 years. Although it might have been precipitated by a layoff or company closure, the people who are leaving aren't doing it because they can't find new jobs. Many of them are extremely qualified and could find another pharma job if they wanted. They just reached a breaking point and decided this was the time to look elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteIf I look at my former supervisors (over 12 years in pharma), only one is still working in the pharmaceutical industry. The rest have switched to university teaching, patent law, government and other fields. They all had different motivations, but the main reasons were a feeling that their work was no longer valued and a reluctance to uproot their families in search of a job that might not last.
People have always left pharma, but this is the first time I've seen so many top people leaving the field. That was a major reason I decided not to look for another pharma job.
"a feeling that their work was no longer valued and a reluctance to uproot their families in search of a job that might not last."
ReplyDeleteThis was all I've seen of the pharma industry since I've been in grad school. It's also why, now that I've finished school up and started my career, that I'm going to jump the pharma ship very soon. Might as well live where I want and find a more stable job rather than get jerked around by people I'll never meet.
Stewie Griffin
I think job security (or lack thereof) absolutely plays a large role in the exodus we're seeing from the industry, but there are certainly other issues to consider. For non-PhD's, there are few opportunities in organic chemistry to become leaders. As there don't seem to be enough management/leadership positions for the PhD's in the industry, a BS chemist will more than likely spend their career continuing to crank out compounds. While many of us seek opportunities to take on more responsibility and perhaps even become managers, we have to look to other fields where the ceiling for non-PhD's is higher. Sometimes these fields are related to what we do (patent law, quality assurance, scientific IT), but not always. Personally, I would like to find something that is more versatile, where I can work in more than one type of industry and have a broader choice of places I can live and people I can work with.
ReplyDeleteAlthough people have always transitioned to perceived better career opportunities I would attribute majority of scientists leaving Industry due to incompatible culture with MBA/short term profit mindset. Certainly feeling work no longer valued/disposal resource/just a cog is part of that, along with inane bureaucracy that increase level of daily frustration. Maybe idealistic as I think most people, especially scientists, are attracted to Pharma as means to potentially aid people and because that no longer is an apparent objective they move on to other areas where they feel contributions have impact. Formerly Biotech's retained greater elements for that connection over Big Pharma however sense is even there no longer as substantial with survival/leadership these days is dominated by MBAs.
ReplyDeleteCMCguy
I'm leaving biopharma to return to academia as faculty. Academia has its own problems, but at least you can be your own boss. There's more stability. And I am treated well, not like a disposable resource. I'm even getting a significant raise! I will collaborate with industry labs to maintain my interest in industry science.
ReplyDeleteJust finishing my undergrad, I am not continuing in chemistry because of the poor job outlook and the difficulty in moving up. I think there are a lot of places where a scientific eye is sought after thought, but perhaps not with extra schooling.
ReplyDeleteI left pharma. Got tired of the poor job stability. Didn't want to sit through another meeting talking about what site or disease area the company was going to leave next...
ReplyDeleteAlso have big concerns such as raised by CMCguy about the "incompatible culture with MBA/short term profit mindset." Still in research (outside of pharma), but am pursuing a MBA... Hoping to use the MBA to help me understand the bigger picture and be able to bridge the business/science culture gap.
I work in the pharma industry (QC chemist...or what I like the call the police officer's equivalent of a mall cop) and I start school again in May for small business just 4 years after finishing my BS in chemistry.
ReplyDeleteI'm leaving the industry because it has completely killed aspirations I had to be a chemist. The lack of creativity in my job bores me. I know there are other positions I could eventually be promoted to, like analytical development, but the creativity scale barely budges. I would never want to be a manager in a FDA regulated industry so why continue to waste my time? I think the longer I stick around, the smaller my chances of branching off into a different career path is. I'm pigeon holing myself into a life of QC and losing any research and critical thinking skills I ever had. Anyone could do my job given the training.
Needless to say, I'm completely jaded. Ohh and I got written up for writing the date in a format that isn't in our SOP...
Ashley, e-mail me at chemjobber /at/ gmaildotcom. I'd love to hear your story, if you're willing to answer a few questions. Obviously, confidentiality guaranteed.
ReplyDeleteCMCguy: I'm curious. Do you plan on being honest and upfront about your experiences in industry with your students? On the one hand, you'd be doing them a great service. On the other hand, it might ruffle some feathers in the department.
ReplyDeleteAshley, I'm four years our from my BS also and I hear you on that SOP stuff. And totally agree on the lack of any creativity in QC. It's boring and there is nowhere to go, we're just monkies in the back room. Going to grad school is no better, plenty of ex-QC people there wishing they'd never tried.
ReplyDeleteWhen I hear how much my friends (finance and medicine) make in other fields, I am in utter shock. Not to mention their career progress is great. Networking is a breeze, since they all seemed to get paid travel and work directly with people most days. Once they get older, they won't be thrown in the trash, they'll be asked to run companies or make one themselves. Being a lab rat only seems to lead to more lab rat work, which is becoming scarce these days anyways.
I agree with Anonymous 8:18AM... there aren't enough opportunities for those of us who don't have PhDs. Whether or not people want to admit it, there *is* a ceiling if you don't have an advanced degree.
ReplyDeleteI think that the geographical limitations play a role in the exodus as well. What if you don't want to live in San Francisco or Boston?
I am in my mid 50's and have spent my career in sort of botech/pharma.
ReplyDeleteI have a MS in Chemistry (Not a washout from a PhD program - Did it part-time while working for a major well known cooperation). Until I got laid off 2 years ago, I had been a small pharmaceutical startup for 14 years and had risen to an R&D management position.
At first I wanted to get back into pharma. Pay and benefits were good, my job reasonably interesting and I had worked for good organization (before the FDA torpedoed our NDA wanting other trial we could not afford)... So I wanted more of the same
But with all the mergers and layoffs at big Pharma and the lack of funding for startups, I'm not sure it would be a good idea... Much has changed even at the little companies...
After a long stint being unemployed, I now work as a chemist in another industry back at the bench. I'm getting payed less , the benefits are significantly less, and the lab is not nearly as nice as the one I used to manage, but maybe I am lucky it's not in pharma.
Anon 4:38PM "pursuing a MBA... Hoping to use the MBA to help me understand the bigger picture and be able to bridge the business/science culture gap." I wish you well in that objective as unfortunately I am jaded by having known many Scientists turned MBAs who apparently got a total Brain transplant in the process so did not retain any of the former education.
ReplyDeleteAnon 5:38 believe misdirected as an interesting question I trust Anon 12:39 will pick up on and answer.
CMCguy
@ CMCguy--
ReplyDeleteThis is Anon 4:38pm back.
Indeed I am trying my hardest at that objective (bridging the culture gap), though it is quite an uphill battle. Perhaps you and others can help! :-)
In my classes, there are sometimes simulations or discussions which discuss R&D. Some classmates are clearly clueless about R&D. For example there was a group simulation about a small company that had a scientist who was 'resistant to change'. He also happened to be the principal inventor of all the founding science that the company was started and built upon. We discussed this problem in a small group (6people) setting. About half in my group wanted to fire him because he was a 'troublemaker'. I convinced all but one to keep him, so that's exactly what we did. (I think the point that convinced them was that if they fired that scientist, they are going to reduce morale of the entire engineering department which will screw up productivity and make even more people 'resistant to change'. Noone else really cared that it wasn't fair to fire him based on his scientific accomplishments.) When we rejoined the larger class I was dismayed to find over half the class HAD fired him in the simulation.
I think the biggest thing I am taking from the MBA is it is giving me courage to speak up more. If we scientists need something from management, we have to let them know! If something doesn't make sense at our own company, let your management know! Communication is the only way the bridge between science and business has a fighting chance. Just make sure when you do so to communicate in a way that shows how it makes good business sense. Connect how your scientific needs are important for the bottom line and longevity of the company as a whole.
@Anon 5:40 - I totally understand the "grass is greener" mentality...nearly all my friends that majored in business or accounting have "manager" next to their LinkedIn profiles now...and I bet they weren't taking hydrogenations down at 11PM....
ReplyDelete@Ashley - I feel the creativity lack as well, sometimes. It helps that my current position always has projects from diverse areas of chemistry, but oftentimes when you get right down to it, it's just "buy, stir, sample, send"
Anon 4:38/5:01 CMCguy reply I am encouraged by your approach and agree to a large degree scientists are often not as engaged as they typically should be since prefer to remain lab turtles and not take advantage to interact or participate for positive changes. It does involve communications and starts with recognition of the different perspectives as believe the education/training diverges thought patterns as well as possible personality types (side note James Tingstad had some good books in 90s about how to manage R&D that were distinct from more popular Management books/trends at that time). Sure scientists, and most people I think, can be 'resistant to change' when they don't know reasons why or have been shown potential clear benefits so when mandates or "bi-annual new programs/systems for improved productivity" come down from above initial reactions are going to be less than positive.
ReplyDeleteAs noted many MBAs are clueless about R&D and the example simulation shows shortsightedness (eating seed corn?) that is all too common these days. This is more of a widespread cultural issue with devaluation/lack of science however there does seem to be a mismatch with majority of Pharmas CEO having no/limited experience in drugs development. Its an equal problem when scientists remain ignorant of business needs and rare to find combination in an individual so need executive teams that cover the areas well. Back to an earlier comment I have seen many scientist/engineers promoted to management or move to sales/marketing then get MBAs and subsequently fail to remember how life in the labs. Such people are more infuriating than those with more strict business degrees (who I do expect to be largely clueless) as indeed expect bridges but run into gated towers.
It's not that the scientists get a brain transplant so much as I imagine they get a wallet transplant. Besides, how many mid career scientists with an extra 100k of student loan debt are going to be enthusiastic about changing corporate culture (Especially given Ashley's experience in the simulations, how long before the pack will turn on you Ashley ... tread lightly). The time for martyrdom is best in grad school and maybe your extended postdocs.
ReplyDeleteChanging MBA culture I imagine precedes at a snails pace, and sadly by the time most chemists obtain their MBA they are probably leveraged greatly with a family to support, more debt, and their own mortality. Not saying it's impossible, but it's got to be tricky with many many lost battles along the way.
Point is you don't need a MBA to change the culture. Just a little courage. :-)
ReplyDelete@Anon 5:33 - While I agree that chemists should stand up for themselves more often, there's an even larger barrier to it that no one mentions: work days. While front office people make phone calls, have meetings, send emails, and read documents, your workaday chemist is getting dirty in the hood, ordering, taking analyticals, juggling 3 reactions, inhaling who-knows-what, fixing broken equipment, making stock solutions, interpreting data, and still making less than his front-office counterparts!
ReplyDeleteSo, when the end of the day comes, the MBA says "Wow, I need to stretch and maybe bike home" and the chemist just wants to collapse into a chair with dinner. Culture change is tough to promote when you're always going 90 mph.
OK anon 4:46am brings up an important barrier (excuse) of why chemists don't stand up for themselves. I understand this excuse--as a chemist I've used it many times myself in the past! However, if bridging the culture gap means you can do your work in a more productive way, shouldn't you want to an extra effort for a short period of time to make your life easier in the long run?
ReplyDeleteAs for the generalization about all "front-office" employees, this is just not true. While they aren't in the lab, they can be just as busy, just not doing the same tasks. Juggling meetings, communication, and collaborations in an industry that is rapidly globalizing is not an easy task.
Self-isolation and big egos will get you and the field of chemistry nowhere. If you approach a situation by being pissed off that chemists get a short end of the deal, and that it isn't worth your time to try to work with your "front-office" counterparts, then nothing will change for the better. In fact it most likely will get more and more complicated if you avoid getting involved.
Take outsourcing medchem as an example. Every med-chemist who has a couple months of experience knows that this quickly reduces productivity. You need compounds as quickly as possible to get data to plan your next course of action. Yet, outsourcing compounds, then shipping them to the US and placing tests is becoming more and more common. What happens during the shipment time? Chemists are working and designing blind. This is neither productive or cost effective.
Yet to someone without a background in science, this mode of outsourcing seems like the most efficient mode of operation. They don't know that it is not a simple equations of x compounds in = one drug out. They don't know that the most important task for a med chemist is actually that of editing their designs and changing plans on the fly when data comes back a certain way or behaves a certain way in the hood.
So what happens? The business people think they are cutting costs by outsourcing more. The chemists get angry and frightened for their jobs. Instead of going and telling the people responsible for the outsourcing decisions that the mode of operation makes no sense, the chemists do what they know best. They work longer and longer hours, trying to crank out numbers to compete with outsourcing counterparts on cost/compound. Their designs become less and less thoughtful, because they perceive the environment as one that only values quantity not quality.
As molecular designs become based on quantity versus quality, compounds are less successful. Therefore this then feeds back to the business side that more compounds are needed, therefore more outsourcing must occur. Little do they realize that more outsourcing leads to more blind designs and frantic scientists.
Seems it would be easier for chemists to talk with their business counterparts than to watch their field spiral out of control.
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