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Career questions - Join Startup or a Well Established Company
#1
Greetings,

I have few questions regarding a career in biotech. I would be coming to this industry with a background in medicine. While I've been in clinical practice for over 10 years, I have just begun MBA studies and have recently come to develop an interest in the coupling of the business and scientific aspects of this career path. After reading the bios of many top CEOs and COOs in this field it seems to be both a fascinating and lucrative career path...many of them making 7 figure incomes.

1) How fast is this career trajectory for someone who would enter the field with advanced degrees in medicine, biotechnology, and business, but with little to no experience in the field? What should my beginning salary expectations be? 5 and 10 salary projections? etc...

2) I live in California, near some heavy hitters, i.e., Advanced Bionics, Genentec, Amgen, Vivus and others. Which of these companies should I consider? What are some other companies I should look at...I'm open to moving after I complete the MBA.

3) In terms of career trajectory, would I be better served coming on board a burgeoning company (private, non yet traded) wherein experienced pros have decided to begin their own startup? Or would I be better off keeping it safe by sticking with one of the more established companies and working my way up the ranks there?

Any insight from insiders in the trenches would be greatly appreciated!

kindest regards!
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#2
My personal thoughts ..

1. I guess you should go to a website called Salary.com to compute salary projections. They have categorization by years of experience, education and region.

2. San Francisco is the Mecca of Biotech companies these days, you will have lot of choices. If you are in Bay area, there are biotech companies mushrooming all over the place. Check out websites like monster.com , careerbuilder.com and hotjobs.com.

3. Regarding your choice of startup or well established companies, one can go either way. With startups, the benefits are more responsibility, faster career promotion (less competition within the company), longer working hours and if it ever goes a successful IPO, ($$$) it can be very lucrative. But there are lot of risks too (what if the research/ product fails or funding dampens?), more often than not small companies are not too well managed and resources are often limited. Bottomline, startups are always high risk-highly rewarding entities.

My personal preference would be to work for a well established company like Genentech, Amgen for 1-2 years and jump over to a Startup after that. This way one will have a big company name on the resume, plus enough time to carefully pick a startup of choice.
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#3
This is very helpful information. I greatly appreciate your response. I checked out salary.com. As mentioned, salaries are dependent on many factors. I like your idea of starting at a larger company. It's safer and could result in great connections and insider expertise. Thanks again!
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#4
Thanks for providing a such kind of great information. This is very useful for me. You said very true that every company are keep their employee after 1 to 2 year experience.
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#5
I agree with earlier comments to your questions in this forum. It’s always better to join a well established company than going in a start up projects. But at the same time it should be kept in mind that what is important is not the organization in which we are but it is more important that what we are and how we improve our professional knowledge and soft skills during the course of our industrial experience and how we present and align it to management and with the organizations growth. Getting a job in well established organization may be a hard thing due to competition and also depends on availability of vacancy at the time when you are looking for job. In such case you should try at all levels as well as you need to cover maximum number of well established companies at the time when you apply. By doing so you increase your chance and thus with this increase in probability you someday enter in such established organizations.
Even though today organizations are subject specific (like Biotech field, Pharmaceutical etc), but what is required in it is leader and not only the technical personnel’s. Therefore these organizations always look for leaders as well as technical knowledge of the candidate. In such cases it is always better to get initial exposure to industries fields even in startup organizations, in case you don’t have options in your hand. And once your market value is increased on the basis of your experience, skills and knowledge, you can enter easily into well established organizations and can grow your professional career & can achieve 7-8 figure income with your skills and performance!
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#6
In my opinion you can decide yourself.Joining startup would mean you can learn a lot and get bigger role in the company.Joining Well Established Company will give money satisfaction but your role their would be very limited.
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#7
If you can afford the possibility of failing, the go with the start up. The rewards- financial, professional and social will be much greater than with a larger established company.
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