Taboo?

[kvothe2015]

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I'm applying to MSTPs this cycle and have come across the "What are your career plans" question in a few secondaries. I've heard that wanting to work at a biotech company in the future is looked down upon by schools. Is this true? Thoughts?

 

[Jeffrety]

You are telling the adcom you want the MD/PhD to make you rich. MSTPs want you to stay in academia and do publicly funded research. They don't want you to work in industry since your entire medical education was government funded.

 

[kvothe2015]

This makes sense. Thanks

 

[Neuronix]

Does biotech make you rich? I ask because I've worked in biotech, and the salaries were on par with academic salaries.

Jefferty is right though. Just tell the adcoms what they want to hear.

 

[kvothe2015]

Yeah I'll just say I'm interested in academic medicine, which is true. I do think that the biotech industry is quite exciting these days though.

 

[gutonc]

Does biotech make you rich? I ask because I've worked in biotech, and the salaries were on par with academic salaries.

The potential upside is huge, particularly in smaller biotech startups that hit on something huge and either get bought up or partnered with. That, however, is going to happen to a tiny fraction of people working in biotech.

But the reality is that biotech pays in the same range as academia, obviously depending on where you are on the food chain. Moving up the latter in industry brings a much greater pay increase than it does in academia.

 

[Neuronix]

Gutonc you know I love ya, I'm just speaking from personal experience in my specialty... Maybe it's different in yours?

The potential upside is huge, particularly in smaller biotech startups that hit on something huge and either get bought up or partnered with. That, however, is going to happen to a tiny fraction of people working in biotech.

So at the startup or early career level, I'm not sure how the MD is really going to help you. You might as well do PhD or PhD/MBA. I agree that if you create a company or get in early on a company that makes it big, you stand to make A LOT of money. But, that's very rare and very risky. In the process you'll likely have to give up a large chunk of your salary and your ability to see patients, possibly permanently, on a gamble that you'll make it big. You could argue that the MD/PhD makes you more likely to succeed. To me, that's the same argument for you being more likely to succeed in getting grants compared to PhDs. But, the commonly expoused notion that MD/PhDs succeed in getting grants over PhDs is false according to the data.

The MD doesn't count for very much in established companies. They don't just come to you with a salary that's better than academics when they have a glut of well qualified PhDs to choose from who can't see patients and thus can be paid less than $100k/year to start.

At the mid career level, the odds of making it big or towards the top of a company (chief medical officer type position) to me are similar to making chairman in academics. They often recruit these types out of academics anyway rather than those types advancing within the company. When you give up seeing patients, you become pretty equivalent to a PhD in your skillset, and thus they become your competition again. The opportunities to continue seeing patients while within industry are limited, and that also hinders your ability to advance within academics. My experience was that the pay at that level is similar between the two careers.

Moving up the latter in industry brings a much greater pay increase than it does in academia.

Not in my field. I know what the MDs make in both settings. The chairman at my residency program makes more (on the order of double) than the CEO and the highest ranking MD of the mid-cap company I worked for.

 

[gutonc]

I meant that there's a potential for a huge payoff, but that it's rare, and that otherwise things are roughly equal. I think it probably is a bit different in the drug industry than in radiophysics/engineering and device fields quite honestly.

My two anecdotal examples:
1. A co-fellow of mine who took an industry job straight out of fellowship (whereas I took my academ-ish job). Our salaries were within 5% of each other (and his COL was 30% higher in the Philly/South Jersey area).
2. Former attending/mentor/neighbor/friend, 10y into academics, Co-PI on a few cooperative group studies, Assoc. Prof level. Hired away by a very well known biotech firm based in South SF. Salary more than doubled.

 

[gbwillner]

From my experience, industry pays significantly better than academia- usually on the order of 50%. I am in industry and hire people into industry. There are a lot of other financial benefits like bonuses, stock options, etc.. if this was not the case, then there would be little incentive to go into industry since you have a much higher risk to lose your job for a variety of reasons (including those not at all related to your performance). If you get into management then the difference is much higher.

 

[Neuronix]

if this was not the case, then there would be little incentive to go into industry since you have a much higher risk to lose your job for a variety of reasons (including those not at all related to your performance).

So my experience seems to be unique to my specialty. And yes, there is little incentive to go into industry in my specialty. Thanks for the perspective.

 

[dl2dp2]

So my experience seems to be unique to my specialty. And yes, there is little incentive to go into industry in my specialty. Thanks for the perspective.

It's not that unique. A very well known entrepreneur told me recently that basically if you stay full time private practice [in a "low"-paying specialty] your lifetime earning, given compound interest and what not, is very comparable to a full career in the private sector IF YOU DONT HIT SOMETHING BIG. However, if you do hit something big, the ceiling is much higher in private. You can live a very nice life as a physician, but in order to make 10s of millions of dollars, it's essentially not possible except through non-medical related activities like managing a large organization or orchestrating large investments.

Overall industry doesn't pay much, if any, more salary-wise compared to private practice, but the incentives are different. Pharma people tell me that once you enter the senior management team, they start handing out equity, and it makes private practice not worthwhile immediately. Same is true for holding equity for startups that had a very high growth trajectory. You can also work on the buy side and work for a private equity firm to structure investments of biotech companies. These jobs are not easily found in a one step linear way.

 

[kvothe2015]

Let's say you hit something big (something with the potential to make a lot of money) while doing research at a major institution, Stanford, UCSF, etc. They essentially own your discovery, right? So if you really do want to make money off something like that you pretty much have to open up your own lab somewhere, buy all your own equipment, etc. and pray that you are able to develop something you can take to investors before you go broke.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

My understanding is that some institutions can be very irrational about patents and you personally (as PI) may be entitled to no more than 5% of the "winnings" - so to speak, with the rest going to the institution itself, department, division, lab, etc.

Don't know how it works in industry but I imagine there are more incentives to making something that works/sells than in the academic circus.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

Oh, and OP, just say you want to stay in academics and do 80-20. And that you want to specialize in IM/peds/neuro/path/psych or other non-$$$ specialties (no plastic surgery or rad onc or derm for you!). Once you're in and done with residency/fellowship, do whatever you want.

 

[Neuronix]

Don't know how it works in industry but I imagine there are more incentives to making something that works/sells than in the academic circus.

Where I worked there was a *small* bonus if the patent was awarded. No royalties.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

Where I worked there was a *small* bonus if the patent was awarded. No royalties.

So is the answer, if you find something big, keep it secret, quit your job, start your own startup and then patent your discovery?

 

[Neuronix]

Yes. They've had a number of people do that over the years, found their own companies, then get bought out and re-employed by the company they used to work for. Strange world.

At least in my line of work, if money is the goal, even if you are successful in these sorts of manuvers, you'd probably end up wealthier in the long run in a lucrative private practice partnership. YMMV.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

Yes. They've had a number of people do that over the years, found their own companies, then get bought out and re-employed by the company they used to work for. Strange world.

At least in my line of work, if money is the goal, even if you are successful in these sorts of manuvers, you'd probably end up wealthier in the long run in a lucrative private practice partnership. YMMV.

General IM or peds won't give you that. Why did the other people feel the need to sell to the big companies? Did they just get the preliminary studies/idea done but needed to leverage big pharma resources for the clinical trials?

 

[Neuronix]

General IM or peds won't give you that.

Physician-scientists aren't typically in general IM or peds. Though there are some subspecialties that don't pay much better.

Why did the other people feel the need to sell to the big companies? Did they just get the preliminary studies/idea done but needed to leverage big pharma resources for the clinical trials?

I don't really know the answer to that--I could only speculate.

 

[gbwillner]

So is the answer, if you find something big, keep it secret, quit your job, start your own startup and then patent your discovery?

It's not that simple. You usually sign a contract with the company that any discovery you make while working with the company (under their time, with their equipment and reagents) belongs to them as their intellectual property. You can't quit and start your own company to exploit that finding without risking that as soon as you make a valuable product they will sue you and take it from you. This is similar to academia with the exception that they are far more likely to actually sue you.

Different agreements can be worked out, and you can share a portion of the value. Far more likely is that you own equity in the company, so the value of your finding benefits you a little indirectly. You can ask to spin out the finding and finance a subsidiary company. You can try anything, but in most cases, if a company paid you to come up with something and you do, they own it.

That being said, once you have connections and a history of success, you are far more likely to be rewarded in industry. If you don't feel adequately compensated after a big discovery, you will have an opportunity to take your talents to South Beach.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

It's not that simple. You usually sign a contract with the company that any discovery you make while working with the company (under their time, with their equipment and reagents) belongs to them as their intellectual property. You can't quit and start your own company to exploit that finding without risking that as soon as you make a valuable product they will sue you and take it from you. This is similar to academia with the exception that they are far more likely to actually sue you.

Different agreements can be worked out, and you can share a portion of the value. Far more likely is that you own equity in the company, so the value of your finding benefits you a little indirectly. You can ask to spin out the finding and finance a subsidiary company. You can try anything, but in most cases, if a company paid you to come up with something and you do, they own it.

This makes sense from a business standpoint, but from the outset it would seem that nobody then would be able to found startup companies unless the concept or implementation they came up with was entirely out of the line of what their prior company was doing. How often does that happen? Say you are working for a proteomics company on their own line but while working there you conceive of a wonderful new proteomics platform that would speed up things and make them more accurate. If you leave the company to start this new platform on your own, what's to prevent them from suing you? Or let's say you're working in the immunology division and are working on HCV vaccines for company XYZ, you obviously have learned a lot about vaccine design there, if you were to found a startup that works on a brilliant new dengue vaccine and succeed with your primate models (not that there's money there, or that that's exactly feasible for an early startup), how would you be able to prove that your dengue vaccine does not derive in any way from the prior company?

 

[kvothe2015]

This makes sense from a business standpoint, but from the outset it would seem that nobody then would be able to found startup companies unless the concept or implementation they came up with was entirely out of the line of what their prior company was doing. How often does that happen? Say you are working for a proteomics company on their own line but while working there you conceive of a wonderful new proteomics platform that would speed up things and make them more accurate. If you leave the company to start this new platform on your own, what's to prevent them from suing you? Or let's say you're working in the immunology division and are working on HCV vaccines for company XYZ, you obviously have learned a lot about vaccine design there, if you were to found a startup that works on a brilliant new dengue vaccine and succeed with your primate models (not that there's money there, or that that's exactly feasible for an early startup), how would you be able to prove that your dengue vaccine does not derive in any way from the prior company?

Quit your job, lawyer up, and be ready to prove that you never used any of their equipment while developing your new invention?

 

[RustBeltOnc]

Oh, and OP, just say you want to stay in academics and do 80-20. And that you want to specialize in IM/peds/neuro/path/psych or other non-$$$ specialties (no plastic surgery or rad onc or derm for you!). Once you're in and done with residency/fellowship, do whatever you want.

word

 

[gbwillner]

Quit your job, lawyer up, and be ready to prove that you never used any of their equipment while developing your new invention?

It's actually worse than that- if you are on their time when you thought of the idea, that intellectual property belongs to them.

That being said, it is not impossible to start a new company. You can ask for permission to develop the idea in a start up, and they can choose to let you do it or license the idea to you. Same thing with academia- most companies that spin off of ideas from the lab license the IP from the institution. Then you need to raise the capital needed to develop the idea. There is no free lunch.

 

[dl2dp2]

At least in my line of work, if money is the goal, even if you are successful in these sorts of manuvers, you'd probably end up wealthier in the long run in a lucrative private practice partnership. YMMV.

This is probably true for a number of specialities including some forms of primary practice and peds. But the kind of work you do in private practice can be very tedious and boring. I agree that while MD/PhDs potentially give you the ability to strike out and do entrepreneurial things, the financial aspect of choosing that path isn't necessarily better. It CAN be better. You should still make sure you'd enjoy doing that if you decide to do that.

There are ways to try it before you buy it, so to speak. For example I'm consulting for a small startup on the side in a very small capacity, but being paid very well on a per hour basis.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

It's actually worse than that- if you are on their time when you thought of the idea, that intellectual property belongs to them.

That being said, it is not impossible to start a new company. You can ask for permission to develop the idea in a start up, and they can choose to let you do it or license the idea to you. Same thing with academia- most companies that spin off of ideas from the lab license the IP from the institution. Then you need to raise the capital needed to develop the idea. There is no free lunch.

How is this even legal? And how would they prove it? All of this makes it seem impossible to start up a company working on anything remotely resembling what you were previously doing for another company. And yet startups happen all the time, no? So how are we not hearing of lawsuits left and right? The people who worked for Abcam and founded a startup are not going to be the next Nokia, they are going to work on biological reagents...

 

[gutonc]

How is this even legal? And how would they prove it? All of this makes it seem impossible to start up a company working on anything remotely resembling what you were previously doing for another company. And yet startups happen all the time, no? So how are we not hearing of lawsuits left and right? The people who worked for Abcam and founded a startup are not going to be the next Nokia, they are going to work on biological reagents...

The answer to your question is in the next sentence of @gbwillner 's post. It's called a licensing agreement.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

The answer to your question is in the next sentence of @gbwillner 's post. It's called a licensing agreement.

Thanks. What incentive would the company have to license something to you, since presumably keeping it all in house would profit them more?

 

[gbwillner]

How is this even legal? And how would they prove it? All of this makes it seem impossible to start up a company working on anything remotely resembling what you were previously doing for another company. And yet startups happen all the time, no? So how are we not hearing of lawsuits left and right? The people who worked for Abcam and founded a startup are not going to be the next Nokia, they are going to work on biological reagents...

Because it depends on how your contract is written. If your job at company x is to think of innovative ideas, and your contract says anything you come up with belongs to the company (which is usually true), then if there is any record that you came up with the idea while working for the company it belongs to them.

Lawsuits can and do happen all the time, although they can be expensive and time consuming. Either side will have to decide if it is worth going to court over. That being said, just because the company owns the idea doesn't mean you can't start a company to use that idea- you just need permission/licensing from the company.

If you worked for me and I paid you to come up with innovative technologies, and those ideas contractually were my IP; and you said you would like to focus on one of those ideas as a separate company I would probably let you do it if there was a way we could both profit from it. If you didn't ask and quit, started your own company, put the (my) idea into production, and made $1billion, I would be crazy NOT to sue your pants off for all the money you made with my IP.

 

[gbwillner]

Thanks. What incentive would the company have to license something to you, since presumably keeping it all in house would profit them more?

This is a good question. There are lots of reasons, believe it or not.
One reason is company valuation and focus. If you work for a hardware manufacturer like Illumina, and come up with a great idea for a rapid RNA extraction protocol, it is unlikely that you company would commercialize something that is far off from its focus. They are a hardware manufacturer, not a kit manufacturer unless that kit is specific to its other technologies. It's called verticals.
A company may simply not wish to allocate funds to the project for many (sometimes trivial) reasons, but be happy that you do so.
A company can change business strategies or direction leaving you and your team out in the cold. But if they can still profit from your inventions they would be happy to let you do it.
There are many other examples.

 

[mercaptovizadeh]

This is a good question. There are lots of reasons, believe it or not.
One reason is company valuation and focus. If you work for a hardware manufacturer like Illumina, and come up with a great idea for a rapid RNA extraction protocol, it is unlikely that you company would commercialize something that is far off from its focus. They are a hardware manufacturer, not a kit manufacturer unless that kit is specific to its other technologies. It's called verticals.
A company may simply not wish to allocate funds to the project for many (sometimes trivial) reasons, but be happy that you do so.
A company can change business strategies or direction leaving you and your team out in the cold. But if they can still profit from your inventions they would be happy to let you do it.
There are many other examples.

Thanks, this is very helpful.

 

[Shifty B]

There is actually a similar notion in academics. If you develop some intellectual property, report it to the appropriate tech office, and pursue developing or patenting it, sometimes the university will review it, decline to pursue it further, and waive their interest in it. They may decide that it is not worth their time, money, or interest to patent it.

At that point, if you choose to patent it and pursue it further, the university has waived its ownership and it's all yours, for better or worse.