| DXCAREER RESOURCES |
| Company Cultures in Pharma and Biotech Big Pharma Culture Big Pharma companies are card-carrying members of corporate America. People are “more collegial than in banking or consulting,” says an insider, but still generally formal and businesslike. These are process-oriented firms—there’s a right way and a wrong way to do most things, and your job is to do things the right way. There is also a clearly delineated hierarchy. People in this industry know who and what they are responsible for and to whom they have to answer. As another insider puts it, “Everything runs like clockwork, and you know what’s expected.” Biotech Culture Compared to Big Pharma, the biotech world is like the Wild West. The difference is partly geographical: With the notable exception of the thriving biotech scene in Cambridge, Massachusetts, most biotech action is in casual California. But there’s more to the distinction than time zones. Pharmaceutical companies know their game—the oldest ones have been playing it for a century. The biotech industry, on the other hand, is only a few decades old, which makes for a more improvisational workday, workweek, and work year. On a cultural level this translates into a democratic, freethinking, chaotic, and often confusing workplace. Change Is Constant Biotech insiders say that change is the only constant, even in big biotech. “The company’s mission is constantly in flux,” says an insider. “Once you start generating revenue, there are pressures to be earnings-driven instead of scientifically creative. The company you came to work for is not the company you work for now.” The Industry Overall Biotech companies also tend to be more casual and less stereotypically businesslike than pharmaceutical companies. Many biotech people look down their noses at Big Pharma. Across the biotech-pharma spectrum, industry culture tends to be rather brainy—a function of the fact that the industry is driven by a highly intellectual research process. In addition, most people in the industry really believe in what their companies do and genuinely feel that they are helping to make the world better. |
