by Eric » Sat Apr 12, 2008 10:23 pm
AM,
As other posters have explained, piling on more degrees is not helpful and may impede entry at the bottom...and entry at the bottom is what will apply. No one is going to let you come into management unless you have real experience and success managing, and you only get that experience by working your way up. I do think an MBA is worth doing if you are in a combined type of program (e.g. a PhD/MBA) program because these programs usually involve an intense 1 year MBA fast-track tailored towards science industry. As far as I know, there are no combined MD/MBA programs.
Dave,
You said:
\"If I were a postdoc in a non-biotech region, I would consider moving to a biotech region. Hard times call for tough decisions. Long distance job applying is hard and getting harder, as evidenced by threads on this forum.\"
As someone who has managed to survive (and maybe thrive) in a distinctly non-hub region, I agree wholeheartedly that the job market is much smaller in the non-hubs, and a whole lot of cities out there are biotech wannabe\'s who will never be able to create a real hub. Having said that, I do not agree with Dave that people who wants to enter industry should just pack up and march off to SF or Boston. There are a lot of advantages to working in non-hubs in addition to the obvious and much-discussed shortcomings. Let me list a few:
1) While non-hub scientists complain about a shortage of companies, non-hub companies legitimately complain about a lack of applicants...let alone qualified applicants. That amounts to a local market advantage for the non-hub job seeker.
2) While salaries are going to be lower in non-hubs, the ratio of non-hub salary to non-hub cost-of-living is usually much better than in pricy urban coastal hubs. 70K/year will get you much farther in Cleveland than 100K/year in San Francisco.
3) Most like me who choose to remain in non-hubs do so because of strong personal and/or family ties to a region of the country. No amount of salary or name recognition in San Francisco will ever be able to compensate me for being able to drive to my parents\' for a Sunday evening dinner.
4) The idea that you cannot make it in a non-hub is obviously not true. I am \"making it\" just fine and have been doing so for years. Furthermore, there are thousands of companies in non-hubs, and they would not survive without employees.
5) In a non-hub, it is much easier to become known on a first-name basis by people in local companies. If you are good, then it is surprisingly easy to know what\'s up with every company. You know who is in good shape financially, who is planning to expand or move, who to talk to when looking for another position. For example, my first company shut down all R&D about 6 weeks ago, effectively ending my position. I had several phone interviews within one week, two site visit interviews the next week, an offer and a round of negotiations that took an additional week and a half. Now I am with another local company that is a good fit for me at a very good salary. If I did not have a strong local network, that swift transition would not be possible. Non-hub cities are like small towns. Everybody knows everybody. As long as you use that to your advantage, you can survive and thrive in the non-hub world.
6) Though not every city can be an industry hub, industry has been and will continue to expand into non-hub regions of the country. This trend ensures that there will be more opportunities for non-hub people in the future.
7) Finally, when does \"following the herd\" work in life? There are a lot of smart, hard-working postdocs out there chasing a tenure-track position just because everyone else does, and most of them fail because there simply aren\'t enough tenure-track slots to go around. Less would fail if they were more open to considering different career avenues. By the same logic, if more scientists who want industry careers would open themselves to opportunities in non-hub regions, then more people would have the chance to find what works for them.
The one point Dave made is very true regarding long-distance job hunting. When you are trying to land jobs far away, you don\'t have the networks you need, and you are competing with local applicants who do have those networks. Furthermore, it is expensive to fly somebody in for interviews and set them up in a hotel room. With a local applicant, the company can just have you drop in at moment\'s notice. Still, I think moving to a so-called hub with no job in hand is pretty risky. How do you know you will even like living there? And even when you get there, you still have to build a network. And what about money to survive on until you land your hub job? I would still suggest networking as best you can long-distance to get interviews, even if that path takes more time.