Advice on choosing your path as an early-career scientist: start-ups or stability?

In this early-career advice feature, our 2024 Bioanalysis Rising Star Award winner, Tomislav Caval (Regeneron; NY, USA), offers some guidance and valuable tips to early-career scientists, drawing on his experience of the risks and rewards in both start-ups and established companies. Tomislav ends the commentary with some practical advice regarding work visas, salaries and company benefits. The question remains – corporate stability or high risk, high reward?

Start-up companies: understand the risks

Start-up companies, especially in biotech, are usually considered riskier because of their inherent instability. Funding stability is a big concern since start-ups are highly dependent on venture capital and other forms of investment, which can be unpredictable. Nine out of ten biotech start-ups fail, with six out of ten experiencing failure within the first 5 years. This financial uncertainty may lead to low job security, with employees facing the possibility of layoffs or company closures if funding dries up or the company pivots in a new direction.

My first job was in a diagnostic company, fresh off a big fundraising round and experiencing exponential headcount growth. My first year was full of exciting research opportunities but also characterized by constant pivots in research strategy and focus, requiring quick adaptations to work requirements. Personally, this taught me to overcome my “academic” bias of needing to finalize work and learning to let go of interesting unfinished research to support newly decided research priorities.

Another growth opportunity is that you are likely going to be the sole expert in the position you are hired for, tasked with a lot of independence and decision-making that significantly influences the company’s business decisions. In my case, this also resulted in a weaker work-life balance stemming from having to learn how to operate in a regulated environment, where, beyond science, I had no experience in the accompanying business of a start-up, requiring a lot of catching up on basics to ensure I could fully understand the expectations of my position.

Finally, one of the most important experiences I had in a start-up environment, in hindsight, is proximity to all the senior leadership and executives. Learning directly from leaders in fields ranging from finance and patent law all the way to quality control, regulatory affairs and running clinical trials is invaluable experience that usually takes years to obtain. This also guarantees that your work becomes more visible and may help influence decisions taken by the company—a rather enriching experience in trying to create an impact early on in career.

Established biopharma company: stability and structure

On the other end are the established biopharma companies that offer stability and structured work. Many roles and responsibilities are usually well established within these companies, which can be a source of comfort and predictability when taking first steps into an industry job. In established companies, job stability is generally higher because the financial foundation is stronger, and companies themselves are profitable.

For me, after surviving multiple sudden layoffs in a start-up, where I was an O-1 visa holder and a lay-off meant having to leave the country, this meant lower levels of stress and a better balance in personal and work life.

Employees are not usually expected to multitask or assume various responsibilities for which they may not be best suited, as there are usually sufficient employees covering all the necessary needs. In my case, this means that I have both the time to focus on research and work I am passionate about, but also a higher level of certainty that the work will likely see a finish line, resulting in a personal sense of accomplishment.

Finally, as an entry-level employee, it is likely that a big pharma job could feel confusing in terms of understanding the bigger picture and strategy due to many managerial levels between you and the leadership. Or there may be frustration with the inability to innovate or change well-established workflows in the company, for which you believe there is a better way of performing them. My advice is that this is a normal feeling coming from a world where we often are tasked with “quick and dirty” experiments to prove concepts or improvements to one where the stress is on reproducibility, robustness and regulatory compliance.

Other general advice:

• Visas: If you require a visa or a green card sponsorship, take into account that those processes can take years to complete. If they are sponsored by your employer, losing the job or the company shutting down could have serious effects on your status.
• Salaries: In most cases, your salary will comprise a base salary (X amount) and stock-based compensation (restricted stock units and/or stock options). In the case of a non-publicly traded start-up, it is best to mentally ascribe a value of $0 to stock-based (equity) compensation. While in the case of an established company with decades of public financial history, the stock-based compensation has an actual tangible value that you can comfortably consider part of your salary. For this reason, start-ups usually offer (and you should negotiate) a higher base salary than a comparable position in an established company.
• Benefits: Established companies are more likely to have better retirement (401k) benefits and a plethora of other benefits.

You may also be interested in:

• Panel discussion: developing careers within the bioanalytical field
• How to publish your research: the journey from composition to publication
• Career focus: how to submit research for publication

Meet the author

Tomislav Caval
Senior Scientist
Regeneron (NY, USA)

Tomislav Caval is an Analytical Chemist at Regeneron focusing on the characterization of biologics with an emphasis on mapping and understanding mucin type O-glycosylation. He obtained his PhD in Biomolecular Mass Spectrometry at Utrecht University (Netherlands) in 2019, under the supervision of Professor Albert Heck. During his PhD, he focused on developing new analytical approaches for mass spectrometric analysis of intact glycoproteins. In parallel, he developed methods for large-scale mapping of intact glycopeptides from cell lines, enabling insight into the landscape of mannose-6-phosphate-modified glycoproteins. He further honed his skills in the field of O-glycosylation by joining the lab of Professor Henrik Clausen, followed by a short postdoc at Stanford University (CA, USA) in the lab of Nobel laureate Professor Carolyn Bertozzi. Prior to joining Regeneron, he focused on studying the functional roles of glycosylation in human health and disease at InterVenn Biosciences (CA, USA) with the aim of developing improved liquid biopsies for early cancer detection.

Disclaimer: the opinions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not express the views or opinions of Bioanalysis Zone or Taylor & Francis Group.