20 Years of Industry

This month marks my 20th year in the biopharmaceutical/medical device industry.

This is certainly not something I had imagined was possible.

If you had asked me at the beginning if I ever saw myself being here this long, I would have even questioned that I would have been in the industry at all:  I was not scientist, nor particularly trained in science beyond the practical application science in my life.  I suffered through my general education on science as a requirement, not a joy. 

I suppose, however, it is like a great many other things:  once you get started, there is a sort of gravity that continues to move you forward.  My gravity was called "salary and benefits."

Mind you, I am not displeased completely with my choice.  With perhaps the exception of technology, I cannot have done as well as I have done in any other field.  It has been a good paying field and although perhaps I cannot claim myself to be wealthy, I can claim to have had many opportunities that would not have been possible in any industry I could have accessed in my chosen degree (Political Science, of all things).

My career has also been something of a blue unicorn:  not having a science degree, I moved my way up by working at the task at hand and taking the opportunities that were offered to me.  By comparison, I believe that if I were starting out today I could not have done what I have done (there is now a specific degree - biomedical engineering - that covers a lot of what I did).

Is the industry everything I dreamed it would be?  No job is perfect, of course - occasionally I have had the privilege of working on a product that really changed someone's life; more often that not I work on products that either go nowhere or do not really have an impact.  The hours can be long and the average lifespan of a job is not necessarily great:  in 20 years I have worked for 8 companies, 6 of which have either been bought out or have simply gone out of business.  And as regular readers of this blog know, this is hardly the sort of thing that fires my blood up on a daily basis.

But fired blood is not everything, of course.  Sometimes the knowledge that I have been able to provide for my family (well) and occasionally do something that makes a difference has some value as well.

It is not always the roadswe expect that lead us to the places we originally intended to go.