Transitioning from academia to industry – unabridged

 

In March 2021 I moved from a permanent academic position at a Russell Group university to a permanent applications scientist position at a major international biotech company. Many people in PhD or post-doc positions in academia see permanent academic posts as the holy grail of science careers, and believe that their working life will be glorious once they drop the stress of moving between short-term research contracts. It seems unthinkable that a person would choose to leave such a position. In this post I would like to offer an insight into why I made this decision, and what my experience has been like.

I anticipate that most people who read this will be other women in academia considering moving to industry and so I won’t focus too much on my experiences of the challenges of being a women in academia (you will be all too aware of these) but on how positive it has been to move into a new area. I want to offer hope to people who are unhappy or struggling or feeling insecure about their future careers, and are unsure of what options are available to them.

First, a bit of background and context, as this is important. I moved into industry aged 35, with 15 years of academic research and teaching experience under my belt. My last 5 years in academia were in 2 different permanent lectureships at 2 different UK universities, in which I was reasonably successful in securing grant funding and publishing papers, building a small research team and developing as a research leader and educator. What I most enjoyed about my first lectureship was the newfound independence. Towards the end of post-doccing I struggled with my relationship with my supervisor. It was the same person who supervised me as a PhD student and I don’t think our working relationship adjusted well to my growth as a person and as a researcher. I outgrew him, basically, and we both struggled with that. Our working relationship broke down and work became really miserable. Alongside several very difficult changes in my personal life I slid into a period of severe depression and anxiety which lasted from spring 2014 – summer 2016. I was well supported by HR and Occupational Health at that university during that time but ultimately my Mum and Dad and my best friend Ruth carried me through.

I left that post-doc job at the end of July 2015 and spent 10 months trying to sort myself out and figure out what to do next. I was permanently terrified as I had no idea where my life was going, and frankly it felt like it was going nowhere. I spent a long time applying for jobs outside science, but kept coming back to research roles. I am a scientist. In April 2016 my dreams came true when I was offered a permanent lectureship at a local university. The job started on 1^st June 2016 and in this time I had to teach myself how to read again. When my depression is at its worst I cannot read. Thankfully this has only happened twice in my life. I started that job and launched into writing grant applications. I got my first two, including a good sized grant from the Wellcome Trust. Wonderful. Over time, that job became really suffocating. I was trying to undertake complex molecular biology research in a teaching-intensive university, which just wasn’t set up for such activities. For example, shortly after getting my Wellcome grant the department closed the research labs for a year to replace the drains (I was given no notice of this). What really frustrated me about working at this uni was how they gamified the system. Everything was focussed on improving university rankings: NSS scores, DLHE data etc etc rather than on actually improving the quality of research produced and education provided. The final straw was a ‘motivational seminar’ we were forced to attend in which we were told by someone with no psychology training that the key to being happy was ‘getting up in the morning and putting on your happy pants’. Potentially incredibly damaging to someone suffering mental health issues (a sensitive subject for me). I made a complaint to the head of department but it fell on deaf ears. I started to apply for jobs elsewhere. I had a few interviews. One was an absolute shocker; imagine a cold, dark, wood-panelled room full of old men staring at you blankly. The other was good and I was offered the job (after initially being turned down – I think their first choice candidate turned the offer down so then they came to me) but the fit wasn’t quite right for me. I didn’t feel like I fit in there. In September 2018 I moved to a lectureship at a more research-intensive university and joined a department with research interests much more closely aligned to my own, with a group of absolutely incredible colleagues. I was incredibly happy and fulfilled. This university was a 2 hour commute from home so I used to get up at 5am to catch the 5:44 train to work. I would stay away from home 2 nights a week. On average I worked 60 hours per week. It was abysmal for my social life and not great for my relationship but I was very, very happy. However, despite continuing to do good research and publish good papers here I had 10 or 11 grant rejections in a row and was beginning to feel very demoralised, although my feedback was getting better and better and I felt like I was edging closer and closer to getting a big grant. I decided to have one last punt at a big Fellowship scheme. Then in January 2020 I was rushed to hospital for emergency neurosurgery on a dangerously herniated disc which was compressing nerves to my leg. I had it removed and I made a good recovery but I live with residual nerve damage in my foot. I was lucky it was removed when it did. I returned to work in February 2020 and a few weeks later COVID hit. I was working with colleagues in respiratory medicine who advised me to stay at home, which I did from 17^th March. This was a really difficult time. I was helping to run an MSc programme and we had to suddenly move all teaching online. I was leading the dissertation module and had enormous trouble persuading colleagues to supervise project students. With labs closed, projects dried up and I ended up supervising a lot of students myself. The workload was enormous. Whilst this was going on I was working on my colossal Fellowship application (it was around 65 pages in total when it was finally submitted) and also on a very exciting COVID-related research project. This was by far the most exciting and significant piece of research I had ever worked on, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that I worked day and night. I had a huge amount of work to do, and it was difficult to ever stop working when my flat was my workplace. I basically didn’t stop working except to eat and sleep. This might have been tolerable if it wasn’t for the fact that I was working on this COVID project with a bully, and this caused me a great deal of stress, anxiety and unhappiness. I became physically unwell. I made a formal complaint of bullying and harassment to the university, which was upheld, and some significant changes were made as a result of this, but to me the damage was done.

I was made aware of a very good opportunity at a world-leading biotech company in November 2020, I applied and interviewed for the job and was offered it in December 2020. I accepted. The COVID project paper was published in January 2021 and soon after I found out that I was shortlisted for the big Fellowship. I started the new job in March 2021 and a week in I attended the Fellowship interview. It went well and I was offered the Fellowship (£1.2 million!) in June 2021 but by this point my life and the world had moved on so much that it didn’t feel relevant any more. My experience in my first few months in my new job in industry were enough for me to know that this was a much better life choice for me. My partner, family and friends were also very much in favour of me ditching the Fellowship and continuing in this new job in industry which was making me so happy.

So, what’s so great about working in industry? The first thing that comes to mind is the culture. There is a culture of openness, respect and collaboration rather than competition. Collaboration and openness are core company values, and we have a really inspirational CEO who embodies these principles from the top down. How is this achieved? I think a big part of it is that hard work and good performance are reliably and consistently and regularly rewarded in my company. You are encouraged to focus on your own personal development and are supported in this, and you can be confident that you will get recognition and promotion for this. There is no unnecessary competition, backstabbing or brutality because there isn’t a lack of opportunity. The company is very selective about who it employs, but once you are in you’re on a permanent contract, they want to keep you and help you progress and there are lots of opportunities internally to move both upwards and sideways into different job roles if you want to try something different. We work in an area of biotech in which I think there’s a bit of a skills shortage, so the company works hard to keep us happy and incentivise us to stay and do good work for them. It works. I’m really happy, really invested in my work and in my company, and very productive at the moment because I’m so happy.

The company has a genuine commitment to equality. There is so much more diversity in the body of staff working for my company, and that’s so exciting for me – I get to meet and learn from lots of different types of people. It’s also a big relief for me because I no longer feel like I am battling to prove myself in spite of my gender and class. That doesn’t seem relevant in my company, which is as it should be. In addition to this, we also have a culture of fun. We know that the work we do is important and serious, but no one takes themselves too seriously as individuals. I don’t think the same could be said of academics. This afternoon I signed up to an online Drag Queen Bingo event that my company is putting on for us. Anyone who knows me will understand how happy this makes me. This culture of fun is part of a wider culture of healthy work/life balance. We are actively encouraged to have full and rich lives outside work. We are given free volunteering days, we receive rewards for getting exercise, there are incentives to take part in activities outside of work, and there is no emailing outside of work hours. I have a work phone which I switch off outside work hours, and then my free time is mine. This is such a privilege in today’s world when we are expected to be online and available at all times, and I treasure this.

I appreciate the fact that I have a very defined role with clearly defined responsibilities, yet simultaneously huge variety in my job. I also love the pace of change. I found this breathtaking and a bit unsettling when I started, but now I have embraced it and I find the exhilaration and excitement in it. I can feel confident that I won’t easily get bored in this role. On the flipside, I think that innovation and agility to respond to change is stilted in academia by the slow process of securing the funding required for research, and the slow publication process (two good examples of this; I first put an expression of interest into that Fellowship scheme in December 2019, I was offered it in June 2021 to start in October 2021 and; I just had a paper accepted for publication 10 years after I started working on it!!). One of my major roles in the company since I joined has been in supporting labs undertaking SARS-CoV-2 whole genome sequencing for the surveillance of the virus which causes COVID. This process allows us to track the evolution and spread of different viral variants. It is a constantly changing landscape, and it’s fascinating, exciting and feels really important. It really feels like I am doing important work, and I’m doing it alongside amazing colleagues as part of a team where everyone has a defined role, everyone respects each other and everyone pulls together to achieve a shared goal.

Let’s be honest; there are financial incentives for moving to industry too. I’m not earning tons more than I would have been in academia (if I took the Fellowship I would have rejoined the university as an Associate Professor), but there are a lot more perks. We receive many benefits alongside our base salary, and more of my income is mine to take home. When I was working in academia I was paying around 20% of my salary on my commute and accommodation near the university.

For the first time in my career I have a manager who has undergone significant management training and understands how to manage people. He is an effective people manager and we have an effective working relationship with mutual respect. We work with a personal development model in which I drive the agenda of our quarterly meetings which are focussed on setting goals for the future rather than on focussing on the past. I have a clear vision of my future within the company.

I also maintain an honorary contract with the last university I worked at, so that I can honour PhD student supervisions, funded research project and external examiner commitments that I signed up to in my previous job. In many ways I have the best of both worlds, I keep a foot in the world of academic research whilst enjoying the many advantages of working in industry,

 

I hope that this gives some useful insight into making the transition from academia to industry. I get asked about it quite a lot, so I hope that what I have written is helpful. It has been quite cathartic, so I hope it hasn’t been too self-indulgent, and I hope that in describing my past and my achievements I don’t seem to be ‘humble bragging’. I fully acknowledge how lucky I have been in my career, and how privileged a position I have been in to be able to choose between such enviable career options. I have earned it because I’ve worked hard for it, I’ve tried to not shit on anyone along the way, and I have tried to maintain my integrity, but I know that a lot of other people also do all of these things but still aren’t lucky enough to get the opportunities I’ve had.

If anyone is in the position of starting to apply for industry jobs and wants specific, constructive advice on how to approach job applications, what to expect from the recruitment process (it’s quite different from academia) please get in touch and I will be happy to help.