Who should be working in pharmaceutical industry?

 Should you work in pharmaceutical industry?

By: Azim Shaikh
M.Sc Biotechnology 
B.Sc Biochemistry (Gold Medal)

    Considering the changes in life style of Indians such as relying on fast foods, sedimentary life style, increased screen time and corporate induced stress will help pharma sector to become larger day by day. Once you enter into pharma, you will eventually have secure job and financial stability which is rarity in Indian private sector. 

    Most people in pharma have either pharmacy degree (B.Pharm/M.Pharm), ITI (Fitter or operator), Engineering (Diploma, B.E./B.Tech) or Chemistry degree (BSc/MSc). While pharmacy background do have upper hand in terms of initial salary over engineering/chemistry backgrounds but employees with good GMP/GDP/GLP skills earn more after few years of experience regardless of his/her academic background. 

Who should work in pharma industry?

    Before answering this, let's first explore what are benefits of working in pharmaceutical industry. 

• Career Opportunities and Financial growth: Pharmaceutical companies earn a lot because of huge profit margin between manufacturing and selling of product. But this companies need to rely on skilled workers. So they are ready to pay any amount asked by skilled employees. The initial salary might be low compare to other industries but once you have few years of experience and are equipped with necessary skills, then you'll have a financially stable career. 

• Other benefits: Companies also provide Diwali bonuses, Health insurance, life and disability insurance, PL (Paid leaves), Travel allowances and House rent allowance (HRA). You will be surprised to know that a lot of employers in India do not offer such benefits. But on the other hand, most regulatory approved (FDA/WHO/CDSCO) pharmaceutical companies provide all these benefits. 

• A good alternative to medical practice: Many pharmacy students are said to have aspired to become doctors earlier in their lives. So even though you couldn't crack NEET UG, you still have chance to help patients indirectly. By working in pharma, you are assured that your product is saving lives of hundred thousands of people. 

    If you are someone who is interested in earning good amount of money after gaining experience but ready to work at low scale initially, and fulfill your dream to work in medical related sector then you can opt for career in pharmaceutical industry. 

Who should stay away from pharmaceutical industry?

    Let's first understand what this sector demands from you: 

• High work pressure and stress: Once reactor is started, Almost all departments (barring few ones like QA/RA etc.) work continuously. As soon as you take the shift charge, you are on duty. You cannot delegate or delay your work. You will have to complete all the assigned work.

• Male dominated workplace: It is no surprise that pharma industry is male dominated. Well a good company doesn't allow any kind of sexual harassment, but you won't find many female co-workers over there as most women do not prefer to travel long distance and work in potential hazardous conditions. Companies cannot ask women to come in rotational shifts so hiring procedure becomes gender biased. 

• Preference to skill over knowledge: Well this is not necessarily a bad thing. But if you are someone who adores gaining knowledge, learning new things, have great imagination then these all things will not necessarily be useful here. In this industry, they require operation skill. From my experience, recently graduates have more theoretical knowledge than a lot of senior level managers in this industry. But still these managers have packages in crores as they have experience and necessary skill. This thing will matter for someone who wants to be a researcher or academician but chooses this sector to gain 'experience'. 

• Good Documentation Practice: Industry wants you to have GD practices. While this is required for patient safety and drug efficiency, it will not be easy for someone who hates documentation. As an employ, it doesn't matter in which department you are working, you will have to record everything online/at that time on paper. No mistakes are allowed. Mistakes on papers are not allowed, so you have to be very careful. 

• Working in hazardous environment: It may not be as hazardous as working in petroleum or fertilizer industry, but you should be aware that working in pharma industry will definitely have negative health effect. While there might not be long term research on health of employees working in pharmaceutical industry, but this is apparent from the fact that very few people over 40 have hair on their head. Boiler and reactor blasts are very common phenomena in this industry. 

• Monotonous work: Once they find that you are excellent in a particular task, your in-charge will assigned that task to you only. So after few years, it will become boring. For instance, a colleague of mine was having experience of operating HPLC. He had 10 years of experience in QC department. Practically he had performed the same task for more than 4 years continuously in a same company. He got so bored that he had to leave that company but new company assigned him the same instrument again. 

• Rotational Shift-Work: Since all department (leaving behind few exceptions) work continuously 24 X 7, All employees have to work in rotational shifts. The duration of shift change differs company to company but generally it lasts 6 days. Some companies changes shift within 2 days. This change in shift prevent your circadian rhythm to work properly. Some people are light sleepers while some have insomnia and other sleep disorders. They will have very hard time working in rotational shifts. They might find themselves 'trapped' in work where they will have to work even though they did not have proper sleep previous day/night. Sleep debt will continuously increase which might have short term effect on their health and long term effect on their career. I couldn't find long term study on sleep deprivation but I'm sure whatever effect it will have on health, it is not positive. 

My verdict

If you are someone who wants stable career with good financial growth but are ready to work under stress then you should happily build your career in this field. 

But if you are someone with sleep disorder (have sleep problem) or want good work-life balance or prefer not to work in male dominated workplace or prefer to involve in creative work then you should probably explore other career options. 

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QA department is one the departments which doesn't require you to work in rotational shift (except IPQA). If you want to know about that department then you can read this article 

 Quality Assurance in the Pharmaceutical Industry: A Comprehensive Guide