Here’s what my sources have said about this sector. Take it with a grain of salt. I’m no bioengineer, so wouldn’t be able to tell you
1) My sources tell me biotech pay is pretty crappy relative to other engineering professions factoring degree credentials one needs to obtain plus the the risk to reward ratio. Yes, a few biotech employees did well at pharma companies when a drug hit the markets. But it’s often a lengthy process, and sometimes even though the surest thing appears eminent, sh!t happens with approvals.
Case in point Neurocrine. I believe this publically traded company was a high flyer because they were producing and co-licensing one drug with a bigger pharma company (it was either merck or pfizer). At the height, employees were jubilant, the company was swimming in equity, and they even purchased that huge lot in Carmel Valley next to the the police station (across the street from Crest Del Mar) community and built their office there. It seemed like they product was a sure thing. Well, apparently not. The drug ran into snags with FDA, and the bigger pharma company dropped them as a partner, or something like that. Company stock tanks , had to layoff a bunch of people, and more recently had to sell off their building and the land around it and rent it back, I guess to conserve cash.
2)The outsourcing of pharma/biotech is sort of overblown, according to biotech firms hq’d overseas. At a friend’s wedding, I met an Indian gentlemen that owns an biotech/pharma company headquartered in india. In the discussion, he mentioned he was setting up R&D facilities in the states, and curious as i was, I asked him why, considering India must have a huge pool of talent and cost must be cheaper.
His response was that “cheaper” really wasn’t really the case. For one, there is still a lag in skillset according to his observation. Second, with all the bureaucracy surrounding governmental FDA approvals and regulations, he mentioned it was far easier and more cost effective to setup shop in the states versus in india, as an overseas facility/etc require d entirely more complicated steps/processes/procedures/regulation/etc.
3)Third, no matter what else, this doesn’t preclude biotech companies from screwing biotech engineers after a project/research makes it to production. As some of my friends have mentioned..Quite often, biotech companies hire a bunch of biotech engineers to get something through approval/regulations. And right about the time something goes into production, the layoff most of scientists, and repeat this process. I think this is probably the case for this industry, as research and release are more or less seperate processes, unlike say software engineering where sometimes the best way to job security is when a product/service has a bunch of bugs/defects and lacks any documentation that no one else knows how to manage and fix (did I say that?)
How this relates to housing in CV? I don’t know. I wouldn’t say all residence here are biotech workers ,and hence a layoff in one are or another I think wouldn’t in itself have *that* much of an impact. For instance, there’s plenty of attorneys and firms that bill out at $400+/hr and other professions that reside in CV.
Now, have a big recession, which impacts just about everyone, that’s a different story.
