Real Talk! Breaking Down Workplace Dynamics in Bio Tech - Anonymous

Summary:
Navigating the biotech industry's complex terrain takes more than just science smarts—it demands resilience, ethics, and a strong sense of self. Join me, Raul Lopez, as I sit down with a  professional from a leading pharmaceutical company, who shares their journey from a humble upbringing to the boardrooms of corporate power. We tackle the issue of systematic racism and how it shapes experiences in the workplace, the strategic importance of code-switching, and the personal ethics involved in navigating a profit-driven industry.

The conversation with my anonymous guest casts a candid light on the financial realities of starting in the biotech field, particularly in cities with a high cost of living like Boston. We discuss the career advancement ladder, from entry-level positions to the director level, the ethical dilemmas faced in drug development, and the often invisible, yet passionate individuals working behind the scenes. Our discussion also delves into the heartbreaking decisions behind potential treatments and the balancing act between effectiveness, profitability, and moral dilemmas.

Wrapping up the episode, we contemplate the nuances of workplace dynamics and the changing landscape of career advancement across generations. My guest imparts wisdom on the importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance, the fallacy of corporate diversity efforts, and the personal repercussions of professional growth and code-switching. This episode is a must-listen for anyone invested in the real stories behind the corporate facades of 'big pharma,' those navigating career growth against the odds, and for those looking for guidance and support in the biotech industry.

Transcript

Raul Lopez: 0:04

This is Raul Lopez, and you're listening to how Do you Say Success in Spanglish. The path to success isn't easy For minorities and people of color. Many attempt to journey with little to no guidance. Join me as I sit down with individuals who share their stories of perseverance so that together we can learn how to say success in spanglish. What's good me Hente? Welcome back to how Do you Say Success in Spanglish. This is Raul. Today we have kind of a very different type of interview. I have a buddy of mine who's a director level at a big farmer company. How's it going? Hello, I'm a farmer. Because of the level of his position, he does definitely want to stay, have some anonymity moving forward, but he is going to dish out and give us some good content, I guess. To start off, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Guest: 1:04

Yeah, I want to be real so that I feel like this is allowing me to say what needs to be said, to put it out of the open. I think throughout all our lives we've had difficulties. We had to deal with things such as racism, sexism, a lot of different stuff. A lot of companies don't handle it very well and they especially don't like it when you put it out in the open like that Think Sackler family, but not that deep right. But there's a lot of truth to that. But I just want to say that right away.

Raul Lopez: 1:43

Yeah, this isn't going to be something the CIA or FBI is going to be knocking on our doors to get down.

Guest: 1:47

No, I just want to keep my job. I don't want to be able to say what I want to say and have my house and stuff. I got to pay the bills and that's fine.

Raul Lopez: 1:58

And you know what, sometimes there's stuff that we need to talk about that we can't necessarily talk about for those same reasons, especially in the public sector. So I really appreciate you taking the time to be here. So I guess, to start off, you work in biotech. Do you want to tell me a little bit about what working in biotech is like?

Guest: 2:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I went to school. I went to BU actually for biomedical laboratories, clinical sciences. I think you actually spoke to someone else who did the same major there. He's the one that actually kind of put me on into it and you know I was going through some struggles in college. Go back to your first question. Sorry I skipped over it, but it kind of.

Guest: 2:37

You know, I grew up in Texas. You know, lower middle class, I would say exactly poor, but there wasn't a lot of money to do other things. Right, I did go to Montessori school from kindergarten through Was it eighth grade? I think? Yeah, so it's a little different, a little different way of teaching and learning and stuff that. I went to high school and my high school was kind of weird. There's this little subsection of like white the ones that developed in that district or in the school area very rich, very white, but it was very minority. I'm very. That school had really good AP classes we're talking like even when my sister went there they're doing like forensics and stuff like that. Like my sister dealt with cadavers, nice, so it was. It's really high school, but yeah.

Raul Lopez: 3:29

Oh man, we couldn't even get like live animals because we couldn't afford it. We had to do the digital one, where you look online and you cut the fake, the fake frog and stuff like that yeah. But? But like old old 1999 computer, it wasn't beyond.

Guest: 3:47

But yeah, so you know there's this little subset, this little section cut out of that school. But it was really really good. Right, I was number like 80, something like high 80s and graduating class, and I was the number two Hispanic male. My GPA was 4.7. So that kind of gives you a look into how competitive that high school was. At least that little subsection was.

Raul Lopez: 4:14

You know there's there's kids and graduating by class, you were top 80 and above 4.0.

Guest: 4:19

Yeah, Out of a school, entire school. That was like 5000 kids.

Raul Lopez: 4:22

Holy shit yeah.

Guest: 4:25

So, it was really big right. So that's kind of wild in the sense that there's this little section in the school where in high school I had to deal with shootings, stabbings, gang related stuff. Like I talked to my wife, my wife grew up in South Shore, massachusetts, and kind of really, really small town I'm like hey, do you ever get your ass kicked for wearing the wrong color T-shirt to school?

Raul Lopez: 4:49

Yeah, yeah, that's happened. I mean, I was talking to a friend of mine the other day who started listening to the podcast and we went to the same school and she was like you know, even though we went to the same school, she lived in a nicer part of the city we lived in, compared to like where I grew up with. Or my other friend, Persha, who I interviewed, grew up in, you know, and I was telling her I was like I remember my cousin Stacy, who was coming home from school I think she was about my daughter's age. She was like 9, 10, walking from like second or third grade and while her and her friends were walking back, a group jumped out of a car and beat the crap out of some dude on the side of the road with a bunch of bats you know what I mean and she ran home crying, screaming, like afraid that something happened to her.

Guest: 5:27

Yeah, that's traumatizing.

Raul Lopez: 5:28

Yeah, like an eight year old and now I have a daughter who's 10 and I worry about her taking a bike down my suburban road by herself without me around.

Guest: 5:37

You know how times have changed, right? Yeah, it's like completely different.

Raul Lopez: 5:39

But growing up like that, you know if you didn't grow up with it, it's not normal. Yeah.

Guest: 5:45

I think it's. I mean we can touch on this later, but it has a lot to do with, like the information flow.

Guest: 5:48

Like you're allowed to see a lot more things now that are going around, not even just your immediate neighborhood but the world and stuff like that. So I think that really feeds into it. But yeah, so high school was wild and you know what kind of drove me to science was was I was decent at math, I was a really like science and specifically towards health science, my sister special needs so that really pushed me in that way. But yeah, so graduated high school, went to BU and actually when I was a junior I was really struggling right. Freshman year was fine, totally fine. I did all AP classes my junior and senior year in high school. So first semester was a cake walk, real easy. I'm pretty much I didn't really take any of my AP credits just because I wanted to. I knew I had to ease into it a little bit, but after I got past that it was an exponential bump. I was like oh, wow, like this is a lot right. But I want to say it hampered me.

Guest: 6:58

But growing up and going through Montessori school it's a lot of hands on, it's a lot of tools that you have to do things like when you're dividing stuff, learning division to elementary school. You have these blocks and you break them up to, you know, put them into the groups right To show your work. So, going to a auditorium classroom style way of learning, oh it was. It was rough. So you know, it was hard to adapt to that. And then come junior year I was really struggling, my grades were struggling just because we're getting into like some really complicated things. And you know, I was in the school of engineering at first. Everything was really theoretical, it was all book work, all paperwork, and I just wasn't into it. You know, looking back, I just didn't like the paperwork and it really worked against me and I struggled. You know, then, on some one of my fraternity brothers actually pointed me towards the Met College. I think you talked to a couple of other people that went to Met and listened to others. Yeah, really good, really lots of people there, lots of people of color. This is designed to, you know, be a night school, right For people who are working and whatnot. So I switched into Met College.

Guest: 8:19

You know, tocque on was a biomedical laboratory, clinical scientist, stupid, stupid law made for no reason, and what it really was was biotech. They're teaching you how to do cell culture, protein purification, on a very, very small scale and what it meant to be to have good documentation practices and things like that. So it was a lot more hands on and enjoyed it. But I will say it was very elementary where I was like, wow, this is college, like, oh, this is really easy, like you know, so my grades are great. Then it was a code go into lab, knock stuff out and leave. And it was to the point where I was helping everyone out with my buddy I know, if you, we have a friend we can talk about later, who's not with somebody, your friend from Rhode Island before. But yeah, I want name drop, but yeah, so it was like me and him, we paired up and we just knocked this stuff out, right. So it was really good.

Guest: 9:20

And then, you know, I was again I'll strongly, didn't know really what to do with my life, didn't know what this would lead to. And fraternity brother reached out and said, hey, you want a job. I was like what are you talking about? And he was like a biogen is actually hiring right now for the many factories facilities in Cambridge, massachusetts, kendall Square, which is like the mecca of biotech. There's so many companies right there. So he was like can you read, can you write? Can you follow instructions? I'm like, yeah, he's like, all right, you'll be fine. So, you know, go to the interview One of the guys that was interviewing me. He's like yeah, you don't worry about this. Just, you know, go through the motions and we're going to get you in there.

Raul Lopez: 10:01

So, that's where I started.

Guest: 10:03

I was really pretty much a glorified dishwasher washing parts that go to like bioreactors, cleaning purification skids and stuff like that and a manner that just had to be documented and making like buffers and cell media things like that. It was really easy and the the pay that I started out with because I think it's really important, because it kind of puts it everything into perspective as we go through this and talk, start talking about medication and cost and things like that and get all the way to the money. But I started at $40,000. And you think and that was just in that department there's also people at my level in the departments that were doing the cell culture, that were growing the cells, that was, taking that protein that those cells produce, which is the medicine, and purifying it.

Guest: 10:54

So you're talking about very low level. You really don't have to be skilled because the idea of it is that you're following directions, like baking a cake right, using the back of a box to bake a cake. That's the general idea of good manufacturing practices is to be able to follow a set of written instructions and be able to perform it, that you can be able to pluck someone off the street to a degree not totally, because there are also some competencies that you need to have, like being able to read it right in the other directions Right, and put them in this, in this kind of role, and you make it right. But what does that do? That keeps your labor very cheap.

Raul Lopez: 11:33

Yeah, and it's in 40K in Boston is different than 40K and not other. You know it's a high cost living, so it's really on the low end for like a Boston job.

Guest: 11:44

I think this data is old, probably by several years now, but the last article I read is that the poverty line is 70K in Boston. So if you're bringing in less than 70K you're in poverty. So 40K then it was probably a little closer, but it's definitely under the poverty line, right. Of course I had those living rooms, roommates and stuff like that. So our house, we weren't living in poverty. Do we go a whole lot? But yeah, and we're talking about, you know, I was a young kid, I was 21 at the time but there are people that were working at that same level, you know, not really making a whole lot more. That were their fifties and stuff like that.

Guest: 12:28

So it's, there's a lot of things in play with that. If you're able to move up, you can make decent money. I think what I ended up there I'll why I entered there. I was a level two, but when I was a level five there, before I left there it was, I was making over. I was making six figures, right, but that was over time. That was working with holiday pay, which was triple time. So you can make all right money I don't say good money, but you can make all right money. But it is a grind.

Raul Lopez: 13:02

Yeah, and just like I said, once again, we put things in perspective. You know, 100 K in Boston is very different than if you do in 100 K and in South Texas or some other places like that where you might even go a little further.

Guest: 13:14

Oh yeah, you'll look like. You look like King. Yeah, you know, it's funny right.

Raul Lopez: 13:18

Yeah. So you know, just to put in perspective, people think it's six figures, man, I would. I would kill to get six figures. Yeah, but we're talking about Boston. Same thing if you're living in like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco. Yeah exactly those places are definitely not going to give you the same return on that type of money. That's right. Continue on.

Guest: 13:35

No, it's, it's a yeah. So I left there just because the that facility got sold off and I went to a smaller biotech which was a gene therapy. It was more of a startup. I got out of manufacturing, but I used that knowledge to take to this, where I was going to a pilot plant, which you know, you have research and development, which those are the ones that kind of discover more or less right, or take something that came out of university and just reproduce it right To say, ok, yeah, this does work, we can make this therapy All right, now let's start putting in the mice and see what it does right.

Guest: 14:14

Yeah, you have those kind of groups that run that. Then you also have like process development, which really is taking that really research stuff that's fresh out of the university or our discovery, and then, all right, let's start making a little bit bigger, let's start seeing how we can make more of it, tweaking things to make it more efficient, to just help start bringing the cost down a little bit to make it, etc. Right. Then you have, like some people call it like pilot plants, some, some companies call it technical development, which is really like all right, that's science is set Like this is how you make it. Now we're going to make it instead of like one liter at a time in the bioreactor, we're going to make it like 250 liters of it or 500 liters or 1,000 liters of it.

Guest: 15:06

Depends on what you're doing right and that Use a lot of my knowledge that I had from manufacturing because you're starting to get to similar scale, and it was really just like all right, how am I connecting this bioreactor? I need to get it to this pump to pump it all out into a big vessel pretty much. How am I doing that? All right, well, I know I have these two big sizes. I have no these connection sizes. I actually need to put it all together and write down the instructions, and that goes into manufacturing. That tells them how to recreate what we did. You know that role is was all right. My boss was very hands on. I really wasn't going anywhere if I stayed there or it would take a long time right.

Raul Lopez: 16:00

What made you recognize that you needed to leave? Well, they started. They started cutting everything. Ok, because a lot of time we'll work on a job and we're like, oh, if I keep working, I'll stay here and I'll move up, I move up. And then sometimes it's hard to read the writing on the wall and say I should jump off. I was going to jump off this sinking ship before I got there. I think that's very different to it's, obviously different to different industries.

Guest: 16:23

But with the biotech, especially if you're at a small company like let's take, let's take, let's take Eli Lilly, for example, how do they have a bunch of stuff on the market? Right, so they have money coming in because they're selling medication. Right, they're selling therapies. Startups not so much. They haven't sold anything yet. They don't have anything to sell. They're just trying to figure out If they're selling medication, right, they're just trying to figure out if this one thing they have can't even sniff Making it right, their first goal is to get into the clinic to do a phase one trial to see if it's safe.

Guest: 17:00

The goal of the phase one trial is really don't kill anyone. Yeah, they're with. The way venture capitalists have gone now with the scene is because it takes it these from discovery to the market and we're talking like 10 years, like a decade, maybe more, maybe sometimes less, and we're always trying to speed it up right, because you want to get to that revenue point. A lot of venture capitalists are looking for efficacy in the phase one trial, so a lot of companies are trying to explain efficacy, yes, so efficacy is how?

Guest: 17:37

how does it work? Right, if you have a diabetes medication that's supposed to lower your ins or, you know, control your insulin output, is it actually controlling? Is it you know? Is it not? So venture capitalists who are investing in these usually starts out private. Before they go public, do an IPO, they're really saying is it worth it for me to keep pouring millions and we're talking about millions of dollars into these 50 people that you know to make this therapy and get it towards the clinic, I mean towards commercial, right? So if you, if it's not really efficacy effective in phase one, now a lot of times things are getting dropped now like they're not even making to phase two, which is usually your dosing. How little do you need? How much do you need? Do you need to find that sweet spot within the human body? Right? So it's.

Raul Lopez: 18:40

I mean not to get into super, super detailed regarding the practice of biotech, but in essence there's a lot of potential drugs out there that could be beneficial, that are being dropped early on because they're not as effective in the initial stages.

Guest: 18:56

Oh, they're not. If they're not effective, yeah, they're not going to be effective. You can't sell it right, and you got to keep in mind especially working in the biotech industry and especially working with on the startup side, as well as even if you're working for a larger company like a now still clinical. So most of the things I'm going to work on and going to touch are not going to work. You know it's it's it's going to be really tough on people sometimes because they get caught up in it right.

Raul Lopez: 19:28

I mean right now, with COVID and everything that happened. A lot of people have different perspective when it comes to the idea of big pharma, essentially, you know what I mean. People get really like, you know. So it's hard sometimes for people to realize that there's people working on something, hoping for it to be successful and helpful, and then it gets dropped, as opposed to just seeing the big corporate side of says, oh all farmer wants his money from us which I'm sure partially true, but it is true but there's still people in those positions below not making those big money that are putting their all into these. Yeah.

Guest: 20:06

Yeah, but that's just, honestly. The people not making a lot of money in this chain Are the people where I started out actually physically making the product, right? You know all the scientists and engineers. And funny thing is, throughout my career I, you know, I said I was in engineering school and I got out of engineering school. I didn't graduate with an engineering degree. At one point in my career I was an engineer Just just from working in the field and learning the specifics of what to do, right. But you know those people. They're making good money. They're making pretty good money, right. They're making livable wages. They're making they're able to make live a comfortable life, right. It's probably the reason why it costs so much, too, right. Is you know who do you want designing it and being in control of a clinical trial of stuff that goes right? So I, you know, I hear that. You know what you said about the high cost of pharmaceuticals, but there is a lot of money that goes into it and it is years.

Guest: 21:09

I think that's a problem that we need to work through as a people. Is you know how do we lower it? Because it is quite expensive? But what that does is, I think it creates a culture of greed, right? Hey look, I brought out the Sackler family. That's pretty hot. Go, I'm plugging Netflix, right now because it was pretty good.

Guest: 21:36

It's called a painkiller. I think that's very puts it into perspective a little bit right. But I really, when it all comes down to it, no matter how, if it even has a barely working, it's going to get cut. Why? Because it probably is not going to work as well. When you get to the population to have to make it a whole big thing, right, a lot, a lot of volume is probably not going to work, right?

Guest: 22:03

I think Biogen had, with Cambridge's controversy about where they're Alzheimer's drug where don't quote me on the numbers now. I remember it was somewhat of like around 30% saw effectiveness, but also 13% of people had, I think it was 13. It was around there, I'm going to say it's around there had huge complications with their brain swelling. Oh yeah, that's not good. Yeah, so it's tough right. And these are the ethical dilemmas that you get into this space. And, being a person that, if I was still working on Biogen, how would I feel about it? Yeah, because I mean, is the Alzheimer's patient making that decision? Yeah, no, they're not. It's their family member, right?

Raul Lopez: 22:51

You know it brings up a good point. To me this is just once again a little bit off topic, but just as I got older and I've had my own dealing of health issues, you start weighing the cost benefits of what's the next step that you want to do to take on certain medications, certain procedures to help you move forward. You know what I mean. That's on an individual, personal basis. Not one point do I put. Okay, now, which one of that is going to make me more profitable and get me more money? Yeah, so that's three factors of will this help? How effectively will it help? And then, how much money can we make so that we can continue making more medicine? Yeah, and I think you had.

Guest: 23:22

I mean, if you're going, to the biotech injury out there. People you're going to come to face with your with some decision of am I okay doing this and this?

Raul Lopez: 23:35

is something that comes up. I mean not just for pharmaceuticals, but you know, there's times when I look at jobs and they're coming up and I'm like, oh, this is, oh, they have openings for, you know, a big oil and gas company, or like Coke industry. I mean, you're like, what companies do I am? Am I ethically opposed to? I mean, when I started working at one of the jobs, it was called Bracewell and Giuliani it was Giuliani and he left like a year after I started there. But that was before we got Giuliani. We got now.

Raul Lopez: 24:04

No, I don't love it. Yeah, yeah. So you know he was, he was more, he was more. You know this is the, the hero of 9-11, giuliani as opposed to the. You know Trump's Trump supporting Giuliani that he is. Now that he started getting I think he went to another law firm and they kicked him out of that law firm. You know, but it's at the same time I had another friend at work and I was like we're so glad he's not here, because that would put us in an ethical dilemma. Do we want to keep working for a company that encourages this type of behavior? You know, and in all companies you can dig deep enough to find something you don't like about them that you have to say okay, where's my limit to how ethically bad this company is compared to what I want to do for a living? But I can imagine a pharmaceutical. I'll put everybody who here in the front is going to give you some shit to complain about.

Guest: 24:52

Well, I mean, there's a lot of propaganda that goes in to during in these companies. As a worker, you don't know how many times have they put on an auditorium when someone comes up and says I have this disease. What you're doing is very important, honestly it is, but there's a price to that, right? Someone's got to pay for you to get that medication right. So it's really just weird and it's really off-putting. It was very off-putting for me. Why? Because a lot of these advocates were white. They're all white and they all have, like, good jobs, right.

Guest: 25:30

One of the small startups it was a hearing company. So we're doing gene therapy in the ear, right, and it was really for the first indications that we were working on was one was for a protein that helps the hairs in your coltia grow, so those vibrate from the motion, the whole. Whatever Not getting ear anatomy right here. So a lot of these. And also you got to realize a lot of these therapies that, especially the rare disease when you start hearing rare disease deal with children, right. So for this therapy it had to be administered to a child. That was usually like six months. You know like, oh, they have this condition, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Guest: 26:20

Or you know so the parent is making the decision is do I want my child deaf or do I want to spend a million dollars? An ear to, yeah, to, you know, effectively cure this. We'll just say that because it's a little more complicated. The people that came to us and the patients were all older, they're all white, they all had good jobs and were like oh yeah, I'm a lawyer, I'm really interested in this. You know, I was like what the? You never see anyone like us. And I will say there's this one company I work, I worked for, who made a clotting factor, for I think it was like factor eight or something like that, you know, for hemophilia. Hemophilia is you get cut, you're not going to stop eating because you're lacking some of the clotting factors.

Guest: 27:12

So they made this clotting factor and the way they framed this donation to Senegal was we're donating a million units to Senegal for children who have hemophilia. When you know me being on the little technical side of it, I understood what that million is meant and it was only like maybe a few hundred doses. It was nothing at all. They sent a million units because it sounded better.

Raul Lopez: 27:42

Right.

Guest: 27:44

But they're all doing it one time though. Yeah, so you're giving these, these, these children who have hemophilia and Senegal clotting factor, like, oh sweet, I can go play, I don't have to worry about getting bruised and stuff like that, and then it's all gone. Yeah, right.

Raul Lopez: 28:02

This is kind of how you deal with a lot of corporations. When they start donating, you have to kind of read deeper into what they're donating and like, lots of times you know you see different companies you work at where they're like, oh you know, send some portion of your paycheck or donate some time for this thing, and then they put a big blessing. We raised a million dollars Like well, the company didn't spend a million dollars to go send out a donation to some cause. They're doing it.

Raul Lopez: 28:24

I'm already used to work for a retail company years ago in high school and they were for Thanksgiving. They were like we gave out 10,000 pounds of pasta that they didn't and I'm like, oh, that's cool. And then you look, I look at the bags that we're selling. It's the same bags of pasta and I was like each one is like two pounds and they're like 50 cents a piece. I was like when I did them out, like I think they sent like $2,000 worth of pasta and it's like it just sounds better when you pick out that specific unit. Yeah, and so when you're working in your gang in here in biotech, you know how do you Obviously you're outnumbered unit your minority in it of itself? And how does one get to move up in those companies to actually start making a difference?

Guest: 29:07

I will say it's getting better. I'll just go to put that out the front. There are a lot more brown faces and black faces and queer faces and LBGQ faces out there, and now I think it's something that the companies are recognizing, they need to like, move towards. Just because you're, how much talent are you missing out at? Yeah, you do stuff right. Uh, that's like it was. Like, uh, amazon made an algorithm based on their past applications and they realized this algorithm that was helping them with recruiting was excluding males. I mean, it was excluding females. Why? Because all the applicants before were pretty much male, right, but anyway. So there are a whole lot more of people who look like us.

Guest: 29:50

Good, but earlier on my career, when I was in manufacturing, I literally had someone in upper management sit me down and say you're not going to do anything because of the way you look. And I was dressed in a polo and slacks and I was working on the manufacturing floor, which your buddy suited up. You have a. You have gowning head to toe to protect the drugs from you, right, uh, for environmental control. So I was like I'm just professionally especially over dressed for the position that I am in. Uh, because I'm learning back there, you know, in a coat pretty much, um, so it was that really pissed me off, uh, and I was like yeah, yeah, thanks.

Raul Lopez: 30:34

And I see how it was. It was that a like, like, uh, a helpful suggestion. Or was he kind of like being a hater, like was he? Was he I?

Guest: 30:41

don't know, I still follows me to this day of like. Well, I was wearing a polo shirt and I was wearing khakis. My hair wasn't done because you're not supposed to have be wearing cosmetics back there, so I'm like what I was just really just speechless about it.

Raul Lopez: 30:56

It happens sometimes, I think sometimes we deal with stuff where, especially when you're brown skin, you know, when you're a Latino, you, you, sometimes you're in the middle between, um, no, especially when I moved to Texas, you know a lot of people that were races, weren't races towards Latinos. You know what I mean. They were black races, but they were cool with Latinos you guys are all right. They're pretty much. You know what I mean. I didn't want to say it, but that's how they act.

Raul Lopez: 31:19

You know what I mean, yeah, and so you get put in certain situations where you're just kind of like whatever and this in all different levels, and you'll hear some things where you're just like that was kind of messed up, like why did you say something like that? And you know they don't realize that you're not necessarily approving of it, and so I was in at work and it was after the Supreme court made gay marriage legal in the United States and I'm like we just I forgot what event was going on, but we just kind of an event. And then I have my there's these two guys on my job and one of them makes a comment about you know, did you hear what's going on? And this high level executive from our company was like, yeah, I know this country's going to shit.

Raul Lopez: 31:59

You know what I mean and I'm just kind of like whoa you, you, you really fired a few LGBTQ people and work with them and rely on them and I'm like, okay. And then and that's kind of for me when I started realizing, yeah, I can go to work and I can meet people and be cool with people, but I still always felt like there was going to be something dividing me from certain people you know what I mean Like there was still a level of I can't necessarily put down my guard, no matter where I am, because I don't know what they're saying about me when I, when I leave the room.

Guest: 32:30

Yeah, and you know, at that same company all, all upper management was white, everyone just white up, you know above like supervisor level.

Raul Lopez: 32:40

And it's funny because you go to a lot of companies, a lot of companies will. You know the company I work for now and I really appreciate some of the stuff they do when it comes to diversity and inclusion that they post data on. You know, these are are demographics at work. This is the age group, this is the colors, this is the sexes, this is the people who identify as LGBTQ, you know, and stuff like that, and they're very open about saying we're doing a good job, but we're not doing as great of a job in the executive level, because a lot of companies will brag oh, we are very diverse from this level down. You know, when you start looking into the executives, the directors, the people running it, nice, and it's the same white men on the top usually.

Guest: 33:26

So I think that is a tale of the time of systematic racism, and it's it's. I think we will connect the dots later. Yeah, it all comes down to education, to my opinion, right. We weren't allowed much varying education because of systematic racism. So therefore, how can you have someone in those positions at this time when our generation, even our parents' generation, didn't have access to the kind of education a lot of these kids have now? It will change in the future, kotu will change. It's just we're dealing with those aftershocks, I guess, of systematic racism, even though it is still here today, but it's going to take time.

Raul Lopez: 34:11

We can go through 10 episodes just on this, yeah it's wild.

Guest: 34:16

But yeah, yeah. So you know, I think Christian Ponce had hit it on the head of well, I think he could have taken a little deeper. Where I want to go is that like hey, look nice, right. Yeah, you know you can be yourself doesn't mean you're going to get the job right. So I went from looking nice to also acting a certain way. There's work me and then there's not at work.

Raul Lopez: 34:44

Yeah, we talked a little bit about code switching with my interview with Peter. And I actually posted a video about it yesterday, quick, where he talked about it, and we also went a little bit more deep, more in depth, with Christian and David, where we talked about code switching, but code switching essentially being, you know, switching how you speak and how you act in any type of situation Based on who your audience is.

Guest: 35:08

Yeah, you know what I mean.

Raul Lopez: 35:09

So for a lot of us in our culture, you know, oh, you're talking white. It's kind of you know people tell you, oh, why do you talk so white? You know what I mean. It's like well, no, and then there's no other time to be speaking. You know, in certain manner, to seem white, but you know, even for me it was getting rid of my Rhode Island accent. You know like talking and talking like I'm from Texas.

Raul Lopez: 35:29

Yeah, exactly you know, like not coming around and talking to my house like this and saying I'm going to go to work on. You know, I got rid of that early on Cause I knew that was going to be detrimental to me in job interviews.

Raul Lopez: 35:42

You know, I wasn't going to be able to come and speak my normal way, that I've been raised to speak, you know, cause I'd lose. I'd lose work. You know I'm already. I was already worried about my name cause I can't hide Raul Lopez, I can't pretend. You know, I've always thought maybe I should put Paul Lopes On some of my interviews and say I had a typo, until I got the interview.

Guest: 36:03

Portuguese.

Raul Lopez: 36:04

Yeah, portuguese or something. Yeah, exactly. But you know I was. But these were all the things I had to think about and I'm like how many job interviews am I missing out now? And I think things are a little better now cause it's all algorithmic computers that are reading the, the information on your resume for a lot of recruiters.

Guest: 36:23

There's a lot of companies out there that claim they're doing blind hiring yeah.

Raul Lopez: 36:27

You know, and so you know, like I've noticed, so like you know, just to kind of put it out there you know, one thing I always do is I copy my. When I get the job, I copy my job title for the for the job they give me and I put it right on my resume and that has all the keywords that they were using.

Raul Lopez: 36:42

And I just keep recycling, I use the same things and I show up and I've noticed that I started popping up on more recruiters searches and I'm getting called by more recruiters because all those key words are there and I don't have to think about it.

Guest: 36:53

Yeah, exactly, I mean also you gotta think of the day they they do someone to do the work right.

Raul Lopez: 36:57

Yeah.

Guest: 37:00

It's like a high-five person. You know, there's a at one of the companies I worked for. It was a small startup and I was looking over the lab, right. So I had a really good relationship with the people who were the technical service. Right, they're the one's changing out like L and two tanks for some of the freezers where we keep ourselves. They're the ones like cleaning some stuff, other ones like moving lab benches, moving equipment, stocking the inventory with common used, like lab consumables, like pipettes and things that people use.

Guest: 37:38

Right, all black, all black, right. So we kind of could bond on the, the fact that we weren't white, like in the company, right, yeah, so it was pretty hilarious because I got this one package that I brought up from the loading dock and it had our address on it, our floor and suite number, but I didn't know this name and it was all the way to the punchline. But but then I was like hey, do you to the, to the technical guys, who was black, and he was like. I was like, do you know this person? He was like no one's staying high and no one named Laquanda at this place. That was like, oh, my God, like, ok cool.

Raul Lopez: 38:28

No, it's funny because you go to a different job and you don't, you'll recognize and you'll see certain systemic we talk systemic racism things that I don't think nobody really recognized it except for the people in those positions. You know what I mean. Like, I worked at a job where we started realizing the person they keep putting into being responsible for stocking and storage of, like the computer equipment, the physical labor aspect, because they're getting the computers, lifting it up, putting it down. You know it was physical, Was always a black guy, it was. You know we were like hold on, this is the fourth black guy in a row now that they put in that position. You know, and it's. You know, you're caught in a position of like, do we make a fuss about it or do we not? Or do we just keep working and hope just to get out of there? You know what I mean. And it sucks sometimes, you know, and especially when you hear stories of people who have actually fought racism at work and failed. Yeah, exactly right.

Raul Lopez: 39:23

And it's like oh, now they do that, now they're blacklisted and they have to leave. You know, and I have friends who were fought in a particular job that I worked at, that I fought the system and their only option was to gracefully bow out with a nice little exit package and pretend none of it ever happened. You know what I?

Guest: 39:42

mean that goes with sexual harassment.

Guest: 39:44

Yeah, sexual harassment and things like that too, and it comes down to if you're a full-time employee or you're a contractor as well. There's a contractor who you know you commonly refer to in history as a temp and they're worked through a third-party company. They actually are work and paid by a third-party company. The company pays that. The biotech company or farm company pays that company to staff them with people, right? This one young woman, she was doing something on a bioreactor and she was bent over like trying to do a connection or whatever. It was a guy, he was a creep. I hate this dude anyway. He came up to her like, dry-humped her from behind. I guess who got? Who got recommended? The young woman who was contractor got let go. Yeah, total wild shit. Like that happens all the time, man, and you know.

Guest: 40:37

Going back to your question of you know how do you get around. You know just the racism and sexism and everything like to move up Because of back to code switching and you also have to live with what you just said, sometimes of like, what do I do? Do I just turn the other way, self-preservation kind of thing, right? Do I raise something A lot of companies are doing like anonymous tips, things like that, and but you know I really haven't seen anything get resolved through that before. So it might work, it might not. I just haven't seen it.

Raul Lopez: 41:08

It's so quiet on the results. Yeah, you know, one of the things you wish it would be that these diversity, equity and inclusion departments would have transparency on the results on certain things. They don't have to name things but just say a complaint was given about this and it was fixed. Obviously they won't, because they don't want to call out the bad stuff but we never know if it's actually working or not. You know you can have anonymous things but you'll hear and that's just companies I work, I mean I have friends in all overpaces and different companies that work that you know in your histories about a high level executive that was couldn't keep a female secretary. They had to eventually switch it only to male secretaries Well, assistants, not secretaries. But you know the state of the sentence had to be all male because they were kept getting sexually harassed and they weren't able to keep them.

Raul Lopez: 42:01

You know, and then you're like well, why didn't you fix the problem instead of just replacing it with a different solution? You know it's a so yeah, no, it's kind of wild and for a lot of times for us we will you look back at, like our parents and something they had to deal with, especially in Texas, you know, and the way your parents grew up, different from where you grew up. Their grandparents grew up especially in Texas, where a lot of people who spoke Spanish or looked Mexicans weren't given jobs. So they raised their kids to not speaking Spanish not, you know, don't have an accent because they were parents trying to protect them from not being able to get a job. You know they didn't want them.

Raul Lopez: 42:40

So you have a big generation of Mexican-Americans who don't speak Spanish, don't have an accent, probably have very angle-sized names, because their parents were like we aren't gonna let you suffer what we suffer. And so sometimes you suck it up and you go in there and hope that you get in high enough to the point where you could be vocal about things without risking yourself. To an extent you know what I mean Like, yeah, now you know when you get to a position where you're high enough, if you're vocal at a job, you're probably not gonna be out of work for too long if something bad happened at that job. You know because of your experience, you know and I think sometimes we need to, we don't get that that we need to wait until our experience is high enough to be able to stand up sometimes and that's kind of the hard part, you know.

Guest: 43:26

And that's exactly kind of what I did. I kept my nose to the grindstone and gained these skills. Make sure I was updating my resume and my CV appropriately to highlight these big terms, these big operations that I was essentially fluid in right and worked my way that way. So you know, going back to my job history, I was in that pilot plant that I went back to another pilot plant for gene therapy, different company, which was a larger company, and I hated that because they hired me at a very low level but I needed to get out of my other company because they were cutting programs and it wasn't gonna go anywhere. So you know, I went to this bigger company but that wasn't gonna go anywhere because of the big companies.

Guest: 44:13

It takes a lot of time to go up the ladder because there's so many people, there's so many rungs and there's yeah, there's so many rungs. There's not a lot of headspace there. So the people who really like those kind of companies are just kind of like I like doing my thing. I'm okay making this money for a while, cause you're only gonna get maybe 3% raise every year if that when you switch positions you can maybe get like 15, 20.

Raul Lopez: 44:40

You know, if you do it correctly, right, and when you leave, another thing. So you bring up the points, just kind of always like throwing in some tips that we, when we start talking about stuff, that people listening. But yeah, you know, staying in your position if you get raises you know cause not everybody gets raises. You know it's usually really minimal. If you move up in a position within a company, it's usually, you know, 10%, something like that, really nice. But if you leave from one company to another company, it's always 20, 30%, depending on what you're pushing for. You know what I mean. And so the jump is always higher leaving. And for a company it's always cheaper to keep someone which is something a lot of companies don't understand where they're willing to let you hang on the hook for a while in hopes that you'll get the position, and then you leave and then they're stuck trying to figure out who's gonna fill in that position and it takes six months to get some of the backfill.

Raul Lopez: 45:26

Yeah, at least yeah, and even when they get them, it takes them a year or two before they're in a position to understand it the way you did it, or, if ever.

Guest: 45:33

Yeah, exactly.

Raul Lopez: 45:33

So yeah, so lots. I mean there's something. This is just a corporate issue where a lot of companies don't realize that, and it's a reason why I've left, you know, and now I'm more of like the three years, I'm moving up, moving up.

Guest: 45:47

Yeah. So, yeah, I totally get that In my career. Now I'm looking to cruise. I'm making a good amount of money and when you get to the like, the VP level, like it really starts bleeding into your life. Like I've had VPs that I reported to directly and they're all day, all night on their phone, the computer, doing stuff. Right, I don't want that. I'm starting to hit cruise mode, making really good money for what I do. Yeah, and I'm fine with it right now.

Guest: 46:17

Right, but to get to this level, yeah, exactly, it was, honestly, the basis of it was code switching. The only thing you're talking to what to say, how to act, speed a different person, honestly, and it sucks. It's a head fuck, honestly. Yeah, but hey, I want to be able to do things. I want to be able to help people who look like me, but you have to have money to do that. Yeah, so, right now, I've been that stage of life of building capital Still, I'm my upper 30s now but still building. That didn't see what we could do, right, but yeah, to get to where I am now as coach switching, it was stay at a job for a year or two and then move it to another one, because that's how you do make the large raise. I doubled my salary in four years. Yeah same thing.

Raul Lopez: 47:13

I mean I, in the last five years I've doubled my salary, More than double my salary. Yeah, I mean, it's just, and all I did was switch shop switch. You know what? I mean and being open to listening. You know, the one of the things too is like recruiters would call me and now I'm like okay, let me hear what you got to say. You know what I mean. Like before I was like oh, I've only been here for like a year.

Guest: 47:37

I don't want my resume to look bad after a while I was like I don't care, I don't care, so I don't care anymore. They're gonna take a chance on you.

Raul Lopez: 47:42

Yeah, you know what I mean? Cause we were raised back in things like well, if you don't show that you've been with a company and you weren't loyal for a long time, they're going to wonder why? Yeah, and now it's like they don't care. They don't care, and so I think that's the reason why I'm loyal to you. I mean, I'm loyal to you as long as you're loyal to me. Yeah, exactly Right, you know it's a two way street and you know when we do, when they do all this stuff like diversity, equity and inclusion they do talks about.

Raul Lopez: 48:09

You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know they do talks about the age difference and the different generations and their mentality, and I think we're kind of in the middle where we're kind of more of the more open to you know we can stay loyal, but we're also looking to move out and improve, as opposed to the old generation that was like we're sticking here for the next 25 years and the newer generation that are just like nah, I just you have to hit my spot that if I'm not happy working here, I'm not going to work here. Yeah, exactly, and I think it's going to go more of that route and companies are going to start realizing that they need to have happy, co happy employees for them to stay.

Guest: 48:52

Yeah, the biotech pharma industry. You see that in compensation is that you know up to I want to say my level. To the director level, you're a hired gun. You're brought in there to do a job, more or less. So if biotech, I mean the start-ups, and that's that's why I got out of there I'm ready not to try to do a lot of stuff and do a lot of things that are outside my role and I want to be focused now. But in general, I will say just to generalize, it is that up to the director level, you're a hired gun. You brought in to do one thing, you're brought to do this role. Who has these discrete responsibilities, blah, blah, blah, and that's reflected in salary pay.

Guest: 49:36

Right Now, when you start getting into, like the VP, like the C level kind of thing, it's a lot about equity in the company, like stocks, rsu's options, things like that. A lot of their, their deals, their salary has greater than mine, but it's not as big of a gap for me from like levels below me, you know. So what that is is for them to stay with the company because these things invest over years. Right, like you, if you, if a VP signs on, you know they're getting this stock equity plan, they're getting all these RSU's, but they got to be on for two, three years before they can even cash them out, right? So hopefully the stock is still doing well, yeah, but so what that does is create the incentive for them to stay and make it succeed, right? So that's what I was going to say.

Raul Lopez: 50:35

So the way you're putting it in is, when you get to anything below this level, you know you're working for the position. Everything above that level, you're working to improve the company.

Guest: 50:45

Yeah, exactly. But you know that comes with work life balance stuff, things like that. And right now I come home and I turn off my workflow right, turn on my computer and that's it.

Raul Lopez: 50:57

Yeah.

Guest: 50:58

If you really really need me or if there's production going on that I got to look after, or working with someone in Europe. Yeah, I'm going to have my personal phone on, or I'll have my work phone on, or something that somebody's going to hold me Right. There are little concessions, but I think that's specific to my role, what I do. But whatever I have direct reports, I always encourage them just to disconnect because it's not worth it Right.

Raul Lopez: 51:25

And the thing, too, that people don't understand is that if you don't disconnect, someone's going to take advantage of that. You're doing it, you know. There will be that one person that clocks out at five and they're done. And there will be that person that works to seven or eight thinking, oh, it's going to help me improve. There's just going to be a lot of times that I've seen there's another manager is taking advantage of you and letting you do that extra work to benefit them as opposed to benefiting yourself. You know what I mean. Really, it's a fight for yourself. You have to be selfish. You need to be able to be vocal about what you want and be able to come in there. That's something that's taken me a long time to learn. Yeah, you know that I didn't come in there thinking, you know I, I was never going to come work, work, work. They're going to see how good I am. I've never had a bad review, you know what I mean. Like that'll be shit.

Raul Lopez: 52:08

Yeah, and I was like I was like, why, why? Why am I such a great employee in all these reviews but nobody's promoting me? It was like, well, and even when I asked I'm just being led, you know, like a horse with a carrot. You know what I mean. And it's like I think about one of my last jobs at law firm that I had. I was like if I hadn't moved and left to where I am now, I'd probably still be barely touching six figures, if I'm lucky. You know, even if they had promoted me, you know, give me a promotion with like a 10% increase and solely like I might have just been breaking, you know, breaking that. And then now I think I make too much, that they can't afford me. Yeah, so it's like, but I have to be brave and I have to be selfish enough to take those 10, those risks and say I'm going to go to another company and try something different.

Guest: 52:54

Yeah, and I think you know it's at least for myself when I'm in management role. You know I I'm trying to look for people who are good individuals, people who are good individual contributors and good managers. And it comes down to what extra things because I do think extra things you take on can help in the long run yeah, like to make the biotech, pharma industry just to pick that, because it's way different right To go from like an associate role to like a senior role or an management role. You got to show that you can manage right, yeah, and then you have to be able to display those, those competencies.

Raul Lopez: 53:34

And just to clarify, I wasn't trying to say never do it. There's always going to be a situation where you need to come in. Oh, absolutely. You're going to be a night where you're going to work till two in the morning getting something done because you need to get this done, because it's going to cost, you know, your job if you don't get it done, but it's just.

Guest: 53:46

You know there's people that go in there and to get abused, yeah, and there's no advocate for themselves and they're just letting themselves do individual contributor stuff. You know, if you want to do something extra, you got to do something that's above your level managing something right.

Guest: 54:00

And you know there's a lot of times it just comes down to luck, honestly, and being able to seize the opportunity which I think we both talked about with moving to different companies and things like that. I think that was actually aided by the market where there was very low interest rates. So there's a lot of free money, essentially right. So a lot of venture capital is a pouring millions on it. Why? Because I can afford it now, because money is not costing them a whole lot, right, they can take up that risk.

Raul Lopez: 54:29

And on top of that, it's not even just, you know, being willing to seize the opportunity, but also recognizing when the well is dry.

Guest: 54:38

Exactly, you got to recognize the opportunity.

Raul Lopez: 54:40

You got to recognize that I need to start looking for opportunities. You know you got to start recognizing okay, I just killed six years of my life at this job and I've asked to be promoted three times and nothing's happening. You know I got to start looking and don't even have to wait five years. You know what I mean. Like start giving yourself a plan and say this is what I expect, my career, and I think that's a lot of people don't do when they start their job. They're just happy they have a job. They don't come in and they say where do I? You know they tell you this.

Raul Lopez: 55:02

This is their interview question and I've never been asked an interview question. Usually you hardly ever get asked that in a real life. Where do you see yourself in five years? You know, but that's really what you should be thinking about. Where do you see yourself in five years? What do you want to be? Are you looking to move up or are you looking to get out and do something better? Or are you just trying to cruise like the next five years? Yeah, exactly.

Guest: 55:21

And I think that's a good thing, yeah, recognizing it. And, you know, I think specifically to my situation, especially within the last like five years or so. I told my wife this, and then her parents, because we always talk about it. Right, it's like I go to the highest bidder. I had recruiters calling me every week and I'm like, yeah, I'll, I'll bail it here. I've been here for six months. If you guys give me more money, yeah, because of these companies. These small startup companies at the time needed someone who knew what they were doing to come in and drive stuff Right, to come in to say, to take it from R and D through development into the clinic as fast as possible.

Raul Lopez: 56:03

And the nice thing with startups is sometimes they're so small that you can fill in many hats, that you can learn a lot of different things Exactly. You could learn a lot more, a lot more broader stuff and different things that you'll be able to use in your career, but there's stuff that you might not have done specifically. You know what I mean. And in small startups, hoping they do well and they succeed, you know, when you're there early, you can make a bigger impact.

Guest: 56:28

Yeah, especially if you get, especially you have a lot of equity with the first startup. You know that will definitely inflate, but, um, yeah, I mean working with small startups. It did, you know, give me opportunities to expand my skill set to things that I had a double four haven't really seen. But it also gives you access to the C level, like CEO, like. We have meetings with the CEO, like every week because it's such a small company, right, and you get to see how the scissors are made at that level and what it beats at least to what you're privy to, right. So that's, that's a definitely a big advantage of of that is being able to just see how you think in a bigger picture, rather than so narrow scope of what is in front of you. You know, um, but yeah, honestly, the market is tightened up a little, obviously with inflation. Not just rates are up. It's not that many things out there, um, you know, I did see some opportunity recently, um, and I knew I wasn't going to be able to negotiate as hard because the market's a little bit drier now, um, so, but also, thankfully, good timing.

Guest: 57:41

I'm ready to, I was ready to get out of the startup stuff. I've already dealt with. All that worked my ass off. I'm just tired. So back in I'm in a big farmer now, just a cog in a wheel and really just going in doing one thing, doing it well and going home and making even more money than I was making before. It's win-win, yeah, honestly. Uh, for just the stage I'm at what I want to do right now and I'm content so far.

Raul Lopez: 58:13

Yeah, and I mean one of the things that keep coming up through all our discussions with all the people that I'm interviewing is being open to risk, open to taking a risk and taking, you know, jumping on an opportunity when you see it. And sometimes I mean it was the same thing. I had conversation with my wife, you know, years ago. I'm like I'm stagnant, I'm not going anywhere, like I need to take a look at jobs that are different than what I've been doing to learn something different. That'll be, you know, help me out. So I moved, I took my job and I got.

Raul Lopez: 58:40

I was a consultant for a Sierra M company and I left that job they're cool company, I really liked them a startup from the UK and I was doing so much different things. You know, project management, consulting uh, I was kind of a business analyst while being a project manager. So I was doing so much little things and then literally like within three years, you know, um, and it was nice to that company because they kind of give you you know, oh, these, if you do this and this, you can go into this path and this path, uh, but you know, within three years I got called by recruiter for a job I had now and everything that I did at my old job, which was very specific to the what they needed, plus the fact that I was able to be a consultant, do requirements, manage projects all that combined together to help me get the position I am now.

Raul Lopez: 59:26

but being willing to come in there. And now I'm in a position where it's more. You know I'm in a lot more control than I am with my specific project, than I ever been in anything. You know what I mean. So, uh, sometimes you have to be willing to go out there and try something different and not not be afraid of change.

Guest: 59:43

Yeah, exactly, it's about what's right for you at the time. Um, there's this dude that I know he's done it twice. Is that, you know, as soon as, like he sniffs the company's about to be bought or something he's out Well, he has kids and stuff. You can't, you know you can't afford that volatility of will I have a job? Exactly you know, am I going to get laid off on just a separate stuff like a few months? You know, then you guys to find a new job. So you know it's he always all right, started looking, got something and got there right. Um, but you know, yeah, stars are volatile or volatile. Um, definitely ready in my life for that stability, focus and everything that I that I have now, my current roles I can see it's still pretty new, so I'm figuring it out, but uh, yeah, nice man.

Raul Lopez: 1:00:33

Well, I appreciate you taking the time to talk about your journey and talk about certain little topics here and there that will hopefully help out people, uh, and I really hope to have you back to kind of deep dive into some of these more specific things.

Guest: 1:00:45

So yeah, let's do another one soon.

Raul Lopez: 1:00:47

Yeah, this is this was fun, so, and this is my first live one in person with someone, so, yeah, this is a slight difference from being on zoom. I really appreciate it. But to everyone else listening, once again, I'd like to thank you for your support and tuning in and I hope you join us again next time as we continue to see success in Spanglish.