Think 1000 times before joining this company.... - Research Scientist Flagship Pioneering Employee Review

First off, I want to explicitly state that the following view reflects ONLY MY experience with Flagship Pioneering (FSP) and I do not want to generalize. However, if you go through all the different reviews on Glassdoor, you will realize that many other people had had similar experiences, thus a sense of generalization of my words could potentially be justified. FSP has a very unique internal structure and business operational mode, which is entirely distinct from other Biotech and/or Pharma companies. At a high level, I will agree that the way they are trying to approach Biotech Science sounds solid. At first glance it sounds as if they are trying to establish an ecosystem characterized by what I like to call: “Industrialized Academia”. That is, invest in new, innovative, out-of-the-ordinary, pioneering scientific ideas and let the Scientists drive the further development of those ideas without the need to write a NIH grant in order to get some money (in fact write 10 grants to get just 1 approved as the odds are ~10% for an NIH grant). Well, sorry I will ruin this for you, but reality is TOTALLY different.... The startups at FSP (at their early stage are called NewCo) are being run by the so-called FSP Associates with the "supervision"/contribution of FSP Executive Partners. 1. FSP Associates: These guys are PhDs who have been selected and have successfully completed a 3-month training at the FSP HQ. Upon completion of this training, they are supposed to have become the new-generation Biotech entrepreneurs and industrial pioneers. Following this training (not fully clear to me what this training entails but it does not sounds convincing...) the FSP Associates are paired with FSP's executive partners to form & run new startups, literally starting from scratch. Now, what is the problem with that? Well, the problem is identified at 2 levels: i) most Associates are coming right after their PhDs with ZERO post-doctoral and/or other industrial & management experience & equally importantly if not worse ii) the field of expertise & training of those Associates usually (almost always) does not match at all the expertise and the field of the startup(s) that they are assigned to run. The combination of those 2 factors above can really be explosive, frustrating and disastrous. 2. FSP Executive Partners: These are usually people who have a very well-established track record in Biotech world and they have served as VPs, SVPs, CEOs, CTOs, COO, etc in their previous professional lives. I cannot speak with high confidence regarding their overall management, PR and scientific skills as I obviously did not interact with them extensively. All I can say based on my personal experience and based on what I heard from other scientists, they should be decent professionals. Note that the executive partners often serve as CEOs in multiple startups within the FSP ecosystem, thus they are VERY busy individuals with limited time to invest on each startup. Therefore, practically, for most of the daily stuff i.e. management of scientists, operational responsibilities, setting experimental priorities etc are assigned exclusively on the FSP Associates described above. Now, getting back to my initial statement in my first paragraph: your experience with FSP is EXCLUSIVELY dependent on the FSP Associates and Executive partners that have been assigned to run the startup that you will join. In my opinion, the FSP Associates play the most critical role, which is much more pivotal than the Executive partners’. FSP Associates will be the "Scientists" that you will be interacting with on a daily basis. You will be reporting to them, you will need to justify the experimental designs to them, you will have to present the data to them, share the data interpretation and come up with suggestions and next steps. Now: 1. Imagine that you will be doing all this to people (FSP Associates) who DO NOT SPEAK the same scientific language as you (not even similar) and THEY DO NOT have ANY (I mean ANY) prior experimental experience relevant to the one that the startup is focusing on. Add on top of that the following, The Associates: 2. will prioritize & set the pace of experimental activities, 3. will set the strategic vision of the company, 4. will think about & "conceive" new projects and will get back to you and ask you to execute as soon as possible, 5. may "criticize" you if certain experiments failed and timelines were not met, which will cause pressure and panic, 6. will ask you to come in weekends to perform and execute if critical timelines are around the corner I could easily go on with more stuff, but this should be enough for you to imagine the working environment.. The initial, early stage of an FSP startup, can be CRAZY at multiple levels. People there like to call this “Controlled Chaos”. The pace can be insanely fast (which is good and that's what many people prefer, including myself..), but the problem starts when the fast pace meets all the other characteristics & components I mentioned above, in combination with the fact that the work is usually done by 2-3 scientists who will form the early science/experimental team...Cherry on top? Expect to work WITHOUT 401K-match and annual bonus; you will get only your base salary... I need to state that FSP Associates are indeed under huge pressure. They are in charge of running a startup company and deliver within a short period of time. They are supposed to assemble a highly-efficient team which will have to execute multiple challenging tasks and meet aggressive & critical timelines. They participate in several meetings on a daily basis and they have to maintain a fine balance between the company’s expectations and goals and the scientific/experimental team’s performance. They need to ensure that the experimental designs are realistic and will yield good and convincing data in order to validate the startup’s hypothesis. They handle a budget which should not be violated. They need to do all that in order to secure the next series funding which essentially ensures: i) the existence of the company but also ii) the existence of themselves! They need to deliver in order to get positive reviews year-by-year and eventually get promoted to Senior Associate & Principal Associate thereafter. HOWEVER, in order to do & execute all this, you MUST HAVE EXPERIENCE. You have to have nearly excellent management skills & a very good understanding of the science that is pursued by the startup. It CANNOT be that an Associate who got his/her PhD yesterday on a totally irrelevant field, will “supervise” and “control” a scientist with 10-years post-PhD experience on the field that the startup is focusing on. I believe that this is where most of the problems stem from and once you are inside this, it is exceedingly difficult to fix it. If you are an experienced & accomplished scientist, with considerable post-doctoral and industrial experience, I do not think you should join this company. Try to start your own company or go after other Biotech/Pharma roles in the neighboring area. If you are that experienced and you know what you are doing, you may consider joining FSP as a Senior Associate or even full Principal without starting from the low-tier Associate level. Remember: we are dealing with experimental biomedical and biological sciences and not with history or philosophy; and in order to know WHAT & HOW you are doing things there is ONLY 1 way: you must have done it yourself at some point in the past. If not, then you can only be a bureaucratic theorist who is asking for unrealistic & fictional things. If the latter is combined with horrible management, then I will let YOU to imagine the outcome... So, think 1000 times before joining FSP and what will be the role you will go after….