Pros
-great manager at local level with wonderful teammates - great medications for the right patients -best annual education reimbursement I have ever seen (50k per year) -parent company connected with Nature Made vitamins so get generous discount on vitamins -parent company also owns a winery so discounts available for their wines - love how they incorporate charitable activities into national meetings -nice having Ford Edge as option for field sales even if it costs a bit more out of pocket than the escape -health and dental benefits average for pharma and probably slightly better than most outside of pharma have —can create opportunities outside of current role to explore roles in other areas of the company - salary base decent
Cons
-micromanaging the field to death through metrics and constantly reviewing and critiquing call notes. Otsuka is the only company I know who still has and requires people to write call notes. For a company so overly concerned about legal and compliance this one blows me away. In my opinion, call notes open the door to huge liability as the legal system can twist notes anyway they want. It just puts everyone at risk even when acting compliantly - Doesn't seem to have a pipeline other than potential new indications for current product. Add that piece to knowing the med has failed trials for certain new indications and a large number of generic competitors in the market may challenge future growth potential -seems to be little negotiation with managed market plans so access to meds tends to take several steps which makes it difficult for docs to prescribe (and it is hard for me to believe as some people say “if the doctor really cares about his/her patients or if they aren’t lazy they will take time for prior auths." I see how doctors and their staff are overloaded with administrative tasks and are forced to see more and more patients. They may truly not have time or resources to put into a lengthy prior authorization process. - There is a big focus on the "3 E's" (educate, expand and ) - it seems overly simplified to target marketing message based on percent of product written. There are many factors and thought processed that contribute to a physician's medication choice. -Goals seems to be broadly set to large degree so whether or not your state has managed market coverage for your product or whatever local market or political conditions are, in general it does not matter. -if you are in an area with significant GPO business it may impact your numbers negatively