Answers from Matthew Barrett, PhD, Consultant in the Life-Sciences Industry
Matthew Barrett (photo right) earned a doctorate in philosophy from Stanford University, and is now a principal in the consulting arm of IQVIA. Barrett spoke with APA blog about his experience as a philosopher who works in life-sciences consulting.
Q: What was the focus of your philosophic interest during graduate school?
Philosophy of science, with a naturalistic approach, was my interest, and related to that, metaphysics and epistemology. My core focus was philosophy of biology and psychology. I wrote my dissertation on the utility and role of certain theoretical concepts in explaining non-human cognition, with a focus on the concept of mental representation. That work has possible applications to human cognition, of course—but I didn’t explore that very much.
Philosophy is very broad, but my perception is that I was at an extreme of the discipline—on the edge where philosophy merges into other disciplines— certainly as far as most philosophers are concerned.
Q: What motivated your decision to pursue a non-academic career?
My motivation came from looking at the upsides and downsides of an academic career for me. I’m not negative at all about academic philosophy. It just wasn’t the path I ultimately wanted.
The upside to an academic career was that it would give me the chance to get paid to think about interesting things. I also enjoy teaching.
The downsides? First of all, philosophy is solitary. So much of the time, it’s just you and the book. I like working with a team.
Second, I was conscious that my main interests lie on the fringes (some would say outside the fringes) of philosophy, and that could mean a career of experiencing disinterest in my work, or worse, from my colleagues. That would aggravate the already essentially solitary nature of the discipline.
Third, the job market—which I saw as a geographical and professional lottery—was a factor. The job market has been bad for a long time. I think it has got even worse, but even when I was making my decision I felt like becoming an academic meant at best giving up control over where I lived.
Q: What’s your current career?
I’m a strategy consultant in the life sciences. I evaluate pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, and other medical and biotech products. Then I provide advice on investing in those products, and what the development strategy should be, based on their value to the healthcare system. There’s a lot of variety in my work, and I like it. It’s a decent gig.
Q: What attracted you to this career? How did you find it?
At the start, I went to work for the consulting firm of McKinsey & Company. What first attracted me? I could be employable!
I had no prior intention to become a consultant. Before turning to philosophy, I had been a diplomat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade of my home nation, New Zealand. So, I had that career as an option.
Then a friend of mine told me McKinsey was giving a presentation on campus. That’s how I learned that consultants work on interesting problems, and make a good salary.
As I got more involved, I found more things I liked about consulting. I could work in a wide range of industries, including life sciences, which eventually became my niche. I would be working in teams, which, as I mentioned, I always liked.
When I joined McKinsey, almost half of my entering “class” had PhDs. I was the only philosophy PhD in the group; the rest of the PhDs were in physics, engineering, biochemistry, and the like. But everyone had a similar story of what attracted us: getting to live where we wanted, working with people, and variety in our work.
Q: Did you have to redesign your resume when you applied for consulting work?
Yes, but I didn’t do enough. When I was applying to McKinsey, I was told in interviews that there were things wrong with my resume.
I needed more details on my research projects within the one (or maybe two) pages that are the limit for a non-academic resume. I also needed to say very clearly (and credibly!) why I was interested in consulting. Essentially, non-academic employers want to know where you have been and why you want to work for them. There is a lot of filtering and one of the dimensions that is less obvious to candidates is how interested they really are in the job. It has to make sense—because hiring someone is a huge investment on their part.
I did a few things right. One was to include my prior work experience as a diplomat. The other was to accentuate the math background I had prior to philosophy.
Q: Now that you’re a consultant, do you think your philosophic training helps you?
There is no content overlap between philosophy and consulting. My studies were more empirical than most philosophers, and that was useful.
This is not to say philosophy can’t help. Philosophers can take a fuzzy problem and put structure to it—very valuable in consulting. We can bring precision about meaning. The span of topics in philosophy is broad, and that trains us to get up to speed quickly in new areas. We also communicate well.
Q: What kind of mentoring did you receive to help you in this non-academic career? Did philosophy faculty mentor you?
I’m hopeful this has changed. The fact that APA is doing this interview suggests that it is changing.
On the other side, at McKinsey, those of us with PhDs went through a “mini-MBA” program. There were various other formal training programs. Just as important, people at the firm were very supportive. When I came in, I didn’t know anything. Experienced people had the attitude: “This guy knows nothing. But he’s not stupid.” So they were willing to help me.
Philosophy departments aren’t big enough to have their own training infrastructure for non-academic careers. But they can look into broader university resources and share those with students. Universities have career planning, job fairs, and corporate visits like the one from McKinsey that helped me.
Philosophy faculty can promote these resources, as part of an open conversation about jobs. If they want to attract graduate students in a world where a good academic job is an increasingly remote outcome, they have to think about what the option set really looks like and how they can help students make the best of that .
Q: If you had it to do over again, would you still have gotten your PhD in philosophy?
That’s a weird counterfactual! Would I skip the PhD if it meant I would not have met my wife or had our child? Those things resulted from my study of philosophy, and a world without my family is awful to contemplate. Besides, you can’t travel back in time with your current information and go to an incompatible future.
Do I regret getting my PhD? No, I don’t. Granted, my life might have been easier if I hadn’t. I left a pretty good job, and became impoverished for about 5 years to study philosophy.
On the other hand, my five years as a graduate student were five years to think about things that were interesting. And that is a good thing. There’s a reason I did a PhD. There is a lot to be said for it, for the time of intellectual freedom it gave me.
Dana Delibovi
Dana Delibovi (MA, New York University) has a hybrid nonacademic/academic career as a healthcare communications writer and an adjunct professor of philosophy.
But can one pursuing active interest in Philosophy, who has no PhD in Philosophy do Philosophy & get APA support for his endeavours?