AtlasShrugged

Thanks a lot for the information! Do you know if statistician salaries between Big Pharma and Finance employers vary a lot? I live in a country with little pharmaceutical industry, and see many finance jobs with excellent salary and career development prospects, but very little pharma jobs. And if there are pharma jobs, the salary isn't competitive with finance, nor are the career development prospects. Is this a trend? Or country specific.

Hi everyone, I am currently a master student of Bioinformatics, GPA 8.9/10.0. I come from an applied statistics background (psychonomics). Besides the basic elements of bioinformatics, the focus of my master has been on machine learning, algorithm's and biostatistics. After work experience in a biotech company, I have decided to move into the direction of biostatistics. I want to work at a pharmaceutical company/cro, conduct clinical trials and progress to a manager/director function. The level of mathematics/statistics I have obtained is not sufficient to confidently perform analyses in a clinical setting yet. I therefore have two options, earn a(nother) master in biostatistics, or do a phd. A phd would cost me four years, a master only one and a half. Taking into account my goals, what do you suggest? A phd will give me a more solid theoretical background, but I sometimes get the feeling a phd is not valued by industry. What is your guy's take on this? Hope you can help! Regards