For Perspective on Bonuses
I was last a pharma rep in 2012. A casualty of years of laying off reps that started around the time of the subprime mortgage bullshit tanking the global economy. I was just a primary care rep, having reset my position every couple years as moves to different companies or transfers out of state curtailed any momentum toward specialty of training roles I was interested in. Once out, it was hard to get back in because there were a ton of highly qualified reps who had been laid off over the previous 2-3 years trying to get back in. I moved over to medical device in a niche industry. Not a crazy OR-based Stryker kind of thing with 24h on call and crazy 400k income. It was just more standard devices used in medical environments that paid similarly to what I was doing in pharma. There I moved into government-focused sales and managed the east coast reps for a stretch. This is all important for what I tell you next.
In my role as what amounted to essentially an entry level pharma job, I was making around 80k salary and a bonus that would usually fall around 40-50% of base. Pretty common stuff at the time. I had worse bonus years and rarely better ones, because I was the lucky recipient of shitty territories over and over again where I couldn't physically get in front of most of my top prescribing docs. You might imagine that it's hard to convince someone to prescribe more of your drug if you can't even speak with them, and you'd be right. But even then I don't think I ever made less than 15k in bonus money during a full year, even in the shittiest of years in the shittiest of territories. Didn't Jay make a measly 30k the year before and everyone was still butthurt he'd get anything?
If you do the math on what I made as a pharma rep FOURTEEN YEARS AGO and what Jay made in salary and bonus this past fiscal year, he's sitting at like 4-5x both the salary and the bonus of a primary care pharma rep circa 2012. Making his pay for what he does, in my opinion, is not excessive at all.
In a world where there will be sales reps selling the drug that Jay ushered to market when all seemed potentially lost, Jay should absolutely be making 4-5x what those reps will be making. And I wouldn't be surprised to see my pay range from fourteen years ago be laughed at by current reps, especially specialty or hospital reps that call on oncologists. It's likely less than a 4-5x difference in 2026.
Finding research partners, designing and running trials, working within the FDA's terrible structure, fighting off the Adam F's of the world, overcoming the Pour Brothers dicking over the company/investors/drug, the two year hold, and on and on. That is all so much more difficult and important than the reps out selling a drug that will virtually sell itself. I'm not for CEOs making crazy multiples of lower level employees, but 4-5x is fine to me.
Then, in my last job as a manager in the med device company, before I struck out on my own over five years ago, I was making a salary of 125k with a bonus set at 40% of my salary (at 100% attainment). Again I never made less than 15k annually. And again, Jay making 4-5x those numbers is fair to me. He's leading a ton of really difficult and expensive work. And if we're honest with where we are today versus where we were when the hold was lifted, Jay and the team really have advanced LL and the company quite far.
Should it have happened faster? Sure.
Should it have made a dent in the shitty share price? Yes.
Does it suck to see the disconnect between rah-rah company bonuses and investors stuck around .20? Absolutely.
Is asking questions to yourself and answering them hackneyed? C'mon man, it's a Sunday. I've barely dipped into the caffeine. But also, yes.
I do think that disconnect between a bonus payout for performance while the share price continues to struggle is the main driver of everyone's frustration, and I'd argue there's a lot the company could have done better in regards to supporting the share price and keeping us informed. We're just a few months shy of finding out if Jay really did apply for BTD, but also if the FDA awards it. We're just about four months away seeing the fruits of their labor from the work they've been doing running Clover, and adding research partners, and opening new trials (Alz, I/Pre SPY, Kleos, Kasi, etc.), and lining up pharma partners, and possibly more.
That's a lot of work even if we feel like it should have happened sooner.
Sometime during these next 1-4 months is when I expect the chasm to close, and all this anger over the bonuses to feel foolish. Because, in my humble opinion, it is.
I was last a pharma rep in 2012. A casualty of years of laying off reps that started around the time of the subprime mortgage bullshit tanking the global economy. I was just a primary care rep, having reset my position every couple years as moves to different companies or transfers out of state curtailed any momentum toward specialty of training roles I was interested in. Once out, it was hard to get back in because there were a ton of highly qualified reps who had been laid off over the previous 2-3 years trying to get back in. I moved over to medical device in a niche industry. Not a crazy OR-based Stryker kind of thing with 24h on call and crazy 400k income. It was just more standard devices used in medical environments that paid similarly to what I was doing in pharma. There I moved into government-focused sales and managed the east coast reps for a stretch. This is all important for what I tell you next.
In my role as what amounted to essentially an entry level pharma job, I was making around 80k salary and a bonus that would usually fall around 40-50% of base. Pretty common stuff at the time. I had worse bonus years and rarely better ones, because I was the lucky recipient of shitty territories over and over again where I couldn't physically get in front of most of my top prescribing docs. You might imagine that it's hard to convince someone to prescribe more of your drug if you can't even speak with them, and you'd be right. But even then I don't think I ever made less than 15k in bonus money during a full year, even in the shittiest of years in the shittiest of territories. Didn't Jay make a measly 30k the year before and everyone was still butthurt he'd get anything?
If you do the math on what I made as a pharma rep FOURTEEN YEARS AGO and what Jay made in salary and bonus this past fiscal year, he's sitting at like 4-5x both the salary and the bonus of a primary care pharma rep circa 2012. Making his pay for what he does, in my opinion, is not excessive at all.
In a world where there will be sales reps selling the drug that Jay ushered to market when all seemed potentially lost, Jay should absolutely be making 4-5x what those reps will be making. And I wouldn't be surprised to see my pay range from fourteen years ago be laughed at by current reps, especially specialty or hospital reps that call on oncologists. It's likely less than a 4-5x difference in 2026.
Finding research partners, designing and running trials, working within the FDA's terrible structure, fighting off the Adam F's of the world, overcoming the Pour Brothers dicking over the company/investors/drug, the two year hold, and on and on. That is all so much more difficult and important than the reps out selling a drug that will virtually sell itself. I'm not for CEOs making crazy multiples of lower level employees, but 4-5x is fine to me.
Then, in my last job as a manager in the med device company, before I struck out on my own over five years ago, I was making a salary of 125k with a bonus set at 40% of my salary (at 100% attainment). Again I never made less than 15k annually. And again, Jay making 4-5x those numbers is fair to me. He's leading a ton of really difficult and expensive work. And if we're honest with where we are today versus where we were when the hold was lifted, Jay and the team really have advanced LL and the company quite far.
Should it have happened faster? Sure.
Should it have made a dent in the shitty share price? Yes.
Does it suck to see the disconnect between rah-rah company bonuses and investors stuck around .20? Absolutely.
Is asking questions to yourself and answering them hackneyed? C'mon man, it's a Sunday. I've barely dipped into the caffeine. But also, yes.
I do think that disconnect between a bonus payout for performance while the share price continues to struggle is the main driver of everyone's frustration, and I'd argue there's a lot the company could have done better in regards to supporting the share price and keeping us informed. We're just a few months shy of finding out if Jay really did apply for BTD, but also if the FDA awards it. We're just about four months away seeing the fruits of their labor from the work they've been doing running Clover, and adding research partners, and opening new trials (Alz, I/Pre SPY, Kleos, Kasi, etc.), and lining up pharma partners, and possibly more.
That's a lot of work even if we feel like it should have happened sooner.
Sometime during these next 1-4 months is when I expect the chasm to close, and all this anger over the bonuses to feel foolish. Because, in my humble opinion, it is.
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