Marc Fages
Life’s Step-By-Step Philosophy
June 16, 2006 | by brett | Permalink
Marc Fages is the Quality Assurance Specialist of Supplier Quality Management at Amgen, a bio-pharmaceutical company recently voted to Forbes’ list of “100 best places to work for.”
Marc started out by going to UC Santa Barbara and almost didn’t finish college. He had A’s in his Marine Biology coursework but he felt that school was keeping him from his real passion: cooking. After college he planned on moving to Kauai with a life-long friend to open a fish taco restaurant. He cooked professionally for awhile, but with the arrival of his children his priorities soon shifted. Looking to do what was best for his family, he applied at Amgen and was hired.
He is now going into his eleventh year with Amgen, but his first year outside of the manufacturing department. In a ten year span, he was able to work his way up from making products hands on, to supervising production, to engineering facilities and is now a category manager within supplier quality management. To clarify, he manages a commodity of chemicals, small molecules, and raw materials that go into making drug products for use on humans. It is his job to ensure that the drugs’ specifications and expectations are met. Marc also deals with the relationship between Amgen and its suppliers.
When asked about how much of his college education he uses in his job, he responded:“I see college as preparing you how to work, how to investigate, and be resourceful of sorts. I majored in biology when I was in college, and its good to know about biology and math. From the perspective of college as a preparation tool, I use it all the time. Writing reports, research, and professionalism are all things that school prepared me for. One thing school did not prepare me for was business practices, which is something that I learned from mentors, meetings, and on the job training.”
One point in the interview that I thought was interesting and I have heard a few times on this trip was this quote:
“When people think they know it all, that is the biggest danger (to learning). It doesn’t matter what kind of degree you get, doesn’t matter where you work, there’s always something to learn…from anybody. Usually the people that teach you something is where you don’t expect it.” (On the same topic of learning from others) “Sometimes college students with a fresh perspective come in and make a simple question about procedures, and all of a sudden it’s like wow, I never looked at it from that perspective.”
When asked about how does a student achieve business confidence, the response was:
“If you don’t have much experience, it is important to know as much as you can about the company and the particular area of the company that you are applying for. By knowing about the specific area you will have an edge because at the end of every interview there is always the part where the interviewer asks if there are any questions they can answer. By asking what are you looking for, what do you expect, what do you want, you really have a better understanding of what you are getting into. (Related to confidence in an interview) Know who you are, know what you’re about, know where you want to go, and on the converse, know what you don’t know about yourself and what do you need to work on.”
A question relating to the first job:
“You have to be patient. If it’s your first job you want to go out and kick butt, but it takes awhile to learn. There’s always something to learn. You have to be respectful. You have to manage your time.”
“It’s one thing to learn something in a book, and then it’s another to go out and experience it. But it’s the book that sets you up.”
“A degree is very important. Lower level positions will be the only positions that will be available without a degree. Management also looks at a degree as what type of person and what type of background do they want their people to fit.”
What probably interested me the most was Marc’s philosophy of “the flight of stairs,” relating to changes in life. His philosophy was that people are cruising along in life, when all of the sudden you hit a challenge presents itself to them. They struggle with it until something clicks, progress is made and then they realize that they are on another next level. They’re happy with their accomplishment and continue cruising along until they hit some other thing that causes them to think and forces them to change. That’s when they know their onto the next level. According to Marc, this cycle perpetuates throughout your career. The biggest thing with this philosophy is that you can’t ever think that you have reached your final career destination, because you haven’t. The second you think that you’re “there” is when the ability to move on and grow is taken away.
“Young people don’t realize it until they experience some adversity, so when you hear someone saying those things over and over again, listen to them the best you can, and if it doesn’t make total sense, you’re just like the rest of us…including myself.”
Other Related Interviews
« Previous: Philosophy Behind Nike | Next: Career Path to EA Sports »
RESPOND TO THIS INTERVIEW