ICON reviews

3.5

64% would recommend to a friend

(5,280 total reviews)
avatar

Barry Balfe

52% approve of CEO

50% positive business outlook

ICON has an employee rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars, based on 5,280 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The ICON employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Farmacéutica y biotecnología industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

5K reviews
3.0
Jan 22, 2026

Could be better could be worse

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Flexibility, teamwork, collaboration, remote, international company

Cons

Benefits, HR, lack of mobility, upper management is so far detached from us in the trenches yet makes big changes without asking us how to make them actually feasible

4.0
Jan 20, 2026

Quarterly review

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Flexible work environment with decent colleagues

Cons

Delays for new systems, sometimes not being informed of new/updated process

2.0
Jan 19, 2026

No Care for Employees - Avoid

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

My team was nice and my direct manager was great (when they had time to meet with me). It used to be a great place to work before they made all the recent changes.

Cons

Upper management makes decisions that benefit profitability of the company but cause immense stress for the staff at the bottom. They merge teams, fire tons of people, change our roles completely (with zero warning) and will not take any feedback on board. Too many changes were made in a short time which made it impossible to do our job well. Nobody seems to know what they are doing because there is no training or support. You are so overloaded that you are constantly stressed, behind and cannot enjoy your life because all you do is work (or have nightmares about work). There are too many people involved in each study and everyone is blaming each other for things not being done, the project managers will throw start-up under the bus at any opportunity and will do whatever they can to make themselves look good to sponsors. When I first joined, the man doing the onboarding meeting was RUDE, snappy, publicly shamed people for not wanting their cameras on, they are meant to be the face of ICON and they left a bad taste in my mouth from day 1. It is a global company which causes numerous issues - there are massive cultural differences so things that would be okay in some countries (rudeness, directness, calling people out in front of the wider team, not respecting our right to disconnect from work) caused tension and issues with other country teams. You are also expected to work insane hours as teams are based all over the world - some days you will have a 7am and a 7pm meeting and too much work in between to log off so you will work a 14 hour day. A lot of roles are now being outsourced to cheaper countries too so the quality of work has dropped significantly. Don't waste your time - go with a different CRO or sponsor.

Viewing 130 - 132 of 5,280 Reviews

Glassdoor has 6,514 ICON reviews submitted anonymously by ICON employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if ICON is right for you.