Pros
Generally hard working and sympathetic coworkers Opportunities for overtime
Cons
In short: production is all that matters. You do not matter. Q2 was bought by IQVIA, but this review is about where you'll really work. It is as if the lab positions are scientifically calibrated to maximize the chances that you will leave. All those five star reviews are probably not real, or from people working from home instead. I did not have an exit interview, so here's the whole deal: -training lacks any consistency or structure after the first two weeks of electronic SOP reading. -You might go an entire year here and only get signed off on two bench laboratory processes, due to various possible reasons: the trainers are themselves so busy they cannot train you, production is happening regardless of your training and learning, or management can (and will) sit on your training packets without turning them in, whether because they are content with the status quo or because they are also too on fire to care about your learning. Your first three months could easily just amount to moving tubes in the freezer, but people have gone as long as six-seven months without being signed off on a single thing. -contractors are treated very poorly. All of my contractor coworkers who were transitioning to full time employment? NONE of them knew when their transition was going to be official, even though their supervisors wanted it, because of how hazy and obscure corporate is. Contractors were also sent home without pay during a 2021 Covid scare, which was sketchy at absolute best. - during my one year of employment the A/C failed during the summer no fewer than five times. Ask during your interview: at what temperature do you halt lab operations? During my tenure, it was 80F. - annual raises happen more like 1.3 years into the job instead of 1 year, unless you are among the fortunate few to get merit based raises. As a general trend, the 2-3 people in the department who get more frequent raises tend to stay, where everyone else leaves, and with good reason: after a year, you could get a far more speedy and substantial bump by switching companies. -many teams are "lean," but I would argue they are lean enough to be starving. The equipment team is either far too small or otherwise to accomplish the validation of all necessary instruments, so lab equipment regularly lapses out of its useable date range, and you will often find yourself having to fix things or call external vendors for help yourself -our building leadership is overwhelmingly unsympathetic, dismissing the real problems we raise with them. One of them got in a huff because the bins in the lab were the wrong color, ignoring the much larger problems of employee turnover, broken equipment, and unreasonable demands placed on staff. - the 3PM email: this production goal that we just learned about has to happen today, and some of you will have to stay late to make it happen. -the electronic systems surrounding vacation, pay, and sometimes even the air conditioning do not take into account that you work shift work or weekends instead of M-F 8 hour days, and you must constantly battle against these systems to ensure your time is kept correctly - an entire department missed a large portion of our paychecks at the beginning of December because our manager misunderstood the time entry parameters. Two weeks later we finally got our money. -the move to the new building was an Apocalypse Now level fiasco. Production goals were exactly the same while everything was disorganized and in boxes, or not categorized in the freezer whatsoever. People in charge of the move were getting monetary rewards and praise while everyone on the ground constantly suffered from the chaos. Also, we were not able to badge in for timekeeping until roughly 3-4 months after moving into the new building. - During my interview, the people in charge of it told me that turnover was low, citing how long each of them had been with the company. This was a lie. One year before I started, there were 15-20 people in the sequencing department. A year after that, they were down to 5. The ebb and flow will continue until the experience of lab level employees is addressed in a real and substantial way. -even for employees who do everything correctly and go wildly beyond, there is relatively little reward. Average and above average employees alike leave in droves, because it would be truly crazy to stay. -even my friends/coworkers in bioinformatics share similar issues to what happens in lab: it feels like our scope of knowledge is kept deliberately narrow to make it harder to jump to another job. -it is possible for you to like your coworkers and even your manager but still be strangled in systems that prioritize production over the human experience of lab employees
