Alcami: Like The Hindenburg In Search Of A Spark Source
Pros
This review is directed to you, the job seeker researching Alcami as a potential employer. My goal is to provide some additional insight, or at least a perspective I believe to be different, which along with the other reviews will help you make the most informed decision possible. Ultimately, this is so you don’t make the same mistake I did. And if you decide to join Alcami, my goal is to help explain to you what you can expect in the year and a half or so that you’ll be with us. At the time of this review, Alcami held an uncorrected rating of 2.0 stars here on Glassdoor. As a simple exercise, I compared Alcami’s rating to those of other companies with a presence in Wisconsin, home of Alcami’s Germantown facility. (It’s a simple search on the Company Reviews page for Location = Wisconsin, US.) I tallied the results of 500 companies, which represents just shy of 6% of the 8398 total, with the reasonable assumption is that the results can be extended to the remaining Badgerland companies. For those curious, Alcami’s rating was on page 44. The results are as follows: 2.0 stars or less – 3 companies Greater than 2.0 stars – 497 companies Congratulations, Alcami. Of the three companies at the bottom, you tied for second, putting your rank in the lowest 0.6%. A full 8348 of the total 8398 companies are rated higher than you. How bad is that? If you listed the highest rated company at the very beginning of this review, the lowest rated at the end, and then evenly spaced the other 8396 evenly between the two, Alcami would be located at the “&” symbol at the end of this review. Worst 0.6%. People, this is really, really bad. I should mention that the reason I used the term “uncorrected” rating above is because their 2.0 score is artificially high. A handful of 4 and 5 star fake reviews were posted by Alcami management in 2018 after it was reported that several candidates declined offers citing concerns about Glassdoor postings. The ‘ratings trend’ link above will show you when this all started, and I’ll defer to you to guess what you think Alcami’s true score should be. (My estimate puts it at 1.6, which would give Alcami sole claim to the title of , ahem, Silver Medalist.) This sounds a bit conspiratorial theory, to be sure, but once you read the posts, it’s pretty clear which ones are minimal effort, zero passion, fake reviews. Contrary to what is claimed in just the last three, Alcami is not getting better, it is far from awesome, and the only culture it is growing is in the stagnant USP water pipes ubiquitously located throughout the poorly designed facility. Admittedly, smoke but no fire. Well, here’s more smoke: Alcami had ONE positive review in 2017 and TEN so far this year. And they have the same “leader”ship, and nothing has changed. Believe what you want, but I have no doubt that Alcami management’s approach to improving the Glassdoor score was to simply put some window dressing on the problem using minimal effort in order to mask, but not bother to fix, the real problem. And so, as this is the PROs section, I offer my positive comment: Alcami applies a consistent approach to resolving problems: identify the problem, completely skip identifying the root cause step, and go straight to painting lipstick on the pig hoping no one notices. Beside low Glassdoor ratings, this approach is used to mask serious issues, such as product quality defects, customer concerns, and process safety deficiencies. Keep up the consistency, Alcami!! Lowest 0.6% rated company in Wisconsin. You can’t make this stuff up!!
Cons
If you are saying: “I might still want to work at Alcami; who can I see?” I offer simply: a psychiatrist. I suspect the rest of you are here because you enjoy a good old fashioned slow motion train wreck. To the uninformed job seeker, it may be easy to fall for some of the well-groomed statements that Alcami advertises, besides the fake reviews. “A culture of innovation, accountability, and customer focus” looks good on paper, but to those who know, it’s as empty as the reactors will be if the FDA and customers decide to take a close look. “It is our goal to be the most efficient, safe and reliable option…” is a stone’s throw from propaganda, and “World Class” is a Hale-Bopp comet ride from reality. I strongly suggest that you, dear job seeker, simply review the titles of a half dozen or so pages of Alcami reviews. If the titles alone don’t convince you what a dumpster fire this place is, then I’ll urge you to read the reviews in full. Because if you do join us, you will find these reviews accurately describe the fresh hell you will feel every weekday morning when you wake up. So what is it about Alcami that causes it to earn these reviews: the management. One could write a doctoral dissertation about all their failures (the cynic may suggest it’s simply a matter of tying bonuses to short term revenue goals and finding top brass with a certain, um, “style” of ethics, but I digress). Rampant tyranny permeates the upper ranks, both in corporate and at the site level. It’s often stated that people don’t leave bad companies, they leave bad managers. And at Germantown, they are leaving in droves. 30% have left year to date. The median Germantown employment tenure is 1.5 years. That’s it. 18 short months to start work, go through the honeymoon period, recognize it’s time to leave, then find and accept a new job. To put this in perspective, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the median tenure for those in the food preparation and serving related occupations is 1.9 years. Think about what this means. You will choose to leave your job at Alcami in less time than the minimum wage paid workers who prepared and served your food, then cleaned up after you, at that sub sandwich joint you recently visited. Four years or more of college, and you’d be happier wearing a paper hat!! There are number of factors you’ll seriously need to consider before joining this nightmare. If you have a family, let your spouse and kids know they’ll be living the life of a single parent family. And if you’re relocating, tell your kids not to make close friends; they’ll be pulled out of school again in a couple of years when you move on to your next job. Single? You’ll stay that way. You will be working for a management team that spends 60+ hours per week at the office, plus logs a few extra hours from home throughout the evening, and expects similar commitment from you. What’s hard to understand is why their career is so much more important than their family life; what is crystal clear is that their career is much more important than your family life. That’s not me talking: that’s roughly 100 past and current employees, over a few short years, warning you about their experiences in these reviews. And since the true root cause of all of these problems can be traced to Germantown’s Patient Zero (borrowing this phrase from an anonymous posting on CafePharma’s AAI web board, even though at GT there are three patient zeros), this pattern will continue at least as long as they are employed. My hope is that if you had been considering a career at Alcami, you’d stopped reading long ago and have moved on to reviewing the next company. But if you are still hell bent on applying, and since this is the CONs section, allow me to describe my thoughts on what to expect for the 18 months you’ll last here. It takes just three words lasting 19 seconds: Flounder Supermarket Video.
