Great place to work for the science, but many issues have gotten worse over the last year. - Scientist AstraZeneca Employee Review
- 4.013 Jun 2023ScientistCurrent Employee, more than 1 yearCambridge, England
Pros
Good opportunities to expand skills and work with ground breaking science (as long as you are also willing to drive innovation). Many great people from diverse backgrounds enrich working environment. Effort is made to create environment where workers can speak up and share concerns, although solutions do not come easily, if at all.
Cons
Not much room for promotion past Senior Scientist, while responsibilities can constantly increase. Too much responsibility is piled on Scientists/Senior Scientists to cover lack of staff in supporting positions and long arduous bureaucratic processes in place. Significant time is spent on admin, waste management, equipment maintenance, booking equipment and ordering reagents, lab cleaning/organisation, etc. While there is an open environment to raise issues, the responsibility to fix them almost always falls on the person who raised them. Currently, labs and offices are extremely crowded, with queues for some scientific equipment longer than a month. Tissue culture hood space is precious, and many have to rely on cancellations or non 9-5 working hours to carry out their experiments. It seems likely this will not be fixed with the move to the DISC as the space was designed when the company was much smaller. While scientific attitude is generally a positive for AZ, it can lead to significant pressure to advance projects and run experiments. This often leads to a disregard for health and safety as not much time is left to dedicate to it.
8
Other Employee Reviews
- 5.027 Nov 2023Summer InternFormer Employee
Pros
I had an amazing internship experience at AstraZeneca last summer. I worked with a talented team doing metabolic-related bioanalysis and bioinformatics.
Cons
The site in South San Francisco is far away from where I want to locate.
- 4.027 Nov 2023SupervisorFormer Employee, more than 3 yearsGaithersburg, MD
Pros
There will always be favoritism wherever you go but if you work hard enough, the actual good leaders will recognize your efforts and help you on your career journey at AZ. I was lucky enough to have managers who actually saw this, others weren’t as fortunate. Pay is decent, considering I came from a CRO that paid very little. Bonus structure was good as long as the company performed well. Work/life balance wasn’t great…when I first started there, my team manager yelled at our team for not meeting goals (even though some of us were meeting our individual goals) and said “you guys are being paid more so you should do more”. This really helped bring up our team morale *please note sarcasm* Thankfully, I was able to move to another team where the sup and manager actually worked together to keep our team motivated and treated us like team members rather than plebeians. Overall, I had a positive experience at AZ by the end and was sad to leave my team.
Cons
Voicing opinions that may be negative in the eyes of senior leadership will likely get you black balled
