Top - Technician BaseClear Employee Review

Nice office, a fun run club, most employees friendly

Everyone is overworked, the management foster an extremely toxic work culture. As an intern, I was screamed at in a shocking and explosive manner and no one stood up for me. Compensation was a joke (a bit more than 100 euros) and there was practically zero learning moments set up for me. The only thing I learnt is that immaturity does not always coincide with age. I have encouraged all of my colleagues who graduated from Leiden uni to avoid this company at all costs. The CEO, although a very sweet man, was also the HR?! The lab was riddled with people either on the brink of burnout or going through it at that moment and everyone, except the management that has been there for ages and could get away with anything, was completely overstressed and anxious. You need to be a certain kind of narcissist or just blissfully oblivious to the company "culture" in order to survive there. Just in my short time as an intern the employee change over rate was through the roof.

Few positive points of working for BaseClear are that: its small company and you can do & learn a bit of everything in a chaotic & demanding environment; since it’s a financially struggling company, you will implement your resourcefulness skills; monthly townhall meetings give you all perspetieven in the company though sometimes its only sales driven; and a good way to gain work ervaring if you are fresh out of colleague or a buitenlander. Sincere tip: ofc, this is our experience about the company. Perhaps talk to few ex-employees to get better impression and fair judgement. If its your first job and hard to get work experience elsewhere, it worth giving it a try at baseclear. You will certainly expand your industry network and get work experience into your CV.

Education and training: insufficient funds so no training program. But as your first job, its ok to not get training – then your are free to move on. HR and confidential person: be careful. Mostly gathers information to use against the candidate. No HR policy. Confidential person – none existent. Burnouts & stress: so high that it is company top 3 KPIs of 2024. Still, employee turnover and burnout rate increased substantially in last 1-1,5y. Of the 8 departments (i.e., 50 employees), every department has ~1-2x employees met arbodienst due to >3 months absence & stress. Super high pressure by the operations directors and managers to work during holidays (periods). Salary scales: big range in same team, with same ervaring and same performance evaluation. Culture: ‘rule-by-fear’, women unfriendly, heard racially discriminating Communication: interesting gossips. Important information impacting employees – is hardly communicated. Operations, project management: customer samples are used without customer’s consent. Geen work instructies or SOPs. No controls for sample analysis even after repeated escalation to QA and department hoofd. Frequent contaminations despite customer complaints. In the last year, (i) different clients’ samples were swapped and the customer is still not informed, (ii) samples discarded ‘mistakenly’ many times (iii) repeated delayed projects and many wasted sequencing runs. Lacks ISO standards, supplier qualification, (bio)IT infrastructure, and poor project management & authenticity to loyal customers. Sales: generally unfriendly team MT: extremely authoritarian (one who questions are on HR list of ‘to be fired soon’ or on lijst of ‘poor performers during beoordelingsgesprek’). Some MT members participate in gossips and say it’s a way of gather ‘info from the floor’. Other directie members never says ‘Hi or good morning’ to anyone below manager level. Leadership: ‘Rule-by-fear’, non-motivating, finger pointing, inflexible and zero tolerance for genuine mistakes. Feedback (e.g., on glassdoor or linkedin posts) ends into serious interrogations and hard questioning of every employee, instead of making improvements in working conditions. MT: extremely authoritarian (one who questions are on HR list of ‘to be fired soon’ or on lijst of ‘poor performers during beoordelingsgesprek’). Some MT members participate in gossips and say it’s a way of gather ‘info from the floor’. Other directie members never says ‘Hi or good morning’ to anyone below manager level. Leadership: ‘Rule-by-fear’, non-motivating, finger pointing, inflexible and zero tolerance for genuine mistakes. Feedback (e.g., on glassdoor or linkedin posts) ends into serious interrogations and hard questioning of every employee, instead of making improvements in working conditions.