My review is for the Foundry team at Neochromosome, a subsidiary of Opentrons.
- The work is very monotonous and mind numbing. It involved slapping hundreds of labels on tubes and preparing Sanger sequencing submissions day in and day out.
- No work-life balance despite being told during the interviews that the team “sometimes” work 45 hours a week and the regular working hours are between 8 AM - 4:30 PM. The truth is, there’s so much work that people regularly stay until 6 or 7 PM to finish everything for the day.
- I had commitments outside of work which was apThe recent announcement of a higher-up taking a "much-needed" career break after four years with the company underscores the severity of these issues. Let that and my departure serve as a wake-up call for necessary changes within not just the team, but the broader company.proved by the manager and communicated to my colleagues who were initially supportive of them, but later experienced resentment from my colleagues for needing to leave at 4:30 PM two days of the week.
- There was no time to sit down and synthesize or digest what I learned because even when I was finished with my tasks, more work would be assigned to me because there was too much work that needed to be done.
- The workaholic, high pressure environment has caused some of the team’s bodies to break down. A colleague straight up admitted that the work destroys their wrists.
- The job exacerberated my own health issues that I thought had been resolved since I had no issues at my previous job.
- Lack of guidance and support - I was told to “be more engaged” without inviting further discussion on how I could be more engaged in the team.
- Caught someone openly disparaging me to another scientist in our open office space, which only made me feel more isolated and disengaged from the team. This, along with mounting health issues from the high stress of the job, was the last straw for me.
