I’m not only impressed by their mission, but also by their astounding lack of empathy for others. Soon after I started, small things I noticed but overlooked during my interview process played out to be true. I interviewed starting in the evening, relatively late evening. Some of the people who were scheduled to interview me took a while to meet me. I thought some of my interviewers went on tangents, but after witnessing the interview process from behind-the-scenes, some people are called in to fill time. My interview lasted well into the night, there was some amount of waiting by myself in the room—all this was an accurate reflection of how late I am expected to stay to wait for management. This expectation was completely left out during my interview and in the job description. One of my interviewers, also one of the higher ups in the company, subtly gave off a rude, snarky vibe during the interview. I later found out, as one of the past reviewers said, the higher up crowd definitely had “big egos.” Management plays favorites, and if you are not in one of the favorites, your voice and ideas are brushed off without a second thought, especially if they’re in slight disagreement with them. You can do everything right and still be wrong, fix the mistakes of others, and still be at fault. I have witnessed this form of bullying onto other people as well, and am surprised that they don’t think to share their experience here. Professionalism does not always seem to be a requirement for management-- yelling can be heard (albeit rare), unreasonable or last-minute requests are frequently asked, and sometimes administrative staff are disrespected or treated like a personal servant.
We have been told a new building was going to be ready two years ago. It has now been two years and we still haven’t moved in, likely due to the unreasonable requests, last-minute changes, and the irresponsibility of management that I myself have found when interacting with them. I find that this parallels my experience at this company—not hard to work for, but hard to work with, my job constantly being prolonged by last-minute interjections and a reassignment to do something else while I am in the middle of something they don’t deem important because it doesn’t immediately pertain to them.
I don’t want to overgeneralize and say that the work-life balance here is bad. It is for my position, but seemingly not so for software-related jobs or lab jobs.
Many people end up working longer hours or on the weekends—that’s simply the nature of a small company, and I did not expect otherwise. I am simply dissatisfied with the company culture. They tout that their company culture is to promote lifelong learning, but the only thing I’ve learned here is to obey without dissent, regardless of whether their reasoning makes logical sense. From what I have witnessed, administration jobs in all departments seem to have the worst of it. I usually don’t write reviews, and especially not negative ones, but I wanted all potential job seekers not to make the same mistake I did: just know that an interview is a two-way street. You learn just as much about the company as they do about you during that interview.
If you want to work here, it’s probably best to specialize in something technical and you will probably be content. Otherwise I would not recommend. It looks like the fewest number of individuals mysteriously and silently disappear from those positions.
