Pros
Actually, can't find any. Except for the poor colleagues who are generally nice and try to support each other in an otherwise horrendous work environment.
Cons
Too many to state. Firstly, you should get suspicious when you may find only a single person questioning you on your interview. For all the positions I applied for in my life so far, I never saw myself not facing a panel of min. 3 people. Second, your employment offer is made in a hurry, with absolutely no negotiations!!! This isn't strange in Germany given the high regard for social equality but still this organisation stands out to be a ghastly exception in this regard. Especially, the work hour clause is so twisted that you sign yourself to work on more than 70 hrs/week. If you try to point this out, the HR smartly tries to convince you otherwise. Ditto with the paltry, pedestrian pay-scales for beginners. They pay about 20% less than similar job based on German federal scale and you are assured of revision after your probationary period. If only you survive that... Right, so the crux of the review, the work environment and work. For an organisation self-claiming to be leaders in a specialised area of medicine, they are extremely delusional, brash, crude and downright insolent when it comes to motivating their employees to feel proud of it. Every day in your probation will feel like a battle day and I'm not exaggerating. You always feel threatened, insecure, demoralised and weak to work. No matter how honest, sincere you are and how hard you try to learn, adapt to the system, it is not enough. Never in my life was I tormented so much about my work-ethic, my skills, my scientific skills and most importantly, my integrity ( I was accused several times of lying about my data!!!!). This to a PhD level employee who is classically honed to be a skillful scientist. At times, if you fail to meet deadlines, despite your best efforts, all plausible explanations are seen as your inefficiency and incompetence. You are then questioned per hour to let your superiors know what you have been doing, so that you may report to them by the end of the day. I often saw one of my colleague reporting her toilet breaks and to my horror, I had to do it for the poor thing sometimes!! And if you try to achieve a certain 50% of an overly convoluted, utopian and unrealistic task, that 50% is termed "useless" and you are asked to literally confess that your efforts were futile; you achieved nothing in the day. Honestly, after a 10 hour work day, listening to such sick, arrogant and downright personally insulting comments make you puke on your work contract!! I have worked in companies before and I can imagine insistence of certain tried-tested protocols but an R&D department is supposed to be an exception, else how would one achieve novel methods/tools? But even this department is run like a specialised marine unit where diversion from the chain-of-command and orders will mean a threat to your job!! To sum up, do yourself a favour and look past this company if you want a great career by all means. There are a lot of fish out there.. :-)
