Pros
There are some genuinely excellent people working for this company that are hard-working, kind, generous, and incredibly intelligent. It was a pleasure working with most of the people there. It is a shame that these people are exclusively up to and including team leader level, not company or even department management.
Cons
I cannot speak for compound management or biology directly, only chemistry and general company management. The management system simply does not work, and concerns for stability and even basic human welfare are either ignored or met with anger, belligerence, and gaslighting behaviour. From the start, you’re made to feel very small, and there is such an enormous atmosphere of belittling if you’re not one of “the favourites”. If you are, however, any and all despicable behaviour you decide to inflict on your colleagues is swept under the rug, hidden, and you’re told not to “create a toxic environment” by opposing this. I can say with certainty that there is no equality amongst the staff here, and no intention to fix that – as demonstrated by the poor retention of female scientists in the chemistry department. There is no career advancement and there are no benefits – unless you count the car park on the side of the motorway as one, which the company clearly seems to. These are trying times to be a small company in this sector, that much is clear, but issues of company instability and attempted perseverance through these difficult times have been handled incredibly poorly by all of the management team, in particular by those allegedly working for HR. The recent round of redundancies that were made was unfortunate, and I do not deny that not only was it necessary but also very difficult for those making the decisions of who had to go. That aside, the lack of communication, the very heavily flawed way in which the process went ahead, and the ignorance of anxious human beings during this process left everyone in the chemistry department completely devastated. Personally, I know that I will never forget the ordeal that I went through, and I doubt anyone working there still or not will either. The worst part of it was that it would have taken the smallest of kind gestures or communication to prevent such a level of damage, and even this was too much of an ask. Bottom line, you are very much made to feel sub-human working here. If you value your physical or mental health, don’t do it.