A good place to start in BioPharma - Anonymous employee Lonza Employee Review

3.0
24 Sept 2014
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Since Lonza Biologics is a CMO and there are always new projects, you get exposed to many different techniques and systems. You also get a lot of exposure to the client systems. If you are project-oriented, this is a great place to work. If you want something that provides a more steady work environment, this is probably not the place for you. Benefits were good, but were getting steadily worse every year. I can not say enough wonderful things about my coworkers - they were the reason I stayed as long as I did. Many projects have travel, and that does allow for cross-site interaction with colleagues elsewhere in the US, Europe (UK, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland), and Asia (Singapore, China).

Cons

Constant firefighting. Stress. Portsmouth site has high turnover. Expectation of 60+hour weeks in many departments. Lots of politics which impact lower levels. There is far less upward movement and opportunity now than there used to be. Most of the management is relatively young and will not be moving on anytime soon. Pay in Portsmouth is purposely about 20% less than comparable jobs in Boston. Ladies, make sure your salary is the same as what they might offer a male candidate--while I know of nowhere that has complete pay parity between genders, Lonza can be worse than most (a friend and his wife applied for comparable positions; they offered her almost half of what they offered him despite the fact that she had more education and experience)

Explore other reviews about Lonza

5.0
8 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Diverse opportunities across departments as one wanted

Cons

Provide decent pay and benefits

2.0
23 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Compensation (for higher level associates/senior management positions)

Cons

1) Work/life balance - leaders don't honor paid time off. Many teams expect you to be available during paid time off periods 2) Benefits - employer doesn't offer employer-subsidized vision insurance 3) Holidays - employer doesn't offer MLK Day and Juneteeth as paid days off, indicating how little they value diversity, inclusion, and belonging 4) Promotions - political; not based on merit 5) Mandated 5 day return-to-office to enable "in person collaboration" while at the same time offshoring jobs to cheaper markets. 6) PTO - based on tenure, but I think Lonza prefers high turnover so they don't have to give people time off (if they even honor it in the first place - see con 1) 7) Lack of harmonization - for an established CDMO, I was surprised at the level of misalignment between sites and the lack of standardization of processes

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