Anti-science, finger-pointing and generally psychologically damaging. Projects were never thought out very well, and the time lines were far too short with the result that batches either failed or targets were not met. The solution was always the same, find someone to blame instead of looking at the core issues. I had been working on several projects were the targets were not met due to bad planning and management, I can safely say this because two of the said projects were transferred to entire teams who had the luxury of years to complete the project which retrospectively were actually difficult given that one of the projects took 2 years to complete implementing MY IDEA otherwise it would have failed. I had 8 weeks to complete a complex multi-step synthesis.
The second project while on paper looked easy, actually was quite challenging. After 8 weeks I was deemed incompetent having successfully completed step 3 of a 4 step synthesis only to have a project manager screw up the purification on step 4. The same project had another compound which took an entire year to complete.
Finally I was invited for at first monthly interviews where I was reduced to tears on at least two occasions. The monthly meetings became weekly meetings where I was constantly threatened with dismissal. I was "offered" help for a new job and when I refused I was told I would never get a job in science again as they would write a bad reference for me.
When I confronted them and asked for reasons for my "incompetence" they had no solid answer other than "we expected better".
