Please do not work here.
I cannot in good conscience recommend Azenta Life Sciences as a good place to work.
I first started working with them fresh out of college, thinking I was going to be getting lab experience (Ya know, like I went to school for). At the time, it required a college degree for the most basic position, and frankly, the job description made it sound like a lab job. Unfortunately, not only do you NOT need a degree to do this job, but they will still make you have one in order to get paid the posted salary or will pay you less, and the job description still has similar phrasing that makes it sound like a lab job, even thought it is not even close. Thus, many extremely overqualified people now work there at the base position, making less than they should be and doing more work than they ought to be. Why are they doing more than they should? Because they are having to pick up the slack of their so-called “management”, who openly do nothing all day except scroll TikTok in the biobank (which is against policy), abuse their techs verbally to the point of tears (4 times that I know of from a SINGLE supervisor), gaslight and burn out techs genuinely trying to do a good job in their role (while also finding every excuse to withhold their promised promotions but still giving them the work), or are just racist (I wish I was kidding, but there are too many appalling instances to count). The most common complaint I heard while there is how “high school” the working conditions are, and the only people truly participating in that are the team leads. There is a clique of mean girls (again, wish I was kidding) that has infiltrated the leadership team, and they just bully people all day and get paid for it. They make sure to get their friends (or their friend’s children) promoted whenever it suits them, and pass up other techs that are already qualified and that they have actively trained for the role. And when they discover that they promoted someone unqualified, they just move them to a different department at the same level, as if trying to cover up a mistake (they are). I should have gotten out within my first 6 months, but the only good thing about Azenta is that some of the people that work on the floor are some of the most kind-hearted, amazing, loveliest people I have ever had the privilege of meeting. I stayed around longer than I should have for them, possibly at the detriment to my own career. Too many good people are already working there, and any success the company has seen is because of them. But the “leaders” in charge want you to think it was them. Some new management came in right before I left, and while I had hope that they would do right by their employees, unfortunately, due to the current biobank managers, I no longer see those leaders as able to make a difference. I cannot stress enough how unproductive and unprofessional most of the active managers are. They are not involved in any of the actual work being done, but spend all of their work hours micromanaging their teams and then berating them for not meeting ridiculous standards. And when those standards are met, you still get screwed over. Higher ups are constantly withholding information from techs or just openly lie/contradict themselves (sometimes in the same meeting) because they want to seem like they know what they are doing. They don’t, and it makes their lack of knowledge that much more apparent. In conclusion, while I once said I enjoyed working at Azenta, the last 2 years I worked there go beyond me just “not liking it”. For my own mental health, I had to leave, and thank God I did. So please, do not give them your time, you are worth much more than Azenta could ever offer you.
