Pros
Back in 2020, I submitted a 5-star review for BioAgilytix because I genuinely loved working here. In a matter of months, though, that has changed completely.
Cons
At the end of 2021, a private equity firm named Cinven became our majority investors. Around that time, BAL leadership presented the board of directors with an extremely optimistic operating profit goal for 2022. Halfway through 2022, when it became apparent that we were not going to meet that goal, Cinven brought down the hammer. They got rid of the entire executive team and brought in Euan Menzies, their pump and dump guy from previous acquisitions, as the CEO and chairman of the board. From the time Euan started, employee morale has plummeted. He spends his time throwing the previous leadership under the bus, making hollow promises about how the culture will improve or how there won’t be layoffs, griping at employees for working remotely while hiring his own team of 100% remote executives, cultivating his own little circle of minions whose opinions exactly mirror his own (or who are just too afraid to speak up), and making impulsive decisions about what the company needs without actually doing his research first: eliminating our second yearly promotion cycle, booting the entire marketing team, letting go of over 30 employees in February, and so on. With the new culture of fear and distrust, I have found myself and several of my colleagues “quiet quitting,” having lost the motivation to go the extra mile and really only doing the bare minimum to scrape by undetected. When someone asked Euan at the latest town hall meeting how he plans to recover from the mass exodus of employees we’re expecting around May (after the fiscal year ends and bonuses are paid out), he essentially told us that we are all replaceable and they’ll just find people to take the place of anyone who leaves. There are still a lot of good people working here, and the company has a lot to contribute in the drug development arena. I sincerely hope BioAgilytix survives this. As long as Cinven and Euan are still at the helm, the outlook is grim.