Good on a CV, but poor work-life balance and recognition - Analyst Costello Medical Employee Review

Long hours (even for this sector), stressful, cliquey and poor recognition. Naturally, teams work long hours when a project is nearing completion, just like any company in this sector working to deadlines. Unlike other agencies, this happens at Costello Medical all the time regardless of the project stage or client. Working over 50 hours a week is normal here – which is not mentioned in the glossy external projection of the company. I experienced unrealistic deadlines, a constant excessive workload and regular last-minute demands from my first to my last week here. In such situations, the responsibility was placed on me to give feedback to project managers - which in itself is reasonable - but nothing resulted from these conversations. I felt completely unsupported and that my work was taken for granted, so I got a better offer and left. The worst part is that senior management say that planning methods (a big spreadsheet) give colleagues a sustainable workload, despite evidence suggesting that the opposite is the case. It feels like with the rapid (and impressive) growth of the company, internal processes have fallen out of date, but aren't seen as worth fixing - with such a large pool of applicants on tap, Analysts are basically disposable. On the culture itself - it's worth pointing out how well you conform to the culture forms part of performance reviews. This could be why it feels shallow and insincere, almost a popularity contest, and why saying anything that isn't unilaterally positive is just not the done thing. The company as a whole is very cliquey. Performance reviews are based on 360 feedback, which is ineffective - few people will share truthful non-anonymised feedback about the people who decide their promotion prospects. On recognition - they say that people who contribute to the company's success should share the rewards, but seemingly this doesn't extend to the Analysts and Medical Writers working all hours to finish deliverables - this gets demoralising pretty quickly. Teams shoutouts and GIFs are lovely but a lot of Analysts might prefer a bonus (!) or something more meaningful. Ten seconds reward costing nothing in return for months of unpaid overtime is derisory in the cold light of day.