Ginkgo BioWorks reviews

Does not hire experienced leadership and managers nor do they offer training to hold existing leadership accountable. If a founder favors you, you get what you want. If they don't, good luck and have fun going through a lot of emotional labor to do your job.

Work life balance is well appreciated and encouraged in Ginkgo culture, however employees may at times go above and beyond to make challenging tasks work. Ginkgo as a mature startup still provides individuals the opportunity to make an exceptional impact by exceeding the call of duty. Biology is not yet easy to engineer, and while Ginkgo and others are making progress, occasionally "elbow grease" is required to push an effort over the finish line. While the average workweek is ~40 hours, some employees exceed that semi-regularly largely because they want their projects to succeed. Having said that, management actively encourages work/life balance. Individuals seem to take on the extra responsibilities voluntarily. I feel this may stem from previous academic research environment where long work weeks were the norm.