Illumina reviews

Customers deeply despise the Corporate, Management and Sales style and attitude. Arrogant is the word most used by customers. What let’s Illumina down the most is terrible management and a toxic environment. Senior, middle and lower management is very rigid and strict but of very poor quality. Stupid decisions are pushed down the chain and there is no one with enough sense to evaluate the true effect. The company promotes and rewards only those willing to fall in line and there is a ‘put up or get out’ message delivered behind the ‘philosophically open’ corporate values (which include ‘Innovation is in our DNA’ and you being ‘physically open’ - both of which always made me chuckle). The chance of career progression therefore is pretty slim for anyone with any true enthusiasm to get the company moving forward. If you can put up with idiot managers, accept constant rubbish and kiss a few butts, you may go far! The recent redundancies have proven the above points. Although some dead wood was cut, mostly the people doing the actual work have been affected and the company has gone from ‘being lean’ to being drastically short staffed. Whilst 10% of the work force was cut (without any sense or reason) a rift of new highly paid VP were bought in at the ever increasingly heavy top. The cuts seem to have been made to please the share holders after ridiculously high sales growth targets were missed and the share price dropped dramatically. You will be financially well rewarded at Illumina but you won’t get much else from the company, respect and promotion are bought with blood, sweat and your soul. Hard work and long hours are expected, home life deemed unimportant and burn out wide spread throughout the company. Moral and motivation are at an all time low and many people are looking to leave.

When I came on board with Illumina, I was hired specifically more certain skill sets. I have seen myself and others included have their positions radically evolve into something completely different. Regardless of whether or not you are satisfied with the change. Projects and priorities could shift instantly, leaving things a bit chaotic at the office. Illumina's core values don't seem to align with your personal goals and end of year review, which tends to lower your raise/bonus. Whether this is on purpose or not I leave that to the employee. There seemed to be a disconnect in communication and goals between upper/middle management and rest of the teams. Advancement and movement across the organization was difficult and hard get approval of for some employees. No structure was in place to show you a path to becoming a senior person on the team or move into a manager or assistant director role. Although Illumina does hire outstanding employees, there seemed to be a lack of basic MS skill sets or analytics for some of the employe thereby having no understanding of their data the to create presentations critical for senior management on how their business line is doing. Turnover is quite high. The burnout and level that you are running at Illumina can be exciting but also stressful.