Pros
Some what of a hybrid schedule, benefits, nice coworkers.
Cons
I came to Lonza due to them being a global entity and wanted to see what it would be like to work at a bigger company. What I wasn’t aware is that the Houston site is a facade and the recruiter painted a pretty picture that didn’t exist. It operates like a start up but has the global name behind it. Thus the amount of expectations and pressure put on an individual is a lot more than what a regular well functioning global company would require. Management clearly doesn’t know how to handle the rapid growth, there is blatant favoritism, they can’t accurately cite the career ladder because they do not follow the career ladder (and it’s poorly made) when promoting/hiring so they try to nitpick on why people aren’t getting promoted. Management doesn’t understand the assays and don’t bother learning them and have very little to zero lab presence. HR is also a revolving door and are useless and the only time people get promoted is when they threaten to leave. This job is very reactive and not proactive management clearly doesn’t not care about its employees and lack foresight on problems until after they arise even after being warned by workers in the lab. The pay is below average, start ups with less cash flow pay more, which is who Lonza usually loses it best people too. The management doesn’t listen to the staff performing the experiments. Samples do not come out on time and upper management expect people to be flexible when there are different shifts but they want certain personnel to perform the same assays and lead them to burnout because they hire mediocre people/freshly graduated people and don’t train them or don’t train them well and when they do train them they don’t require them to perform and rely on the same small fraction of the lab to carry the lab thus leading to burnout and the high turnover rate. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy, it’s like playing Russian roulette with good management. Your career is likely to be stifled working here when it comes to growth, they pigeonhole people. The same skills I came in with I left with.
