This company puts itself above all else, at the expense of its employees. I worked at Medpace for 2 years, starting shortly after the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Position as a Statistical Analyst: There is limited training provided as a new grad in this department. We had about 2 weeks of training where we were given simple projects to complete, and then were thrown into massive projects with little direction or guidance. Projects are set up with primary programmers with quality control programmers checking your output, often led by a lead statistician who had little to no experience or training in project management and was stretched thin across half a dozen projects simultaneously. If you asked for help of any sort (including minor technical questions, like "What is the syntax for programming an unusual symbol?”) you were told that you must figure it out on your own. If the project falls into a tight deadline due to the ineptitude of the project lead, the fault and punishment would inevitably fall on the lowest level members of the team (the Statistical Analysts). Individuals are promoted too quickly within this department because of the incredibly high turnover rate - once employees gain a couple of years of experience, most leave for a company with better benefits and work/life balance. Because of this, there is a SEVERE lack of employees with the skills to be project leads - most employees are either fresh-faced Statistical Analyst I's, or managers who have been in the company for 6+ years. There are a handful of statisticians who serve as project leads and they are therefore stretched extremely thin. This is a severe weakness. This chaotic department structure makes it impossible to actually learn and grow at your own pace – newer employees get promoted before they are ready to handle the higher workload. This creates a high stress environment for the entire team when inexperienced employees are given massive projects. The result is 60+ hour work weeks when there is an impending delivery. On multiple occasions, I was told that I would be expected to work on weekends and during my time off/vacation.
Culture of Department: The culture of the biometrics and biostatistics department at Medpace is incredibly toxic. It is extremely cliquey and there are not enough efforts to make new employees feel like they belong. I went almost a year before meeting my manager. Early after you join, management will make a decision about how much they like you based off no measurable method, and your entire career at Medpace will be dictated by this initial opinion. If you are a "favorite", you will receive higher merit increases, more frequent salary increases, be eligible for bonuses, and be eligible for promotion at a faster rate. If not, you will not receive as much of a merit increase, will not receive bonuses, and everything you do will be heavily scrutinized. If you have a target on your back, it won't be long before they find a reason to fire you. In theory, we had biannual performance reviews. In actuality, I never met with my supervisor to discuss my performance and he would submit the report twice a year based off of what he guessed was my project performance.
COVID/Crisis Response: While most companies were fully remote until recently, Medpace had employees coming into office regularly starting in summer 2020, stating that the quarterly earnings in the two months prior indicated loss due to employees working from home. There was no need to require employees to be in person – in my first year there, I spoke to no people in office and only communicated with coworkers virtually. In the time that I was there, there were multiple COVID outbreaks in various departments of the company, with no response from the organization regarding employee welfare. There was once an outbreak on the biometrics floor - the company failed to shut down the floor to limit the spread of illness. Once I got COVID, I alerted the "response team", who instructed me TO TELL NO ONE and to use my limited sick time to cover the time I was out. They failed to alert any of my coworkers who had been in my vicinity. Not only was this completely preventable, but I was expected to use my own sick time for getting sick at the workplace I was forced to go to. When the crisis in Ukraine began, we received a pathetic email from management stating that employees who were based in Ukraine were allowed to work from home. That was it. From what I can tell, there were no other measures taken to ensure employees in the middle of a refugee crisis had the time off they needed to get out or get help.
Company Culture: In the name of employee engagement, once a month they will bring in an ice cream truck or give out a beer to each employee. There is no community building otherwise. These half-hearted gimmicks are extremely superficial – rather than providing quality healthcare, decent benefits, and competitive salaries, you’ll get a beer every month!
The needs and priorities of the employees are not a concern for Medpace. Most positions in this company can be done remotely for identical benefits packages – there is no incentive to work at this company. You do not qualify for any work from home time until working at the company for more than 6 months, and then you are allowed to WFH a couple days per week.
