VERY low ceiling for scientist who want to remain scientist throughout their career
No bonuses unless at the manager level or higher OR middle marketing positions
$100 holiday bonus for all employees (get real)
raises range from 2-3% for above average yearly reviews
It needs to be known that if you are on the scientific side of the company you WILL BE PAID UNDER market value for your position and skill set. Sigma has number grades for positions. Scientific side is 11 (associate),13 (scientist),15 (senior scientist) for individual contributors; 16 for supervisors 17-19 for managers and directors. Only at the 17 level do you get a bonus. There are PhDs who don't get any kind of bonus and are underpaid at the 15 level. For comparison, on the marketing side a person with a BS or BA entry level starts at a level 14. There are people with Masters degrees and 7+ years experience at the 13 level who make less than a 24-26 yr old with a Bachelors with much less work experience. It is almost expected that if you are a scientist at 11 or 13 and want real career advancement from within the company, you HAVE to move to marketing. This is fine if that's your aspiration. It does seem to be an easy transition from those I've spoken to.
My extreme disappointment comes from the ethos of management that selling goods is far more important than the internal creation of them. The life science part of the company where i left-which is much much smaller than the chemical side for reference-is split into R&D and production. Both sides have scientist that are apt and good at their jobs but of course there are those that are extreme slack offs on both sides as well. The production side is what generates money for the company. R&D has important projects but it's been down sized over the last 2 years (layoffs). Sigma would rather purchase a developed product than create it; which is fine for a business model but not good for employees in that part of the company. As a whole the idea is that as long as a decent product is being produced, there is no need to improve pay and implement bonuses for scientists even if there is essentially a revolving door of people on the lower end of the spectrum of scientist. People, including myself, want to stay and advance but the ceiling is just far to low and career progression is sluggish at best if you do stay in the lab.
Disregard all this if you want marketing insight in the company. As far as I'm concerned, the grass actually is greener there.
