Pros
All companies pay and have benefits. Nothing Moderna provides makes the terrible work environment worth it.
Cons
- Roles and Responsibilities: job descriptions are completely meaningless word docs generated to post an opening. Within 2 months of being hired, I was asked to do a completely different role outside of my area of experience, a large departure from what I was hired for (and being paid for) and a role that my boss at that time 2 levels above than me had been performing. Major and immediate bait and switch, and it only continued from there. Re-orgs every 4-6 months. The job that I thought I got when I was hired at Moderna was very quickly a distant whisper in the wind. And I’ve seen this happen to many others, repeatedly. Also, the recent and very quiet layoffs across the organization have wreaked complete havoc, there’s no end in site to the responsibilities chaos. - Values and Ethics: you will be asked to comprise your values, do the opposite of what you know to be right in the world of pharma, and do things that are not in the best interest of patients, constantly. You will do so in the name of an invisible race and fake urgency, with project managers breathing down your throat 24/7. Someone else’s screw up becomes your latest urgent task instead of an extended deadline. I have signed off on work that has been at best sub par and at worst blatantly incorrect or contradictory, and I am ashamed. - Daily Distress: if you've worked at any a company that uses calendar availability to book meeting…forget about all that here. You’ll regularly be booked for 3 or 4 meetings at the same time, and everyone will expect you to attend theirs. If you decline, the person will double book you again, at another time. If you decline again that person will probably escalate to your boss and say that you’re not being cooperative. If you miss replying to all these double booked meetings and just don’t attend that person may try to dial you into their meeting anyway while you’re on another call. Oops, someone forgot to add you to an invite, so they’ll call you into a meeting 5mins after it’s started and expect you to attend too. I was once booked for 19 meeting in one day (it was a Friday…see below). Teams statuses matter even less than calendars. Busy, Out of office, Do not disturb…there are no boundaries around your own time that you can set to do actual meaningful work. Incessant pings from people you’ve never met, asking for deliverables you’ve never heard of because someone happened to whisper your name somewhere….are endless. This will be 80% of your working day, and you’ll spend the other 20% wrestling digital systems that never work the way they’re supposed to. You’ll end every day either giving up and accepting failure or working at night until 3am to do all the actual work you had planned for that day. - Fridays: this is a relaxing day at Moderna like many other companies, where you get a chance to tie up all your loose ends and wind the week down, prepare for the following week….sorry bad joke. Friday is the most awful and hellish day of the week at Moderna. Instead of accepting reality and doing what everyone can to close out their week, most people are frantic and crazed because they didn’t meet some deliverable that was completely unrealistic in the first place and they need 6 different people to move mountains for them so they can check it off their list. And surprise you’re one of the lucky 6! You will likely clock more hours on Friday than any of the week. - Weekends: I won’t even joke here, your boss will email, or IM, or call. Or all three until they get a hold of you for something “urgent”. - Leaders: either fall in line to this chaos or get packaged out. - Moderna Mindsets: the values by which Moderna employees are supposed to work by. Routinely mocked by those who can see them for what they are, and weaponized by those who can’t. “We act with urgency”…if everything is urgent…you know how it goes. “Prioritize the platform”…there’s no platform, only leaders who desperately need there to be one and try to force the science to fit. “We obsess over learning”….you won’t even have enough time to do your actual required trainings much less any other learning. “Digitize wherever possible”….here’s your used laptop that barely works, use it for the next 5 years and don’t complain when it lasts 10 minutes unplugged. Overall, an awful and bordering inhumane place to work that would love if employees were actually robots or machines…sound familiar?
