Pros
The underappreciated people with uncommon grit.
Cons
For young PhD graduates, I highly recommend this place. You can get your foot in the R&D industry door. You'll become a manager almost immediately. In some cases, you won't even need to complete much postdoc time. You'll be a leader with a voice that is heard. Actually, you might not even need to interview. Now... if you don't have a PhD.... Run. It doesn't matter how much experience you have, how much non-doctoral education you have, how long you've served the company, performance, dedication etc. It doesn't matter..... Run. The PhD gatekeeping by Moderna is demoralizing to so many key personnel. It creates two classes of employees, and the lower class is disillusioned. I'm convinced this is why Moderna is going to fail. The most important thing to people is respect. Passion and drive are so key for a company like this. When you don't feel respected, passion for the work is near impossible to hold onto. When you don't feel respected, you take the easy outs. You do the minimum. When you don't feel respected, you don't squeeze in one more experiment before going home. You come in late, you half-ass the documentation, you procrastinate, you order more reagents than you need. A fair salary and solid perks alone don't buy respect. The work needs to be appreciated. Talent needs to be recognized. And not with a title like, "Senior Principal Research Associate". Think about how ridiculous that title is for a second. Do you really think people that receive that title are grateful? (they weren't). That's a scarlett letter. That title says, I know you're working hard, but you are incapable of creative problem solving or leveraging any scientific knowledge to propel the company forward. HR messaging is that this is the industry norm. It's not. And even if it was, that doesn't make it right. RAs notice, RAs talk, RAs leave, RAs get disillusioned. And that's one of the saddest things about this, treating people this way becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The company used to at least pretend this was a meritocracy. Not anymore. Ironic too - the president and CEO are non-PhDs.
