SGS reviews

Terrible money-hungry management, who does not care about the well-being of their employees. They treat most of their workers as expendable materials. For them, there is always a new batch of naïve and desperate new grads to take their place. They heavily rely on seasonal workers to get through the busy season. They always do not hire enough people on purpose at the start of the new season to save money. Summer season is very busy, and winters are usually chill, but still expect to be overworked if there are not enough full-time employees staying for winter. Do not expect to be appreciated for your hard work. The management does not care about your career goals. There is no upward movement, only lateral as workers in other departments are constantly quitting and someone has to cover for them. Do not expect to have a decent work-life balance, especially during summer. Expect to be overworked due to the constant lack of staff and having to train new hires while juggling work in multiple departments at the same time. As you would expect, they have a very high turnover rate. Dozens of my coworkers quit during my time there. Another dozen quit within a year after I quit. They do not adjust their pay raise for inflation. Expect your mental health to decline if you stay at this job for too long. If you really need the money and experience, stay for a season, or for a year at most. April is the best time to quit after you receive the spring bonus. Do not settle for this job. Even the overtime money and bonus are not worth it. You deserve better.

Management is willing to give up integrity and safety of employees to satisfy certain "big" clients. The workload can get incredibly stressful, the constant micromanagement is ridiculous yet the training is almost nonexistent and testing supplies are scarce. Analysts are always expected to deliver results on time regardless of lack of training, supply shortage, staff shortage, instrument calibrations taking too long or sample management not providing the information they're supposed to provide. To make matters worse, client services team constantly accepts expedited test requests for tests that no analyst is trained on or tests that the lab doesn't even have the equipment for. Analysts are frequently asked to significantly cut down the turnaround time if a client is willing to pay a hefty surcharge, regardless of testing backlogs or any other issues in the lab. The communication between departments is terrible. The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. The building is poorly constructed and has a terrible HVAC system that would frequently malfunction and would sometimes make working conditions unbearable. There has been numerous ceiling leaks inside the lab and bathrooms, ceiling panels falling off, sickening natural gas smell, jetfuel smell from the nearby airport, chemical waste smell and rotten food smell from the food lab. This lab is the definition of a toxic work environment in every sense of the word. It is not surprising that the employee morale is so low and the turnover is so high.