Pros
Some of the people are great.
Cons
- DMs are too overworked. They can't adequately resource the studies they have but keep piling more on. - VERY bad processes. Shockingly bad. Every task is unnecessarily fragmented over many groups and most of them do not have the big picture. Little to no standardization of CRFs, datasets, or edit checks. Very little training/onboarding for DM and no comprehensive checklists. Takes hours and long 10-person email chains just to figure out who is responsible for some basic task. -Overreliance on shared Excel files; dozens of people working in a study with no auditability, so a DM taking over can't figure out who made certain decisions or why...makes it even more difficult to "fix" a previously botched study when you are only seeing part of the picture. -While I was there they were talking about adding a new layer of data manager above the project DM, to ensure at the end of the study that the data is clean and that "the protocol endpoints are captured". You can't clean the correct datapoints into a study if you didn't design the CRF to capture that data, yet CRF design was not being discussed as part of this role's job or oversight. Syneos just doesn't seem to "get" data management. -IT is a nightmare, something is always breaking and it usually takes multiple tickets and escalations to get anything resolved. You may get calls in the middle of the night when somebody has time to fix your problem, and then have your ticket closed because you didn't answer. People go MONTHS at a time without the correct software or access to folders that they need to do their basic job functions. Complaints about this seem to be ignored. -Oceans of near-identical emails from upper management filled with corporate buzzwords and no substance, very irritating to read all these people patting themselves on the back every day when you don't have the tools to do your job. Yet there seems to be little appetite for the comprehensive process reform that would actually resolve the problems. A very hidebound company where nobody seems to have both the power and the inclination to improve things, despite many people offering feedback and trying to implement proven solutions that much smaller companies have used for years. It is sad.