eCS lures prospective hires with attractive benefits and promises of being committed to employee success. However, management was unable to outline specific performance expectations and a major gap exists between performance milestones and attainable goals. Heavy emphasis is placed on billable hours and utilization for ICs, who are expected to be fully utilized within weeks of being hired. Inconsistent and unclear direction is given to new hires about timecard completion - especially during mentorship periods when Principle ICs and “Junior” ICs share workloads. The time recording process is overly complicated and timecards are scrutinized by corporate leadership, (down to 15min increments). Department leadership is comprised of highly intelligent individuals, with an obvious lack of experience leading and developing employees. Department culture was often hostile, as manager has mercurial temperament. Repeatedly apologized for snapping, giving contradictory or incorrect direction, had frequent confrontational outbursts during meetings, unable to comprehend questions from subordinates related to job function (“I’m not understanding your question” or “help me better understand how that will help you in your job”), and was unnecessarily hypercritical of specification and logic writing style. Several members of the IC department freely communicate with one another, and have shared identical experiences. Concerns were escalated to department VP on multiple occasions and were ignored. I, personally, was once told to “put on your big girl panties” during a meeting. It was offensive and demoralizing. Also, be aware of an increased use of globally dispersed technical teams who are inexperienced in life sciences industry. End result(s): Lots of re-work and training on the fly for ICs & PMs.
