I was one of the ones in MRL IT that got cut about a week ago, there was no warning. All I can say is thank freaking God. The continual stress here over "the budget" is not worth it. The job market is tight but who cares. Life goes on.
Some observations about my time here:
-A former accountant that is now the CEO (Hi Rob). This is as good as the previous CEO being a lawyer. You would expect that the CEO would be someone with a scientific background. That would make to much sense. Only in American companies do you see this kind of stupidity & insanity.
-As the CEO is a former accountant the crazy amount of budget cutting and penny pinching is staggering. This is all they care about.
-Zero innovation. When was the last time MRL produced anything that was a blockbuster. They buy companies hoping to hit pay dirt and that usually doesnt pan out either. Witness the train wreck that was Scherring. They merged with Scherring only to sell off huge chunks of the business to other companies.
-Massive middle management that should be cut. So lets see there are:
Assoc Directors
Directors
Executive Directors
VP
Senior VP
Most of these people produce NOTHING and all they do is "manage up", that is if you want to call it that. They spend their days kissing ass and messing around with budgets and power point presentations. What is their value?
-Blatant nepotism (both ethnic and otherwise) and cronyism. I have never seen a place where its so in your face. People are put into positions because they are pals with the higher up or they are the same race or ethnicity.
-Obsession with presentations (arts and charts) that mean NOTHING. Enormous amounts of time are spent on presentations that are useless and that NOBODY cares about. They love to put all kinds of graphs and charts that you cant easily understand. Hint: if people cant read it in a second than why are you doing it.
-Pissing tons of money away on open office bullsh*t. NOBODY wants to sit on an open floor with no desk of their own. The last time I was there I might as well been in an office in Bangalore.
-The parking problem. If you dont get there early you are screwed. They eliminated tons of sites yet think they are going to stuff an entire company into a few sites in NJ and PA. This is pretty basic: number of employees = number of desks = number of parking spaces. Learn basic math.
-Tons of people in roles that they should not be in. Examples: biologists, chemists, accountants and others managing IT areas when they really have no background in it. This goes all the way up to the senior level. Say hi to Mike Studney who has no IT background and yet is a SVP managing IT.
-Pouring tons of money into AI and machine learning with no obvious payback is stupid. What they dont tell everyone is that the real reason they are doing this is to get rid of more people.
-Pouring money into pet projects of senior managers for years on end that doesnt work and have zero payback.
-Starving projects and areas of funding that are critical to the business and are used every day is just plain dumb. I have seen them eliminate the staff of entire projects and have no one to go to except some bodyshop who cant fix the problems.
-The various companies that they have outsourced all kinds of stuff are full of crap about their abilities. Their staff is as stupid as the day is long. You know the company names.
-Massive bloated bureaucracy that could not find their ass with both hands.
-Continually hiring of people at the Assoc Director level and above with no real experience. But hey they check that DEI box.
Some observations about my time here:
-A former accountant that is now the CEO (Hi Rob). This is as good as the previous CEO being a lawyer. You would expect that the CEO would be someone with a scientific background. That would make to much sense. Only in American companies do you see this kind of stupidity & insanity.
-As the CEO is a former accountant the crazy amount of budget cutting and penny pinching is staggering. This is all they care about.
-Zero innovation. When was the last time MRL produced anything that was a blockbuster. They buy companies hoping to hit pay dirt and that usually doesnt pan out either. Witness the train wreck that was Scherring. They merged with Scherring only to sell off huge chunks of the business to other companies.
-Massive middle management that should be cut. So lets see there are:
Assoc Directors
Directors
Executive Directors
VP
Senior VP
Most of these people produce NOTHING and all they do is "manage up", that is if you want to call it that. They spend their days kissing ass and messing around with budgets and power point presentations. What is their value?
-Blatant nepotism (both ethnic and otherwise) and cronyism. I have never seen a place where its so in your face. People are put into positions because they are pals with the higher up or they are the same race or ethnicity.
-Obsession with presentations (arts and charts) that mean NOTHING. Enormous amounts of time are spent on presentations that are useless and that NOBODY cares about. They love to put all kinds of graphs and charts that you cant easily understand. Hint: if people cant read it in a second than why are you doing it.
-Pissing tons of money away on open office bullsh*t. NOBODY wants to sit on an open floor with no desk of their own. The last time I was there I might as well been in an office in Bangalore.
-The parking problem. If you dont get there early you are screwed. They eliminated tons of sites yet think they are going to stuff an entire company into a few sites in NJ and PA. This is pretty basic: number of employees = number of desks = number of parking spaces. Learn basic math.
-Tons of people in roles that they should not be in. Examples: biologists, chemists, accountants and others managing IT areas when they really have no background in it. This goes all the way up to the senior level. Say hi to Mike Studney who has no IT background and yet is a SVP managing IT.
-Pouring tons of money into AI and machine learning with no obvious payback is stupid. What they dont tell everyone is that the real reason they are doing this is to get rid of more people.
-Pouring money into pet projects of senior managers for years on end that doesnt work and have zero payback.
-Starving projects and areas of funding that are critical to the business and are used every day is just plain dumb. I have seen them eliminate the staff of entire projects and have no one to go to except some bodyshop who cant fix the problems.
-The various companies that they have outsourced all kinds of stuff are full of crap about their abilities. Their staff is as stupid as the day is long. You know the company names.
-Massive bloated bureaucracy that could not find their ass with both hands.
-Continually hiring of people at the Assoc Director level and above with no real experience. But hey they check that DEI box.