AdvanBio Reviews

Work-life balance is nonexistent. You will be required to work long hours and will not be allowed to take a short day to recharge after long strenuous bouts of work. If you asked for PTO you're questioned on why you're taking it and if you can take it some other time. PTO is accrued and HR stated there was a policy to "borrow" PTO so that for longer vacations that employees may not have accrued enough hours, employees will still be paid. I tried doing this once and the response was "it's too hard to do that on the system" even though other colleagues had just successfully requested the same thing days before me. Upper management is easily startled by the demands of the parent company and often lashes out at their direct reports when things out of their control do not go according to plan. Tasks and priorities are often switched up due to poor planning, lack of resource management, and probably changing demands from HQ. There is an expectation to complete tasks with atrociously short deadlines without factoring in major components like supply chain or staff availability. There is micromanagement over very small mundane tasks but the large ongoing projects are left with little support. You will often hear "let me know how I can support you or give you resources", but the minute you ask for them you will get immense pushback and even criticism of your work ethic. During my time there I was not comfortable asking my direct manager for clarification on things because she would often be in her obscenely bad moods that would be inflicted on the lab or she would just try gaslighting me into thinking she did give me that information. The CEO was also extremely rude and disrespectful. I have heard him talk bad about women, make fat jokes to a heavier-set employee, and be super untrusting of an African American vendor. I have never seen a company where the CEO is extremely disliked and a source of low morale. Responsibilities are given at management's whim and not properly planned out which has caused too many lapses in communication and improper use of resources which again can be attributed to upper management having little to no experience in running a proper lab. There were so many times when I was blindly doing a project for a few days just to find out there was at least one other person assigned to this as well. Talk about wasteful! There has been great emphasis on safety walks where the employees are berated for having a clean single tube on the floor but there is no addressing the lack of a properly functioning safety shower. There were so many useless logs that had to be filled out because the CEO thought it would look professional when instead he should have thought about- is this truly needed? is there a risk in not having this log? Is it practical for the current situation the lab is in? Is there a compliance reason to need this? Do we have the appropriate amount of resources to ensure the binders are being checked, filled out, and stored? Many things in the lab were like this..... If you do not speak mandarin it will be hard to move up in the company, they will deny it but there is a strong preference for these types of folks and you will often see favoritism for those employees. These mandarin speaking employees are often the ones watching other employees and reporting back that you checked on your cellphone while at your desk.

This is the second turnover that Advanbio has experienced where 8 out of 20 employees resigned within a 5-month period. Senior management denied opportunities to cross-train, and will pigeon-hole them to doing the same thing for the rest of the year. For several months, upper management and HR have been asking their employees why their morale was so low and how they could improve the work environment. Every response that they received, they immediately tried to make excuses for themselves, and denied any accountability. Instead, blame was placed back to the lab associates. Senior management would talk poorly of their associates to other associates, threaten demotion, and for the 0.5 seconds they’re in the lab and sees you with downtime, they’ll immediately complain to other associates as to how poor your work ethic is. It really shouldn’t matter if you have downtime because the project is being done regardless, especially when you’re a non-exempt employee. Your work ethic and time management skills will also be questioned if you refuse to stay overtime due to their last minute requests and lack of understanding of the timeframe it takes to perform their experiments. Barely any of the research done there is considered productive, and ideas will be rejected because there is simply no time in the short deadline they have. Mental and emotional decline is observed in many associates, and I would not recommend this company to anyone unless they are desperate to gain some sort of experience. Just know your monetary compensation will be lower than industry standard, and as of right now, it cannot be negotiated. They do prefer passive employees that can say yes to their demands, and it was seen that a lot of talented people were rejected during the interview process because they were too extroverted for management. If you decide to apply for their operations team, there’s definitely more perks to working there. There was a couple of times where operations team would go out pumpkin picking, restaurant taste testing, and christmas tree shopping to “prepare” for company events while the other lab associates are struggling to meet deadlines. Things might be different now since Advanbio was given the opportunity for a fresh start as all of their senior employees have all left, but major changes are questionable considering the people leading the departments are still present and has lost a lot of talent. Most of the positive reviews are falsified by management in hopes of balancing out the company’s overall ratings.