Pros
All other employees are so bad (poorly educated, non-English speaking, ugly) that you may feel good about yourself for a couple of days before you release what an abyss you are in. It is a curious case how they managed to gather so many losers.
Cons
Some people say it is a good experience at Amphastar to learn something about the pharmaceutical industry and may help you land another job in the same industry, in order to justify their higher-than-1-star ratings. Let me clarify the myth. It is true you can learn something about the industry standard that expired 10 years ago (that's why they can't pass FDA's recent inspections). And Amphastar really does not have a good reputation to help you with your future career. Things are off-track. 1. Worst pay and benefit 2. Senior Management is unbelievably incompetent. I know this because I worked closely with many of them. (1) The CEO is in his 70s, ill-tempered and forgetful at work. He can't remember things is a big problem because he likes to micromanage the company. CEO's letters to the FDA is full of English mistakes too. (2) The COO is his wife who does not really do anything. (3) The already-small management has many of the CEO's Chinese relatives. These people get super jealous if you show any competence, and they will try to destroy you. (4) The few white guys in the management are just for show: they are sent off to various conferences to represent the company and that's about it, including the President and the CFO. They just seem to be puppets. (5) There is no hope that the CEO may step down anytime soon as he is expecting to hand the company to his 18-year-old son when he's ready. 3. The management is full of lies. They promise so much but deliver so little. (1) They lie to the investors about their "strong pipeline", but the fact is the company just does not have what it takes for R&D. For example, the CEO tells the investors they have more than 10 products in the pipeline when they only have like 2 or 3 that are just in the infant stage. What the CEO would do then is to brandish some samples from India and claim those are Amphastar-developed-high-quality product. They say they have patents? I read them all, all garbage. (2) They lie to the employee about benefits they will never get. (3) A guy got injured in production due to the minimal protection provided by the company (noncompliance with safety codes). His face was boiled. The company made no compensation other than sending him to a hospital and asked him to come back to work in a week. (4) They lie to new members on the management team about promotion opportunities to get people to join the team at lower offerings. But the fact is, only the CEO's relatives and cook-sukkers get them. If you go ask, they will lie, if you are persistent, they will just kick you out. Hey, at least they got some cheap labor out of you. (5) You think you get a better chance at this Chinese family company because you are Chinese? You couldn't be more wrong. They will not help with immigration and they somehow think they own you. (6) The CEO himself will lie to your face. (7) There are frequent quality issues in the production, which they hide by "good paperwork". 4. This is perhaps the most important. The pharmaceutical company is on bad terms with the FDA. They constantly defy FDA's rules and regulations. Every FDA inspections raise multiple red flags. And I quote the CEO himself "FDA makes all kinds of mistakes". It cracks me up. All bad companies eventually die, don't you think so? 5. Amphastar is looking bad in a series of litigations, potentially facing a huge financial loss. I will end this review with the words of a former employee "I'd be better off go flipping burgers than working at Amphastar".