Pros
Benefits like health, dental, 401-K and things you'd expect for a company this size. Recently increased 401-K contributions to more generous levels as one of the highlight. Also have generous PTO for new employees. Flexible working arrangements for many people depending on who your manager is but it's often in exchange for high demands on your time, like taking meetings before or after working hours including on weekends. Some employees that have been through various transitions with both companies know their stuff and are genuine experts in their areas. If you can get some of their time, which is rare these days to be able to do because of the demands on everyone, then it's a great learning experience to talk and listen to those people. Experience working with a diverse, global workforce. Even those who are more junior in the organization have likely exposure to significant projects that have the possibility to be career defining and meaningful opportunities. This is hands down one of the bigger benefits of working here right now if you can tolerate the significant flaws of a company that is still trying to figure out what it's doing and how to bring together two vastly different cultures of employees after a significant acquisition of a company significantly larger than it's historic size.
Cons
Where to start. Well. Talk to an old Avantor employee and the person will say "VWR is screwed up." Likewise, talk to an old VWR employee and "Avantor is screwed up." The fact is that both legacy companies were screwed up in their own rights!!! Put the two together, still not sure what you get, going on a year and a half after the merger. The cold truth hurts but Avantor had a miserable, nonexistent culture in the last several years with a leadership mentality of working people to the bone. Employees were stretched thin as a result of countless layoffs and restructuring, and there was a mentality of putting profitability first over customers and employees. VWR was a gigantic contrast but not in a good way. VWR had layers and layers of people who didn't feel like they had authority to do anything or make decisions without getting another 20 people involved, many managers that did nothing except seemingly order people around and push paper, and a culture of mediocrity and red tape. Avantor's leadership or new leaders are leading the combined company so the concept of working to the bone continues very much so. VWR legacy employees are resisting that because that aspect of the VWR culture was so very different. And guess what... many of the do nothing managers are still here, well, doing nothing as they have been. The general looks on faces say it all. People aren't happy. The new Avantor culture we are creating is only one so far of burn out, misunderstandings and mismanagement. Fast paced is an understatement. There is the notion to hurry up and get stuff done but do it with no real resources, vague guidance, no time and changes or delays so often it makes your head spin. And why do we have to hurry up? Why the unreasonable deadlines? Who knows. Nobody can truthfully say what we're racing towards. Maybe another IPO? But who knows when, that has been the talk for years. So there are major projects being pushed through with poor planning, no project management and people assigned that are overlapping with other critical projects so it's impossible to give projects the attention they deserve and do them right. Even employees that are typically comfortable working in fast and changing situations are getting to the point where it's impossible to sustain this level of work without thinking about, at least once during any given week, what it would be like to walk out and quit.