Pros
- World-leading mission. You’re pushing science and healthcare forward, and helping some people who really need / deserve it
-Work from home as standard. Only mandated office time is once a fortnight.
- Great work-life balance. Would only ever be expected to work late in exceptional circumstances
- Some nice benefits. generous leave policy, discounted gym membership
- Highly determined and motivated colleagues. Any colleague I can think of would be happy to help out with anything if asked (except management and HR)
Cons
-Far far far too much management. Any piece of work has to climb a mountain of bureaucracy before it can actually get done, and this is made worse by the barrage of middle management who’s only ‘input’ is to slow things down so they can look like they’re involved.
-Related to above, too many meetings. But the company is taking steps to fix this.
- Bullying and, to a lesser extent, sexual harassment are known issues that are not being addressed.
- No career progression. Internal promotions based on favouritism. Criteria to get any substantial pay rise are not clear. Annual pay rises barely cover inflation.
- Redundancies have been happening over the last few years. Entire teams let go and told to reapply for ‘new’ positions, which are essentially the same role.
- The ‘corporate’ culture often feels like it dims any sort of scientific spark or fun ‘blue sky’ work. This is probably very team-dependant
- Not much socialisation, doesn’t help that the office is in Canary Wharf, so everywhere nearby is expensive and full of obnoxious clientele.
-A non-profit, government-funded organisation is extremely vulnerable to political change. In three years Prime Minister Farage could call the organisation ‘woke nonsense’ and shut it down. But I suppose many people would lose their jobs under a Farage regime so that’s not a GEL-specific con.
