Pros
Still has the small company feel, where people actually enjoy coming to work. Very social office in Kansas City compared to other CROs. They still do the monthly bday celebrations for the employees (ice cream truck, popcorn, cake, morning bagels, etc). Loved the environment there. The one thing I so appreciated at UBC was the simplicity of how they managed studies. I don't mean this in a bad way in any way, but they are about 5 years behind the rest of the so-called "big CROs". Meaning, they don't have 5000 systems to manage studies, budgets, resources, payments, milestones, etc. Yes there is definitely some room for improvement but they are working on that. As a Project Manager, I could actually focus on the management of my study versus managing all the various systems which I find incredibly frustrating at other bigger CROs. I went to a smaller CRO on purpose and was not disappointed.....until the non-compete (described below). I will definitely still be there if it had not been for that stupid non-compete. Salary was good and if you're willing to sign their non-compete the bonus plan is very generous. That is their justification actually for the non-compete. they want a return on investment. They give you a nice bonus and they want some reassurance you won't bail. I get it, but it's not for me.
Cons
(I actually left in 2014 but that wasn't an option.) Anyway, the primary reason I left was due to Express Scripts implementing their corporate nonsense with a non-compete contract required for senior PMs and above. I had many lengthy discussions with HR and senior management, including president of the company. He did go out of his way to call me on 3 occasions to discuss my concerns and really try to talk it through. I was very impressed by that, but it was just not an option for me to put my salary at risk for a year. Even though Express Scripts acquired UBC a few years ago, there are still many changes being made at UBC. UBC hasn't totally implemented electronic TMF, so they do have a lot of paper TMFs, which isn't necessarily a bad thing - again not a fun of a system that doesn't function the way it's supposed to anyway - or claims to be "efficient" but it is so far from being "efficient" it's laughable. So, the fact that UBC doesn't have a full eTMF wasn't a huge con for me but I know others have different opinions in this area. Another con from this Express Scripts merger (or whatever you want to call it) is the loss of some vacation days. From what I understand UBC lost 2-3 vacation days because they were required to now follow the vacation days that Express scripts has. I didn't experience this myself as I started and left in 2014 but I understand others were upset about this.