Amgen – “Amgen pays well and helps develop its high performers, but it tolerates its low performers indefinitely”
1 of 1 people found this helpfulPros
Amgen allows a lot of flexibility with your work schedule. Middle management is very aware of their employees strenghts and encourages them to seek out opportunities that will match those strengths as well as provide the employee with an interesting challenge. People who work there are fairly laid back, so it can be a pretty fun place to work. The pay and bonuses are great, to say the least. Everyone down the Admin Coordinator receives a yearly bonus roughly 10-30% of the annual salary, with Directors (maybe EDs) making much more than that (in the range of 70-130% in BONUS on top of their already competitive salaries.
Cons
As nice as it is to work somewhere fun, the "fun" factor seems to get in the way of actually getting work done, which I personally find really annoying. The slackers within the company are generally tolerated well, and they are able to use the dreaded "HR" card too often with little cause. For example, if you tell an employee that she hasn't performed her task, it is not uncommon that the employee may cry then take you to HR for being insensitive. The whole issue can turn into a case about how you treated her rather than the initial issue that she wasn't doing her job. I've never seen HR take action on this type of complaint, but it's certainly possible that they may have to if the circumstances are right based on liberal CA law.
Advice to Senior Management
I'd like to see a more aggressive effort taken to get rid of the low-hanging fruit who won't perform their jobs. It annoys those of us who do and therefore have to pick up the slack.