Forest Labs Reviews

Pros

Pay is level with industry. You do get more vacations for more years of service. Paid lunch time. Usually no overtime.

Cons

Unless you enjoy your job function, you can be bored here, as the company culture is lacking spirit and fun. Pay is not so great considering the location (minutes from NYC where everything is expensive). Parking is expensive and not provided by company. No gym. Workload used to be very reasonable, but has doubled in recent years due to pressure of patent expiration. Depends on managers and groups, you may or may not be valued as an employee.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve company culture to boost morale.

Pros

The people, my colleagues across the org

Cons

Management and the inconsistency they allow and foster. Not top management, middle management.

Pros

Felxibility, no samples, no time and date stamp

Cons

Upper mgmt has no clue

Advice to Senior Management

Get some realcmanagers

Pros

Forest Labs has great products, a stellar team, a bevy of new compounds coming to market in important categories where pay, benefits and career growth is possible for serious, dedicated team workers.

Cons

The company is undergoing great strains as it moves to a mature pharmaceutical company in a difficult market for sales at historical profitable levels. There will be a lot of turmoil in the next few years due to patent expiry in important products

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to better communicate with employees and the public about strategy, position the business is taking, and change in the marketplace as it pertains to the business.

Pros

Great company to work for, provide good benefits and healthcare options, work life balance is great. CO seems like they have a good pipeline

Cons

IT department is a total wreck. Both CIO and IT Corporate SVP lack integrity, effectiveness and honesty. No transparency. Management spends unnecessary budget to get the same or higher budget following years. Give too much business to friends and relatives.
It is also disappointing to see multiple internal fraud instances over last few years in IT but the top management culprits are not held responsible.

Great company, CEO, CFO are extremely bright but If you want to work for Forest, avoid Informatics department by all means.

Advice to Senior Management

Remove CIO and SVP Corporate IT and directs. Appoint new CIO and IT management .Make the department better and there will be no negative impact to the company.

Pros

Good location with nice views. Great benefits and perks. Salary is decent as well although stock options not performing.

Cons

Informatics senior executives do not really listen and do not manage their staff due to lack of professionalism and it is reflected on everyone downstream several levels below.

only in it for themselves and managing up by putting on a different face so to look good is not a very good way to run IT. Staff productivity, morale, motivation and attitudes are really poor across all Informatics areas due to extraordinarily bad management. Unnecessary stress, politics and pressure.

It is true that most of the folks in senior roles are in some shape or form "connected" to CIO and SVP and hired from outside - clear sign that there is no internal staff development to move up. Forest has a lot of good talent that is not being utilized effectively.

Advice to Senior Management

Appoint new SVP Corporate Informatics and direct reports.

Pros

Very diversified, good technology, great people

Cons

a little slow to move, little sense of empowerment

Advice to Senior Management

Empower people more, you will be pleasantly surprised how well they respond.

Pros

Good benefits
Work Life benefits
Some smart innovative people

Cons

Unrealistic expectations, Infrastructure expects you to Work 24/7
Lots of Nepotism - family, past colleagues and friends get it all, esp. in Informatics
Little career growth, most senior exec roles go to outside because there is no leadership development
CIO and his executive team lack integrity

Advice to Senior Management

The problem is the CIO and his SVP, VPs .
Never meet with IT staff and I am in IT supervisory role.
A lot of IT jobs going offshore and the senior IT leaders CIO, VPs orchestrate this for personal purposes

Pros

The new talent they hired from outside

Cons

-Workload is not realistic
-No sense of urgency
-Salary is not FMV
-Think innovatively

Advice to Senior Management

-Continue to hire from outside and get rid of the employees that are resistent to change

Pros

There is a lot of flexibility, but that is more a function of the position and your manager than the organization. The products are good. The company treats top performers exceptionally well.

Cons

Upward mobility is highly limited for sales representatives. Promotions are routinely handed out to friends of management (the typical corporate boys club). If you want to move outside the sales organization and into a corporate role, the only opportunities are in NYC, Long Island, and St. Louis.