How are senior leaders perceived at Cemvita?

Pros

A lot of smart and motived people. The CEO and CTO are mission minded and super kind.

Cons

It is almost impossible to make >100 people all happy at the same time but I can see that Cemvita try their best to keep a good and health environment for everyone.

Pros

Getting to work for a company with really cool science and an amazing mission for a better future is truly my dream job. I am challenged daily and absolutely love it. I actually can't wait to arrive each day. The leadership team thinks big picture and values everyone's input. All my coworkers are caring and candid and everyone works together towards our overall mission. On top of that, the company offers great benefits and compensation. It has been a breath of fresh air working for Cemvita, and I'm really excited about my future here.

Cons

As a startup that is rapidly growing, we are quickly running out of physical space, conference rooms, internet bandwidth, etc. Our team is working diligently to expand though and address any issues that arise.

Pros

They have a lot of different projects, and they focus a lot on unusual bacterial physiology (extremophiles, archaea, etc.), which gives opportunities to microbiologists who don't work with E. coli. Their pay schedule is very competitive with other companies.

Cons

Their projects have little to no overlap so they cannot easily share many resources. Sometimes it means they all need separate very expensive equipment. It also often means that projects are somewhat siloed and generally people on one project have no idea what's going on with other projects and there's very little communication with upper management to correct this or be more transparent. They undershot their Series B funding goal by about 80%. Because of this, they've been laying a lot of people off. Projects have to fight with each other for resources and personnel. It results in a very competitive and tense environment. There is a lot of infighting. And experiments are often rushed, poorly planned or communicated, and disorganized, leading to mistakes and having to repeat experiments.

Advice to Management

Take some pots off the burner. The business plan appears to throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks. Realistically this means that none of the projects have enough resources to succeed. If you cut off some projects and redirected resources to the remaining projects, it would greatly increase the chances of that project succeeding. As it is, it seems like leadership is content just to let projects flounder and then wonder why no one wants to invest in them.

Pros

This company is going places!! Excellent leadership team

Cons

Growing firm so money can be tight