What is the hiring process like at Cepheid?

Competitive pay, some managers allow you to work hybrid even though the company wants us fully on site

Corporate workflows don’t translate well when you are in biotech. Performance reviews are tedious and the process changes every year but are pointless because they end up being averaged out such that the department has a specific average rating.

Friendly and really talented people Product brings great impact to patients’ lives

Constant layoffs and outsourcing. Upper management has no idea what they are doing and underestimate employees’ work. Toxic productivity: Middle management had meetings to talk about meetings and manipulated numbers/data to show “improvements and potential savings,” while root causes were not addressed, so there was no true process improvement. Leadership was perfectly intact through layoffs, and the CEO posted on Linkedin celebrating record-breaking revenue, so it was hard to believe that layoffs were a “tough decision” for them.

Diverse teams, lots of great co-workers, improvement mindset, kaizen, learned a lot!

- Unconscious bias in workplace (one round of layoff, they fire only immigrants regardless of experience, years at company or degree) - Political promotions - Hiring of unqualified or underqualified people but actively hindered qualified experienced people from moving up if they do great work because they can't be replaced (I saw this a lot in the technical band) - Very hard to be promoted from technical positions. They promoted people from technical bands to R&D then sent them back to their original positions during layoffs but after layoffs, refused to give them those positions when hiring back because 'they couldn't be spared'. - Toxic management environment for higher levels (P2,P3,M1). Half of the project management and regulatory team quit in 2024 - Frequent changes in managerial direction (bought a plant in China, spent millions then closed it down. Made major, expensive changes but shut down the idea after money was spent. They cost the company LOTs of money (sorry for grammar mistakes, English is not my first language)

Diverse teams, lots of great co-workers, improvement mindset, kaizen, learned a lot!

- Unconscious bias in workplace (one round of layoff, they fire only immigrants regardless of experience, years at company or degree) - Political promotions - Hiring of unqualified or underqualified people but actively hindered qualified experienced people from moving up if they do great work because they can't be replaced (I saw this a lot in the technical band) - Very hard to be promoted from technical positions. They promoted people from technical bands to R&D then sent them back to their original positions during layoffs but after layoffs, refused to give them those positions when hiring back because 'they couldn't be spared'. - Toxic management environment for higher levels (P2,P3,M1). Half of the project management and regulatory team quit in 2024 - Frequent changes in managerial direction (bought a plant in China, spent millions then closed it down. Made major, expensive changes but shut down the idea after money was spent. They cost the company LOTs of money (sorry for grammar mistakes, English is not my first language)

Don’t have much to say… the company was much better before Danaher acquisition.

L1 leaders are clueless and don’t know what they are doing. Some VPs and upper management play dirty politics and they are self-serving and don’t have empathy for what their teams are having to go through and deal with. When the BUs were formed under Melissa Aquino’s leadership (which was a complete s**tshow btw), some incompetent people become VPs. They undid the BUs and laid off a whole bunch of middle management and ICs then continued to do that in the subsequent rounds of layoffs as well. What’s left is a hot mess and a lot of collateral damage because some really good talent with a lot of experience within the company were let go. Employee morale is at an all time low. Hint hint, there’s another round of layoff coming soon so that’s going to really put the nail in the coffin in terms of employee satisfaction. Good luck recovering from that! Some groups are working themselves out of their jobs, very well knowing what’s coming but counting on the severance package. Work-life balance is a joke. Don’t bother burning the midnight candle because if the management already made up their mind, they’ll give you a low score anyway. They are ultimately trying to force the average performance rating for their groups to a predetermined level. They manipulate the performance review ratings to make sure the team or department average complies with top-down mandates. Managers are put in a really tough spot because of this and they have to deliver the performance reviews that they themselves don’t fully agree with. There’s a lack of solid strategic vision… town hall meetings seem to be a forum where they attempt to discuss this but it’s all gimmicky and nebulous. What in the world is this new president doing? He and his L1s seem to be inaccessible and they exude the “corporate vibes” because they are rarely seen outside the virtual town halls. Despite the sentiments that leaders need to lead from the front and that they need to go to gemba, I have not seen these people do that all. Despite the various Kaizens and Policy Deployment initiatives to improve time to market and on time delivery, what has come out of these efforts in the past 5 years? Nothing. There’s a fair amount of women leadership in the company but many of them get talked over by their male counterparts who still behave like it’s bros club. Poor communication all around about the implementation about return to work. Some of the L1s weren’t showing up onsite themselves even though they were asking their teams to do so. It perplexes me that there are some remote employees and managers/directors in R&D groups who managed to keep their jobs after multiple rounds of layoffs. Like why do these people get to work remotely? What “R&D” are they doing in the comfort of their home? And as for the managers, are they leading from the front by having their people show up day in and day out while they sit at home not having a clue what’s actually happening in the office?