Not what it seems, be careful - Anonymous employee BenchSci Employee Review

1.0
Sep 19, 2022
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Working on an exciting software platform that brings a lot of value to pre-clinical research.

Cons

The company spends more time advertising its culture than it does actually living up to it. A lot of what you see in the culture slides is not or no longer true. The company is heavily marketing themselves to attract talent to rapidly scale up and make up for people leaving. Do not ignore the red flags you see during the hiring process. There are a lot of aspects that may have been true when it was a smaller start up that are no longer true. In general, I feel that upper management uses the "start-up" mentality to excuse bad behaviour and practices. You will not have time to have a work-life balance and complete everything that is expected of you. In addition to this, a lot of the tasks you are expected to complete are done for the sake of doing them, because that's how it's always been done. Contrary to their culture slides, you usually do not have an input, to me it seems they are looking for workhorses and hiring at much too fast of a pace to rapidly expand their platform. Another large problem to me was the lack of teamwork. Although they advertise that everyone is united and working together, I did not feel this was true. A lot of people are too busy and will not be able to help you if you feel it may be required to complete something that is asked of you. Better solutions that require some team input will be shot down in favour of worse solutions that require less team input. The scale-up environment also results in a large portion of the employees being relatively new. This is resulting in a lot of confusion, and if order and structure is important to you, you will likely struggle here. Although the provided benefit plan is good, the pay was also fairly low, I was paid more at my previous role where I actually had work-life balance respected and where my input was actually valued. Be very careful when negotiating your salary if you choose to accept a position here.

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BenchSci Response
3y
Thank you for taking the time to share your open and honest feedback. I agree that the products we are building are exciting and making a real impact in the preclinical research space! BenchSci’s culture is evolving as our company grows. Scaling culture is difficult and we know that mistakes will be made along the way. I’m sorry to hear you felt that your input was ignored and that your team members were not readily available to help. Working at BenchSci is certainly a fast-paced and challenging environment. While Speed is one of our company values, we also believe in “strong convictions, loosely held.” All team members, especially managers, are encouraged to be mindful of feedback and to make changes as needed. However, living by these principles is always harder than writing them down. Our People team, in partnership with our in-house leadership coaches, offers a robust onboarding program, learning, and development support, and leadership training to help with acquiring and practicing these skills. If a team member is having difficulty sharing feedback with management, our Talent Business Partners are also available to help with the conversation. Compensation is regularly reviewed at BenchSci. Our People team is completing our annual compensation market review cycle currently to ensure pay fairness across the organization and will be presenting updates to the company in the weeks to follow. I would love to hear more details about your concerns so they can be addressed going forward. Please feel free to contact me directly via email. Thanks, Jane (jroberts@benchsci.com).

Explore other reviews about BenchSci

5.0
Feb 28, 2023
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CEO approval
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Pros

The "ends" do NOT justify the "means" at BenchSci. Collegiality and Teamwork trump short-term results. BenchSci technology is a paradigm shift in uncovering reagents; AI/ML scans the literature to present the essence of a publication for your review (and there's more to come).

Cons

BenchSci is 100% remote. My colleagues are so interesting that I would like to see more of them in person.

4
1.0
Mar 10, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Remote work. Went to the office twice

Cons

- leadership sucks here. Not one leader would be at a leadership role in another company of decent reputation - the surviving leaders here are good at politics or they are the oldest ones remaining who are friends with the CEO. They have their own agenda and try to just play the game to get their seat at the table. They would not succeed anywhere else in the real world - there is zero pay parity. Some get such high pays and others are just blind to it. When employees talk, that is when there is a realization of the gap in pay. -they care only about employees who suck up to them and stroke their ego - their product is not the best in the business and they promote it to be something of a unicorn - company bleeds out people who are talented and now they are desperate as no one new wants to join the company - they do nothing to maintain the culture of the company - it’s the most toxic out there

17
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BenchSci Response
1y
Thank you for sharing your feedback, and for highlighting our remote work options. We appreciate you taking the time to provide your perspective. We are focused on building a strong, effective leadership team and recognize that this is an area of continued improvement and are actively investing in leadership development. We strive to foster a culture of collaboration, respect, and high performance across all levels. We recognize that our culture is a constant work in progress and are committed to acting on feedback to ensure a positive and inclusive environment for all employees. We also want to acknowledge the concerns raised about pay parity and want to share our approach. We conduct annual pay equity analyses, which include a detailed review of internal parity across teams and a focused assessment of potential disparities for underrepresented groups. In addition, we conduct annual market analysis to ensure our compensation remains competitive. Building on this foundation, we have been working to build a transparent and market-aligned compensation framework, ensuring clarity around job levels, benchmarking salaries, and aligning performance reviews with compensation decisions. This is an ongoing effort, and we remain committed to delivering a system that is fair, sustainable, and consistent with our values. We are dedicated to continuous improvement and appreciate the candid feedback that helps us on this journey.
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