Great people and technology. Awful management. - Anonymous employee Berkeley Lights Employee Review

In my opinion, BLI is currently a very poorly managed company. There’s zero upward accountability; management poorly predicted revenue so budget must be cut. As a result, many workerbees at the bottom are laid off (~15% of the company), and upper is all retained. There’s very little respect or appreciation for non-management employees. Promotions are almost exclusively into management titles / roles, resulting in a company of upwards of 30% management, yet somehow BLI still is plagued with very poor communication / planning. Upper management seems to consistently be in the midst of a civil war, resulting in only lower lever employee casualties, after riding the waves their war creates. Not an atmosphere in which the quiet, hardworking individual contributor is appreciated whatsoever, nor an atmosphere for someone who likes to execute upon a well laid out plan. Zero downward trust. Upon being laid off, I was asked to be supervised as I pull personal files from my laptop. I understand this is a norm in some settings, but not what I expected from a smallish, bay area “start-up.” Loudest worker is rewarded before the hardest, and quality goes unnoticed in lieu of quantity.