The Center for Breakthrough Medicines reviews

Owner cares only about advancing his own personal agenda, doesn’t know anything about the science or industry, and scares away clients. The culture is fear-based, employees are over-worked and stressed to deliver without resources or efficiencies. Owner demands sales projections and values which are unrealistic (read: made up). Screams and swears at employees to get what he wants. People know it and talk about it but what can be done? Nothing. Communication between teams is terrible as employees are covering their own tails instead of working together. Can’t do the job we came here to do with constant distractions and confusion, changing direction with the wind. Seriously ADHD management. I constantly catch myself thinking, why do I put up with this? What’s wrong with me? Is this just how start-ups work? I don’t think so.

It was palpable that CBM was on a decline: Chronically understaffed and some of the hires they actually did make were very poor choices Being understaffed meant not enough time to train other scientists and also not enough time to have data reviewed before presenting it to clients so errors in data analysis were presented to clients Unnecessary bureaucracy on document workflows, likely just to try to justify some people’s jobs Not enough development in the support roles for labs, forcing scientists to do things way outside of our job descriptions just to complete our work People in positions they didn’t have the credentials for so they couldn’t provide the guidance needed to those under them Very disorganized Clients were being lied to in regards to testing capacity and capabilities Clients were promised completely unrealistic timelines by BD and then management expected scientists to kill themselves to get the work done in time to meet the promised timelines, SMEs weren’t consulted before discussing timelines with clients Also, all the construction on the building was being done by the CEO’s construction company, something felt wrong about that to me. Are 2 companies owned by the same person going to properly bill each other and make sure everything stays kosher? During my time at CBM, CEOs changed from Brian O to Joerg and that was for the best. Brian was notorious for screaming at people who don’t agree with him. Unfortunately he is CEO again and they’ve had 2 rounds of lay offs since I’ve left