Decent place to work, but some changes are needed
Pros
Highly recommend Alkermes for many reasons: -Friendly and competent people/team -Nurturing environment where I feel I'm developing professionally -Interesting, varied work (depending on what function you're in) -Decent work life balance, but things can get busy reaching ~60 hr weeks but it's rare -Decent benefits, pay
Cons
Overall I'm quite happy at Alkermes and hope to make this place a home for my career for a while, but there are some things that could be improved. 1) As a background/intro, Alkermes has a lot of ingrown folks who have been with the company for a long time and rose to the sr. management positions, which is both good and bad. Good because they seem to be decent, competent human beings who were able to grow and got recognized within but bad because at times it feels Alkermes is falling behind in its practices because people are set in their ways without seeing/experiencing what others are doing in the industry. For example, things like work from home policy which many companies have adapted to for a while at this point but it still feels like a lot to ask for at Alkermes (seems to vary quite a bit by teams). While there is a formal policy to support it, at least in my team it was made clear to me that the sr. management does not like this. While I'd personally appreciate having more flexibility in working arrangement, Alkermes needs to realize that this will also get in the way of attracting and sustaining top talent when many of our peers offer this. 2) Another related issue I've noticed is the invisible wall between the team members and the management of the group preventing free and open communication. Given the size of Alkermes , this was a bit shocking. Honestly not entirely sure if it's the senior folks being too busy/preferring a more limited channel of communication or the mid levels being afraid to engage in and encourage more open communication, but it can feel very one directional at times and sometimes make the team work inefficiently. 3) Slow/overwhelmed IT: IT issues should really be the last thing that holds us back but more often than not it has been a significant obstacle to us doing our job on several occasions. Having worked at other places, it seems to me that Alkermes needs more manpower/competence in IT because the ratio of total employees vs IT support seems off. This is another sign that the sr. management is missing something and falling behind.
