Pros
- Established company in a stable industry - Passionate and extremely smart people - R&D had a separate office site by ourselves, which helped us grow closer as a team - Get to eat lots of delicious food - Innovation sessions with customers were super fun, got to be very creative and think outside the box about flavors/textures - Manager fought for her team constantly - worked for months to get us raises and was adamant that we took overtime hours off at a later date even though we were salaried (i.e. if we had to be at a production run for 16 hours we could take a paid day off any time within the next month)
Cons
- PTO/parental leave policy is bad for how big of a company it is - R&D had very little schedule flexibility. Obviously we had to be onsite to work in the lab, but as a team we all had to get there at the same time and leave at the same time every day, no leaving early or working from home in the afternoon if you finished your lab work in the morning. Office positions have a hybrid schedule. - We were understaffed the whole time I was there, which led to fast burnout ESPECIALLY in leadership positions. My manager worked easily 10-12 hours a day and usually worked on weekends too. - A lot of the work is ingredient change projects which are pretty boring - The R&D process was very misunderstood and underappreciated, which led to us having many last minute pivots and urgent last minute projects (leading to more burnout) - Company as a whole is very stuck in their ways when it comes to processes, marketing, etc. We had several different marketing executives from very large CPG companies come on board while I was there and then leave because they realized they couldn't implement any of their ideas.