1. Unrealistic timelines - the common joke at illumina is “all deliverables were due yesterday.”
2. Too much work - this ties in with unrealistic timelines. Among colleagues, we often talk about how much work we have on our plates, and it feels overwhelming to have so much work all the time. It often feels like no matter how much you get done, there’s always more to do. In a way, this is a good problem to have. But, we often talk about being overworked at ILMN. And, in times like Covid, the situation is exacerbated. Those who work hard are working even harder. At the same time, there’s a lot of dead wood that’s sitting around without any accountability that needs pruning. Another joke among colleagues is “it is very hard to get fired at Illumina these days” unless you do something terribly wrong (e.g. sexual harassment or something similar). In other words, doesn’t matter if you don’t work, you won’t get fired even if you don’t produce outcomes as long as you’re putting in your 9-5. This is not good for a company that wants to continue as the market leader in the genomics space.
3. Meeting obsessed work culture - ah, so many meetings. Way too many. A lot! Think back to back meetings starting 8 am all the way till 6:30 or 7 pm, almost every day, and without breaks. Sometimes, there’s no time to eat and/ or take a bio break or stretch. This has been exacerbated further during the pandemic. During my decade long career, I’ve never before (ILMN) worked at a company so obsessed with meetings. People often come to meetings without a set agenda of what they want to accomplish. And, then often these meetings end with no meaningful outcomes/ actions/ decisions. Which means, there’s often a need for follow up meetings. This is hugely inefficient. Maybe, this is endemic to my work groups/ colleagues. But, I work with a lot of cross functional teams within GQO, and this is definitely prevalent.
4. A PowerPoint obsessed work culture - everything that needs discussion is thrown on a PowerPoint. The amount of time people spend on preparing PowerPoint presentations is outrageously high. And, at what cost to the company? One can only dare wonder because this is prevalent across all levels with the company. Such “busy-work” must be discouraged. Maybe, we can learn from Amazon where PowerPoint presentations are banned.
5. Overlapping job functions across teams - GQO is the worst org within Illumina when it comes to fostering overlap. Multiple teams of people across different groups often trying to do the same things creates duplication of effort and a sense of uneasiness in work relationships. It fosters confusion, and a sense of unhealthy competition and jealousy because everyone wants to do the next big NPI project, as if there life depends on it. People often show off their involvement in the next NPI project to others.
6. Issue Flavor of the week - there’s always a burning issue during any given week. Most people gravitate towards the issue flavor du jour, meet a bunch of times on it and then are quick to move on to the next burning topic without ensuring resolution. As a result, a lot of issues/ problems resurface from time to time because they were never resolved in a structured way the first time around. All this creates a lot of noise and distractions which makes it difficult to focus.
7. Persistent disconnect between executive leadership in GQO and ground reality - it appears as if leadership in GQO is not in touch with the ground game, especially at HQ. There’s a lot of talk about SD One culture, but GQO leadership is removed from the realities on the ground. It’s a bit of a boy’s club, where people scratch each other’s backs and go on offsites. And, non performing leaders are able to escape scrutiny and accountability on outcomes when projects are delayed. People who work hard, who produce outcomes are often not well supported, and then there are some departments (e.g. FoF) that enjoy protection from accountability for God knows what reason. A lot of FoF led projects are delayed. But, there’s no accountability. On the contrary, such departments also end up getting more resources because they’re “delayed” with their deliverables and need help to push things past the finish line. By contrast, those teams that consistently demonstrate strong work ethic of delivering more with fewer resources suffer the most in such an environment. They’re denied access to resources because there’s only so much money in the company pot to draw from. Accountability is key if Illumina desires to stay competitive in the long run. Those who perform to produce desirable outcomes must be rewarded by giving them more resources to achieve even more results. Those departments/ work groups that don’t produce timely outcomes must not be given more resources. Such a culture is very demotivating to those groups that strive to excel and produce timely outcomes while dealing with resource constraints and aggressive timelines.
