Average Corporate Employer which focuses on profit over quality and corporate culture was not positive.
Pros
Large company with many opportunities for entry level, and low salary jobs. Good corporate level medical benefits and vacation package. Flexible hours/shifts for salary positions. Many external hires are considered and brought in.
Cons
Focus on profits as priority #1 clouds basic principle that providing quality products and service builds customers, and keeps them loyal. Customer turnover is high and company growth is based on acquisition of other competitor companies. Upper Management can be very dysfunctional, too much planning in ideal world over planning to attainable goals. Project timelines frequently given by management before project requirements and scope defined. Management out of touch with core business operations and have no accountability for failures. Too many varying systems between lab locations resulted in inability to land new contracts and/or keep existing major contracts. Many jobs outsourced to "off-shore" jobs, or replaced with entry level employees, costing experienced employees their jobs. I was not affected in this way, but many long-time technical SMEs were lost. Many "Go-To" folks for technical support are gone, replaced with employees who frequently know less than average users and ramp up time to get the needed experience is too long . This created large gaps of knowledge in critical areas, feeding the dysfunctional environment at Quest. One of the major concerns for me was the loss of long time loyal customers. Interaction with clients went from almost always positive to tenuous at best. Quest willing to let go of valuable and strategic business alliances too easily (see United Healthcare as an example). Also many anchor hospital clients, who bring in a large network of associated secondary business, were also lost for similar reasons. Quest has been very short sighted in negotiation of valuable contracts. Yearly reviews based in focus on weaknesses (everyone had to identify weaknesses and majority of review process was discussion of these instead of also focusing/rewarding on the many successes that routinely outweighed any negatives). Highest "attainable" rating were virtually unattainable. Ratings within groups HAD to even out so if there was one review above average, they also had to have one below average in the same group. This approach punishes teams where the majority employees are above average.