A highly innovative company, going through uncertain times. Can it overcome challenges?
Pros
The reason to work for Blacktrace is the people who work there and the culture that they stand for. I was humbled to work alongside brilliant scientists and engineers. What's particularly impressive is that you always have the feeling that your colleges are not there for the paycheck, they are motivated by pushing the industry forward. Some of the things that I loved about Blacktrace were: - The company is never afraid to try new, sometimes risky, things - The CEO and the management can be inspirational figures - Scientists and engineers work closely with each other, which opens new ways to look at problems and the products that are brought out as a result of that collaboration reflect that - Most people who are employed have an engineering or scientific background (including those working in sales) this makes it incredibly easy to reach out to people and share common goals - The company is well regarded worldwide - The is an amazing sense of loyalty and belonging in the company. Groups tend to bind together professionally and socially. The entire company comes together every Friday for updates and Fred talks. One other important aspect is that the company tries to take care of its employees: - During my time there were quite a few Blacktrace babies - children born within 2 years of staring work. Grated the company employs people in their 20's and 30's (mostly). This however, also reflects that the employees were more relaxed and optimistic about their future. - Maternity leave tends to be celebrated as opposed to seen as a problem - I remember cases where some of the employees got life changing medical news. The company did everything in its power to put them on private medical insurance, get them the care they needed and 6-month leave. All of this makes you proud to work for the company.
Cons
The company is going through uncertain times. Over the last five years Blacktrace transitioned from being an engineering company to being a scientific company. No change in management occurred. As a result, the company currently suffers from poor commercial awareness. At the same time the company is centred around its CEO. This is not necessarily a problem, except Mark is very egotistical, does not listen to critical advice coming from within or from the outside of the company and tends to flip reality on its head to fit his world view. Coupled with the transition that Blacktrace is going through this creates very significant turbulence. - The problem is that brilliant, driven people who come in with the very expertise that the company needs tends to get frustrated, mostly because they are not allowed to implement changes that are necessary, leave relatively quickly. Things have become worse over the last two years when Mark moved to Vietnam, founded an electrical motorbike company, but did not give up any managerial responsibility over Blacktrace. - The same autocracy applies to critical product lines that the company releases. Mark takes charge and pushes products through without listening to customers, engineers or scientists working on the projects (the very interplay that makes Blacktrace great). Good examples are: Titan (production-scale continuous flow system targeting pharma) that was released without cGMP or any other necessary certification; Nadia (Single cell research instrument) that was released into a market dominated by 10x and BioRad without any significant differentiation; Fluidic Factory (3D printer for microfluidic devices) that was released with multiple issues and critically did not solve a problem that anyone had. - Lack of focus. The desire for innovation and ingrained optimism leads to the company spreads itself too thin across three brands that do not reinforce each other. Engineering, Marketing, Sales simply cannot keep up. This leads to poor commercial performance – missing the aggressive sales targets. This in turns leads to stress. In the last four years 10 people (10% of the company) had to take leave to deal with stress. Obviously, lack of commercial performance leads to poor compensation packages – lower salaries that other companies in the area and no bonuses in the last four years). As a result, a lot of employee trust, confidence and optimism was lost recently. With any other company one would just shrug solders and look elsewhere. After all, companies fail all the time. The issue is Blacktrace has huge potential in its people and in its innovation and hard work culture. Looking at this wasted potential is incredibly frustrating. If the company could focus, get the necessary expertise in house and move forward as united front it could be huge.
