Pros
It is extremely easy to get hired and extremely difficult to get fired from any Eurofins entity. If you can pass a drug test and manage to not steal, harass colleagues, or falsify data or time sheets, you can work here forever, or as long as you're able to support yourself on a below-median salary. There are a lot of brilliant, dedicated, friendly people working for this company. I imagine that's a big reason some stay for so long. Someone is always willing to help out and someone always knows the answer. At least at my BU, there are no calendar blackouts for PTO and there are no employee productivity monitoring technologies in place for remote workers (yet).
Cons
Eurofins is the Wal-Mart of any industry it involves itself in. - Low pay, low pay, low pay. Low raises. Low/no bonuses. No profit sharing. No unions. No pensions. No stipends (wellness, home office, etc.) of any kind. Extremely basic benefits package that leaves a lot to be desired in 2024. - The company keeps buying out competitors left and right but can't manage to invest in the employees, infrastructure, or real estate it already has. Everything at my BU is shabby, from the LIMS down to the carpet. The building has constant issues such as pests, negative building pressure, extreme temperature fluctuations, power surges, etc. - Eurofins has some of the absolute worst IT infrastructure and support I've ever seen for a company this size with a global footprint. The IT portal is very difficult to navigate and ticket responses are slow or non-existent. Several layers of MFA for absolutely everything but zero support when something goes wrong. - Unless you manage to make it to a department management+ position, you will eventually reach a point where you are seen as a subject matter expert and have an ever-increasing amount of responsibility placed upon you, but will receive no requisite pay increase. I have no idea how anyone can raise a family, buy a house, plan for the future, etc. on the salaries provided by Eurofins. This company is very much one of those - here's a pizza party, here's a coffee mug with the Eurofins logo on it, now shut up about your pay - kind of places. - There are a LOT of dead-end positions at my BU. Many departments have poorly defined or entirely non-existent career ladders that allow incompetent or difficult employees to coast while the competent ones get siloed until they eventually seek more rewarding employment elsewhere. Hard work is rewarded with more hard work. - My BU also seems to prefer to hire externally rather than nurture growth/talent from within. There are very few opportunities for professional development unless you independently seek them out, outside the company. Over the past few years, I've witnessed two management positions get filled externally despite there being a number of long-standing internal applicants and was told by a director-level employee that this was, at least partially, because Eurofins had failed to prepare any of my colleagues for advancement. What an embarrassing admission to have to make. If your boss's boss is telling you that you can't advance at the company, what more do you need? There has been zero effort to shore up the career ladder or professional development opportunities within my department since then. I have been planning my exit ever since. Gilles Martin is a multi-billionaire and one of the richest men in France. Keep that in mind at your next performance review where it's determined that your work exceeds expectations but you only qualify for a 3% "merit increase." For some reason, Gilles' office sends out quarterly earnings summaries to ALL employees, as though the lab techs making $16/hr care about how many millions of dollars the shareholders made. In their 2023 Q3 statement, there was mention of "eruptions of new armed conflicts around the world" (i.e. Palestine) that will cause our business to have to "work hard to counter these global disruptions." What an insane thing to commit to writing. Billionaires are already morally bankrupt but you have to be especially detached from reality to relate abject human suffering to how your bottom line might be affected. I was really at a loss for words when I read this. Most recently, Gilles' office sent notice that a short-selling firm issued a report on Eurofins. The irony here is that there is 0% I'd have ever heard of this report if not for Gilles. The report is mostly about Gilles' alleged shady financial dealings as Eurofins' majority shareholder. Hilariously, the report actually brings up all these negative Glassdoor reviews that mention below-market compensation. I guess it's good to know our reviews are being taken into consideration somewhere, if not by Eurofins itself.