Top heavy homogeneous leadership with lack of long-term direction with toxic culture - Research Scientist Goldfinch Bio Employee Review

Many SVPs and VPs but not enough people doing ground work: upside-down pyramid! Non-leadership team members are overworked or are pulled in many directions. Very homogeneous leadership (mostly males and just 2 white females) with BigPharma mentality attempting to apply to startup pharmaceutical biotech. Issues occur when leadership members are vying for promotions and people to manage because they are not used to startup work. which requires self-drive and self-physical work. Lack of direction for business as well as science; lots of flip flopping so constantly changing priorities which is difficult for the us to do our current work. Layoffs of RAs, scientists at many levels occurred and were justified because of budget and Covid-19, but a week later two new senior leadership members were hired. Interestingly all 4 administrators for a less than 50 person company remained. Rationale for layoffs are not really transparent when there is such a contradiction; damaged morale but people fear for job security during Covid. Leadership members are not on the same page. There was constant pressure to re-enter the lab during quarantine. Leadership members can be promoted anytime but career development for the rest is sluggish with no career latter in place for any hope of advancement. Losing original scientific, business, and financial leadership to new "big pharma" mentality replacements has resulted in disjointed scientific and business decisions and lack of vision, thereby affecting we scientists on our computers or in the lab. Disillusionment is happening as patients are no longer the driving force, but career advancement for VP and SVP members at the expense of the poor worker bee lower level scientists and support. They only want worker bees who do as they are told; there is no room for creativity or ideas from the non-leadership team. We are not treated as experts in our field, but rather chess pawns to do work. Leadership members are constantly trying to dive into areas on non-expertise Things that need improvement: 1) diversity and tolerance for leadership members of who observe or hear about acts of racism/sexism/classism --"old-boys club mentality"-and the least diverse group I've ever worked with in all my years 2) support for male parental leave (important for me because my partner also works); felt pressure just to take a short leave although we have unlimited vacations which really only means you don't get vacation paid out if/when you leave 3) prioritization and direction for short-term and long-term programs; leadership team wants no commentary from non-leadership team members; do as you're told or the PC version do as "strongly suggested" mentality 4) career development opportunities for non-leadership members need to be available 5) transparency needs to be improved 6) benefits: 401K, career development opportunities 7) poor management of Covid crisis; showed us $ is more important than team members and their safety; very concerning 8) 401K would be nice