Favoritism and poor leadership culture - Scientist TERRAY THERAPEUTICS Employee Review

I've been at many companies in my career and nothing has come even close to how great the culture is at Terray. Everyone is extremely kind, motivated, and brilliant. Everyone is working towards a shared mission and new challenges and requests keep every day engaging and motivating. The company is small and so there is a high likelihood you'll get exposure to leadership and access to opportunities you wouldn't get elsewhere. The leadership team is kind and very technical--they make an effort to really understand the science and teams and individuals at the company. Hard work and excellence are recognized and people are rewarded for the effort they put in, not by the number of years of experience they have on their resume. Benefits are excellent and compensation is competitive to many companies out there both on the tech side and bio/pharma side. There are many other perks to invest in employee happiness like free lunch, stocked snacks and drinks, boba days, holiday parties, team outings, etc.

It's a smaller company, so it comes with all the usual cons -- inexperienced managers, high workloads, lots of context switching and wearing different hats. It seems no worse than other start ups I've been at and many times it's made much better at Terray knowing everyone is genuinely trying their best.

Only those who work directly beside you will recognize your impact and motivate you to keep going. Some truly wonderful people trapped here.

A workplace so toxic and draining you will miss your undergraduate PI. For a company which prides itself on being patient and inclusive, you will find yourself excluded from the founder’s club (and their pets) and disrespected both personally and professionally. Management is generally scatter-brained, untrained, and values work-life balance so little that you will have no life left within a month of joining the company. There is no accountability at any level of the company except the very bottom. Regardless of your performance, you will not be valued or rewarded— prepare to churn out numbers like a robot. Research associates do most of the work. The higher you rank, the less time you spend in lab and the less you are expected to help the team. There is little to no understanding when it comes to health, bereavement, or personal matters. If you are begrudgingly granted “unlimited” PTO, expect to be punished when you get back. Unless you have children of course. If you have not worked at terray for 3+ years since its founding, don’t bother. But if you have a good manager, expect biyearly promotions and insane raises. You will have no opportunity for professional growth, cross collaboration, or learning new skills. There is no clear path for the company and honesty and discontent is punished. Retaliation and abuse is rampant and swept under the rug in order to protect mid-level management. You will lose your love of science here. No amount of free lunches or fancy parties could recompense the belittling, disrespect, and disingenuity of this workplace. No matter what you experience, you’re expected to promote the company and do free PR on LinkedIn via email and announcements. I recommend you seek other opportunities instead of wasting years of your life here chasing a dangling carrot. This is where dreams come to die. You will be trained to keep your head down and keep quiet in order to keep your meticulous, brain-numbing job, where your scientific expertise holds no value. To make matters worse, HR consists of one person who is disconnected from company culture and lower level job positions that any attempt at mediation or conflict resolution result in retaliation from your manager. They will ask why you didn’t speak up sooner and place the blame on you for allowing yourself to be mistreated. There is a reason the turnover rate is so high and all hires are fresh grads desperate for an industry opportunity. Managers will drag you around forcing you to apologize to their favorite employees. It is an incredibly hostile, inappropriate, and unsafe work environment. I and many of my coworkers have been harassed by higher ranking coworkers nearly daily. Expect 10+ hour workdays, especially if your manager works overtime for fun.