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Proteus Digital Health

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Proteus Digital Health Reviews

3.3

51% would recommend to a friend

(103 total reviews)
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Andrew M. Thompson

61% approve of CEO

33% positive business outlook

Proteus Digital Health has an employee rating of 3.3 out of 5 stars, based on 103 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Proteus Digital Health employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

103 reviews
2.0
2 Mar 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Gregarious, positive CEO. Many ambitious people. Great Redwood City location. Technology is attempting to break new ground in the grey area between pharmaceuticals and biotech.

Cons

Pay is medicore, there is no bonus structure, no 401K matching, ungenerous PTO, paltry raises, long and often stressful hours, and wide-open seating where people must wear headphones or earplugs if they don't want to be distracted by nearby conversations. With such little to offer as tangible incentive, Proteus offers some small stock option grants and boasts they'll be a multi-billion dollar company one day. Meanwhile, they're a long way from being in the black as their ingestible sensor product, or more like product concept, continues to change shape, has little clinical data behind it, is expensive to make, clumsy to use, and is fraught with technical challenges. Management core is comprised of a close-knit, almost fraternal group of individuals that have been working at Proteus for several years to a decade. Few have any real experience outside of this perpetual startup environment. As the company grows, this shows up in lack of appreciation for outsiders, impersonal people managers, chaotic timelines, fear of change, wasted resources, and junior-level mistakes by high-level individuals. Internal evangelism and self-promotion is high, almost cultish: large TV screens throughout showing barbara walters style interviews of managers on continuous playback, company-wide emails celebrating the latest recipient of the obligatory weekly award and the ensuing chain of reply-all hoorays, frequent all hands meetings with managers declaring their love for the company or hamming it up on stage to a spectacle of video and dj music, holiday parties that serve more as a formal stage for propaganda speeches than as an enjoyable time for employees to get to know each other, and walls decorated with founder slogans and catch phrases. While the concept of an ingestible sensor is cutting edge, the manufacturing process is anything but. The sensor is basically just a small microchip. The process to make it is very similar to any other traditional silicon-chip industry of the last 20 years except with the added bureaucracy of FDA regulation. Another big part of the business focuses on data-trending, patient monitoring software applications for mobile devices. Mildly interesting, but many would rather be programming games, line of business apps, or social media apps. And again, there is the documentation-heavy overhead of FDA regulation.

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Proteus Digital Health Response
10y
Thanks for weighing in. I wonder when you were an employee given a number of points that either have been addressed or are just simply not accurate, so out of consideration for any reader, I’d like to comment on just a few of your points: This year we added a 401k contribution and enhanced PTO a bit with a “Birthday as a Holiday” offering. We have embraced open workstations to better support the interdisciplinary project work required to drive digital health, enhanced with complementary “modes of work”-conscious focus rooms, small meeting rooms, huddle rooms (for project teams), chill rooms, and a dynamic “commons” space that supported a product launch initiative, which benefited from other collaborative and cross-functional organizational dynamics. Finally, as a matter of perception: What you describe as “video propaganda,” others see as a helpful communication channel; the “obligatory weekly award” is a peer-to-peer statement of recognition and appreciation; “managers declaring their love for the company” is an expression of passion and drive; “walls decorated with founder slogans and catch phrases” are actually defining quotes from world and industry leaders (nominated by any Protean), as wide-ranging as Marie Curie, Alan Turing, Rosa Parks, Jeanne d’Arc, George Washington, Mahatma Gandhi, and John Lennon after whom conference rooms are named. I do appreciate you taking the time to write your review. It helps us look at how far we have come, how far we can go, and the choices we are able to make to get there.
1.0
2 Mar 2017

Don't work here if you value trust, respect and transparency

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

There are some really great people who work here, mostly at the lower levels of the company hierarchy. The product is very unique and the work is incredibly exciting.

Cons

I wish I had listened to the reviews more and I agree with many of the common themes here- heavy favoritism, inexperienced managers, questionable direction and decision-making. A few examples of the Proteus I have experienced: Promotions are based strictly on favoritism. Many of the highly technical leadership roles are filled by non-technical people who have zero experience in the area. This not only negatively impacts the company internally but it also impacts our ability to hire good people. It seems that incompetence is correlated with power. Company survey data is withheld when the reviews aren't what management wanted to see. In general there is very little transparency here. Secrets are everywhere. Layoffs occur about twice a year. Re-orgs occur at least twice a year. There are way too many managers (my guess would be 2.5:1 employees to managers). The managers are not contributors. In general, the company lacks trust and respect amongst employees, making Proteus a difficult place to work.

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Proteus Digital Health Response
9y
First I would like to apologize for my tardy reply. Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. I am really sorry that your experience at Proteus does not meet our intention of being a great place to work. We value and consider all your feedback, and we'll continue to find ways to improve but I wanted to address a couple of your specific concerns here. We are improving communications, especially socializing results from employee satisfaction surveys. Equally important to communicating those results, we are working with each of our leaders to ensure that they are acknowledging and creating action plans based on employee feedback whenever possible. We are also continuously evaluating our performance management and recognition tools and processes. We encourage a culture of recognition through our company's rewards (e.g., QTL, Golden Boot, Spot Award, etc), and have revamped our performance review process to streamline while also ensuring that promotions are merit-based. To address your advice about reviews, we truly welcome all kinds of feedback, good or bad, as it is a way to address concerns and continue to improve our employee experience at Proteus. If you would like to share more about your experience please contact me so that we can schedule time to chat. Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.
2.0
21 July 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Though I've departed from the company and after years of daily chaos, I honestly still believe in the company's technology and the potential it has to offer to the public. There are some (unfortunately the minority of the population in my opinion) incredibly smart, knowledgeable and down to earth people that I had the pleasure of working with.

Cons

- Constant changes in company goal, each year a new direction while no true accomplishment - Heavy company politics, for a company of less than 300 it operates as if its a global thousand plus employee company. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, communication is out the window, unnecessary hierarchy between offices. - Promotion is highly relied of favoritism rather than performance or actual deliverables. - No personal accountability, constantly playing the blame game. - Thick filter as far as what information is passed on to upper management - Unrealistic goals or project plans, often designed to fail. - Public image is more important than actually dealing with the issues at hand. Hence why all the Interns loves the company- the free gifts, lunch parties, a day at Great America, etc. Upper management smiles when Investors are around, but behind closed doors its the "who are you, get out of my way" look. - Extremely top heavy, several departments have multiple directors and managers. - Compensation is lower than industry average, benefits also does not compare to other companies in the same industry.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 103 Reviews

Glassdoor has 127 Proteus Digital Health reviews submitted anonymously by Proteus Digital Health employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Proteus Digital Health is right for you.