Pros
The R&D team in San Diego is staffed by a great group of individuals. There are a lot of talented and experienced folks working to develop the assays that I would gladly work with again under a different roof.
Cons
As the title suggests, Roka is a house divided. This didn't occur over its 6 year lifespan but from the very beginning when the company was spun-off from Gen-Probe. Half of the company is located in San Diego where R&D, manufacturing, and some administration takes place. The other half is located on the other side of the country in Warren, New Jersey where marketing, an applications lab, all of HR and management of Roka reside. It is this separation that has contributed to the tribal knowledge, lack of accountability, and finger-pointing that has eroded the morale of its employees and the confidence they had in management. Roka is the byproduct of a medical diagnostic company (Gen-Probe). The talent that designed the technology and formulated the assay come from that diagnostic background. The food industry, however, does not operate like a diagnostic lab. Food testing labs are often staffed by individuals that may lack a college degree operating under intense schedules in environments that are not always sterile. These conditions lead to increased instances of cross-contamination between samples that result in false positives for Roka’s Atlas instrument. Proper maintenance procedures and guidelines for the Atlas go largely ignored no matter how many times the FSAs train and retrain technicians. The biggest failing by the marketing department was failing to understand how their customers operated from the very beginning. As a result competitors like Dupont’s BAX system have the edge over the Atlas despite its features. Late last year Roka experienced a severe layoff with the axe falling hardest in San Diego. The company had failed to meet its milestone for the quarter of placing a certain number of Atlas instruments with prospective customers. Much of the talent in the San Diego was lost and the workload increased dramatically for those that remained. The San Diego office was also left without an HR representative and still does not have one as of this review. The New Jersey office where the CEO and CFO are located were mostly left intact. The leadership of the marketing team which failed to understand and anticipate the food testing industry as the instrument and assay were being developed are still with the company as of this review. The future of the company is in question. Many of the employees are waiting for the announcement of the Q2 results this July to determine if they will still have a job at the end of the year. New applicants at Roka should expect short-term employment.