I have been with the company for a while, and have recently seen it go through a lot of changes. More recently, possibly empowered by the downturn in the local biotechnology industry, the leadership has taken more of a darker tone towards its employees, and more focusing on squeezing as much work out of employees as possible. I’ve seen very well-respected scientists be pushed out of the company entirely because they were deemed ‘lazy’ by someone in leadership, which has made everyone feel uneasy.
We no longer have "unlimited PTO" anymore as many of the reviewers on here say; that was replaced with "Flex-PTO", which is much worse. Your time off is strictly up to the discretion of your manager, and you never earn PTO-time so you're never paid out for acquired PTO if you rarely take time off. Employees are not trusted to take as much time off as needed as long as they get their job done. 2 weeks is the maximum time you can take off. All of our sick leave, family leave, jury duty, etc. is all grouped into our 'general PTO', so if you or your child get sick earlier in the year, that will work against you when you go to request time off for a vacation. Working from home is strictly forbidden.
Except for the executives, they get to WFH (work from home) as much as they want. EVERYONE else is expected to be always on site, even our computed-based AI or bioinformatics and other positions that could easily be (and should be) remote. ShapeTX offers very little resources for employee development and career growth, compared to other biotechs. Leadership wants the employees staying in their jobs and squeezing as much work out of them as possible. Nepotism is everything here, and there is a massive lack of racial and gender diversity.
The vast majority of leadership happens to be white males. No black person has ever been hired at ShapeTX. In whole, ShapeTX is marred by a success-only culture. Competition is stiff for recognition and failure is not allowed (inevitable in science). Everyone is expected to have a 'grind mindset', making for an overworked and unproductive environment. Burnout is huge here.
The leadership in a whole is widely inexperienced, and many in ShapeTX's leadership are running a ship for the first time. The CEO is new to leadership and runs the company 'his-way-or-the-highway' style, occasionally sending out cringy letters saying things like 'If you want to use PowerPoint, then start your own company and use PowerPoint'.
This is a white male dominated company, especially in the leadership and above. Women are constantly leaving the company due to workplace harassments and for not being respected as nearly as much as their male peers. Especially strong-willed women in leadership don't last long here. It’s no surprise that lately, we’ve been hemorrhaging great folks to other companies like crazy. Oh, and the men never lower the toilet seats after using the all-gendered bathrooms.