Made great friends and learned a lot about the Pharma industry, but culture needs help
Pros
The young culture made it easy to connect to my teammates. I made a lot of connections in the pharma world and learned so much. Some of my closest friends, I met at Suvoda.
Cons
I needed to step away from this company for a long time prior to writing my assessment. Free lunches, happy hours, and 30 days of PTO (which turned out to be less if you wanted a holiday off) do not make good company culture. How the individual is treated by their superiors and peers speaks volumes of a company culture, compared to the tangible perks that, to any college grad entering the workforce, seem amazing on the surface. I did not feel valued or respected as an employee, by HR (I guess it’s called Talent these days), some of my peers, my direct manager, and executive management. This impacted to my personal well-being, negatively. The sub-group of individuals who worked together before, were rewarded more than others who were just as hard-working, if not harder-working. The work and the expected timeframe for delivery typically resulted in very long (12 hours or longer) days. If the long days were a regular occurrence, not just a one-off circumstance due to a large project or big goal. Working in this type of environment, longer than 1 year, is not sustainable, even for someone right out of school. As someone who came to Suvoda with prior professional experience, I’m happy to admit that I worked with a lot of good, hard-working college grads during my time there. But without the appropriate leadership at the helm to shape and guide the college grads FIRST professional experiences, this will do more harm than good for these young professionals in the long run. This is a direct result of the lack of training and professional mentorship for middle management. Then again, if the executive leadership at the top isn’t providing a positive leadership and mentorship example for anyone in the company, how can excellence be expected for anyone that works there? Communication from executive management regarding Suvoda’s business plans, strategic vision, and mission was vague at best, but usually non-existent. However, employees were constantly expected to keep up with the demands of the company and fall in line without complaint. Those who fell in line and did not complain were clearly favored. Lastly, social events did not consider the cultural background of the employees. Not all employees find a happy hour to be time or the place to get to know their co-workers and network with management. To this end, I wish that more events, such as volunteering in the community or even team building workshops were made available to give employees the time to socialize and learn about their co-workers. However, when an employee is too afraid to leave their desk because they are drowning in their current workload, these types of events fail. I have never looked back on a job and felt strongly about my experience, time, hard-work, sweat and tears that I invested in every aspect of my work. I worked so hard to build outstanding relationships internally and externally. It just wasn’t appreciated or recognized. I would have taken a high-five as recognition that someone saw what I was doing. Additionally, I’ve never looked back on a job and thought, I would never work there again – but for Suvoda I do. I do not recommend this company to anyone. I had hoped that I would read positive reviews for Suvoda in my time since I’ve left. But I can see based on the many negative reviews here, the culture has not changed.
