In my opinion, the merger that resulted in the formation of Velsera was performed too hastily, without due regard to the opinions of key employees from constituent companies. I also noted that folks from some companies, notably Pierian, were elevated to more senior positions in Velsera than others. I think this distorted the view through which leadership viewed problems, since Velsera created a situation where many of the new managers were basically way in over their heads with their expanded scope with other legacy company products. Not only that, but Velsera brought in completely new folks with no experience in legacy products, who were tasked with basically bossing around people. A notable example is commercial "L&D". For a so-called learning & development team I found it very interesting that it was staffed with folks who were completely new to legacy companies products, their customers, and how to sell them effectively. Marketing did a great job of creating a glitzy image for Velsera for it's launch, but unfortunately the vision created did not bear resemblance to the products that actually existed, particularly their integration together. It was also a mistake, in my opinion, for Velsera to wash their hands of the brands of legacy companies overnight, brands which had been well established in the market over many years and well regarded in the industry. Outside of commercial, I noted clear problems in Velsera within other groups too. For instance, Support seemed to struggle for months, with unanswered tickets and poorly resolved queries. "Bioinformatics" at Velsera seemed to struggle with any project beyond basic CWL wrapping tasks. The innovation amongst Product teams seemed to be lacking, with roadmap features taking too long to come to fruition - or being downscoped significantly by the time of release. HR, in my experience, were stingy. I heard of employees at the same level, or even within the same team, that were paid significantly differently to each other, and there seemed to be no motivation to hold onto employees based on their actual worth to the company. Overall, I found that the culture descended from a pre-merger status of trust, to a post-merger culture of suspicion and micromanagement. Taken together, to me this demonstrates poor decision making at both the executive level and senior management level. The leadership seemed more willing to listen to external consultants than their own people. It's a shame because each legacy company was successful in it's own right, and legitimately brought value to customers. It's also a shame for the good employees that have been let go.
