Pros
- Frontiers *used to* hire insanely talented and passionate people, who were a pleasure to work with - Fully remote work - Flexible working hours
Cons
It's difficult to write a review this negative without sounding like just another disgruntled employee affected by the mass lay-offs (which should tell you a lot about how the company was run up until now - laying off 35% of staff after hiring over 1000 people the previous year), but i'll try. More than anything, i'd like to prevent anyone from going through the same suffering at work that so many of my colleagues have grappled with over the years. So here we go. - The upper management drowns in hubris, nepotism and favouritism. They have surrounded themselves (from what i can tell, voluntarily) with yes-people and have become utterly immune to criticism of any kind. They may on occasion ask for feedback - that people are eager to provide in a constructive manner - but will either dismiss it, cherry-pick the positive bits and highlight them in company-wide meetings to downplay the real issues, or pretend they never received relevant feedback at all. Either way, no preventive or corrective action is ever taken, and those responsible for bad decisions are never held accountable. - The upper management do not know the difference between vision, strategy and tactics, and refuse to learn. In their panic, they change their minds practically on a daily basis, provide contradictory instructions and offer no structure of any kind, creating confusion and dismay. As a result, nobody knows who is responsible for what, and no one wishes to stick their neck out and make any decisions, and understandably so. - No career progression opportunities will be offered based on merit. You may have the best results in the department (even by the management's unreasonable standards), participate in every department-wide project imaginable, provide concrete solutions to concrete problems and bring monetary and/or reputational value, but if you are not considered as being "aligned" with the company values of "positivity" and do not share their "growth mindset" - or if your manager simply does not like you - you will be overlooked at best, reprimanded at worst. If you want a promotion, they will demand you abandon your values, your common sense and your dignity in exchange. I've watched wonderful bright motivated people turn into empty shells of themselves, become resentful purposeless bitter mutes. There is an alarming number of employees, in the three lower ranks of the company, that are either on extended sick leave or who have left the company because they were too exhausted and heartbroken. - The lower ranks are made to work harder and harder to compensate for a complete lack of vision and guidance from the upper management, and are not allowed to focus on solving problems, only on implementing pointless actions like spamming ever more researchers and scheduling ever more unhelpful calls with researchers. When employees miraculously do succeed in coming close to some of the unrealistic targets, they only receive more work, and never more pay. If they protest, they are labelled as lacking drive, commitment and simply being lazy, and gaslit into believing there is something wrong with them. This is hands down the worst place i have ever worked at, and the valuable lessons in detecting red flags, managing my expectations and detaching myself from my work were not worth the hopelessness i've felt for the past two years.
