How is the Amgen company culture in Thousand Oaks, CA? I hear that it is a 7 AM - 7 PM job + weekends for all departments. Any information would be greatly appreciated.
Mostly 8:30 - 5:30. Most people work through lunch (meetings or at desk). Some depts work a lot more, some less. Pretty empty on weekends, although some people spend a half day in the office or at home cleaning through their emails. If you have a global role plan on coming in at 6 am to get a couple Europe meetings/ calls done and no that doesn't mean you get to leave early. The real challenge is all the meetings. It is hard to get any meaningful work done when you are double booked all day long. You get back to your office at 5 with a ton of email. Since everyone is double booked you don't have the necessary people at the meeting = waste of time and need for another meeting. Stop scheduling meetings without objectives and agendas (put them in the meeting invite). Stop scheduling 1 hour meetings that could be done in 30 minute. Stop scheduling meetings that could be handled with an email. Use email to diseminate info and updates not meetings.
What type of pharma experience does your company look for? If I don't have oncology or hospital background, what course do you recommend? I have 5 years pharma experience.
This company is crazy big pharma. I've worked 2 other companies and NEVER had this kind of micro-management. Reps have NO choice about who to call on, how often, no say whatsoever on how to run the business. Upper management spends time chasing the competition and freaking out over every little thing. Run, don't walk, away from this company.
culture: Gym 8 - 10 coffee break 10 - 10:30 bicycle ride - 10:30 - 12:00 lunch 12:00 - 2:00 meeting 2:00 - 2:30 coffee break 2:30 - 3:00 surf internet 3:00 - 4:30 go home 4:30
That's BS. Work 6am-6pm steadily in mow5 corporate roles. Manufacturing, lab, Research bench jobs are more relaxed. In these same departments, admin staff (aka Director and above) work long hours due to meetings, consensus building and overall lack of leadership, direction and accountability.
The place is a joke. They hire some big wig from company X and then they billed an empire of former X employees. Next guy comes from company Y and he builds an empire, the two groups engage in petty warfare against each other and the worker bees get screwed in the political battle. Plus you have a bunchnof idiots that don't understand Federal Regulations and think they can lie to the FDA, that always makes for a good train wreck to watch! Do yourself a favor, look for employment with a company that has morals, they ain't any at Amscam!
If they get caught lying to a federal egency then they can be in big trouble. How about the Amgen employees who took the fifth and refused to answer questions. What are they hiding? Anyone know who they are? Amgen can pretty much get away with anything they want because they have good lobbyists who protect their interests. Eventually all the BS they've been shoveling will get them into serious trouble. Until executives go to jail nothing will change. Amgen is free to do whatever they want and treat employees like crap.
It's true what you say about executives who lie...there's one who lied to the FDA, a whistleblower got 96mm and Glaxo had to pay 170mm in fines. Now he is the Site QA head at AML in PR. He has destroyed good workers and is intent on bringing Amgen down as well Great background checks, Ey??? MVT is also quite adept with his arrogance to bring down our company same as he did Abbott Diagnostics.
What's the background check process for sub contractors? What are things they look out for? Is there a time range? Is there a drug test? ???
1. There is no lying to anybody here. 2. The culture has changed over the over last 5 years, it is NOT the same place it once was. 3. There are a lot of meetings. 4. Worker bees do a lot of work around here. 5. Leaders need more leadership experience. 6. There needs to be more spreading of the wealth to the people doing the work. 7. General lack of recognition for high performing Sr Mgrs to Director level people. 7. Shareholder and patients continue to benefit in spite of the general dysfunction. = Room for improvement, definitely. (but not as bad as most of the places in this business)
As a doctor who prescribe HSA, I am worry about buying product from a company who's VP of Quality has some questinable past. Maybe I should call the 1-800 # that Amgen provide for costumer complaint. I am sure this is the major complaint the company will have if all doctors who prescribe HSA know about this.
