A company set to defeat itself in blissful complacency - Partnerships Manager Roche Employee Review

1.0
3 Sept 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Minimum controls on what the employee does, where he works, what he achieves. Ability to apply for any project anywhere in the company. Everybody is extremely nice on interpersonal levels.

Cons

No plan. No structure. No concept of getting anything done at maximum levels of wastes. A culture and management that prevent tough conversations, with middle management filtering anything that is not praise. Everybody being "nice" is part of the problem. This is known on CXO level and can be seen in public analyst reviews and market capitalization. Yet, what is done about it is too little and too amateurish on all levels of the enterprise. "Transformations" that don't lead anywhere as they mostly focus on reshuffling hierarchies to reduce headcount, while conceptually little is achieved to change what is done and how. The lack of quality data paired with maximum complacency, never looking outside how good looks like, makes everything opinion-based and consequently political theater. A false narrative of being a learning organization means that nobody in the higher ranks takes accountability, as everything is part of organizational learning. However, this is done on the back of thousands of employees, creating change fatigue that drive good people out of the company. Therefore, success is entirely based on leadership's opinion about an individual or group, never based on tangible impact. This leads among others to an incredible amount of PowerPoints that look beautiful, praising false successes, while there is little to nothing under the surface. Since nobody knows who does what and how to work together, the amount of meetings and workshops without agenda, concept, meaningful outputs is impressive. Advancing in the company means playing the theater for enough to get promoted based on tenure. This can be seen by looking at the trajectory of employees on LinkedIn.

Explore other reviews about Roche

5.0
4 Jul 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Nice people, good work life balance, a good job

Cons

Some of the work can be quite menial coming from a scientific background

3.0
4 Apr 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Excellent Employee Benefits and beautiful facilities

Cons

As a seasoned quality professional I could not recommend enough that you stay far away from this company. The entire Global Quality program is run on gaslighting. Procedures are vague and cryptic and the management solution is always to just copy and paste from another site. You will be told to "speak up" and its an open and collaborative environment, but that could not be further from the truth. Roche is a toxic environment that is run by cliques that pick and choose who gets to succeed. If you dare to speak up you're targeted and ostracized. If you want to succeed there you just need to nod head in agreement and try to follow the cryptic task that is gonna set you up for failure anyway. Success is completely contingent on how well you gossip and politic. The "Branchberg Mafia" is run on emotions and direction will change day to day depending on how leadership feels that day. Again I recommend looking somewhere else if you're looking to make an impact and enjoy a challenge. If you enjoy being a sheep or like weak and emotional management. This is the place for you.

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