Working at nanogen — Reviews by Employees

Where to start..... I suppose with the top and work down. The upper management overall is a useless collective of ass-clowns incapable of making a decision and god forbid a good one. It takes six committee meetings for them to decide which hand to use when wiping themselves. As a company they waste more money than they know what to do with. They are still spending millions of dollars trying to develop technology that was novel in 1985, and the fact that BETTER and cheaper faster technology is already on the market has not deterred their spending. Their chief commercial product is a PCR machine costing $100,000 which is best used as a door stop. No kidding! In 2004 they sold roughly 10 of them and all of the labs that bought one do not use it. The machine is just garbage! They sent one to us at the Bothell site. It did not work right out of the box AND they wanted us to pay to fix the technological turd! The company is spending millions to upgrade this steaming pile of so-called technology for use in marine applications as a boat anchor. The VP of operations is an ego maniacal jerk-off who although he had absolutely no quality or regulatory experience decided he could run the manufacturing/operations divisions as well as the Regulatory/Quality divisions. This self-important blow hard was so arrogant as to not realize his decision constituted a serious conflict of interest which put the company in jeopardy with the regulatory bodies, namely the FDA. Shortly after he turned the reins of the RA/QA over to someone actually qualified to do the job, but before his mess could be cleaned up, the company received a warning letter from the FDA! He must be business genius. The "head" HR person is a 50 year-old California bimbo with a bad dye-job and huge implants trying desperately to hold on to her youth. She looks good in the tight sweaters she wears which is her only actual contribution to the company. When she is asked a question she, like the majority of HR weasels, supplies no actual information but is "proactive" enough to spit out an endless stream of semi-important sounding buzz words making you just give up your quest for real information. The director of operations is a true company Yes Man, spineless to the core. He would rather watch his mother be thrown under a bus by his supervisor than take a stand and put His neck on the line. He has kissed so much back-side his nose and lips have a permanent brown crust. When the big bosses are back in California he talks a big game calling the companies upper management idiots and criticizing their business plan and decision making. But, when the bosses are on site for meetings he follows them around like a bad bad little puppy, exactly two steps behind with his head down. He knows his place! Overall, the vast majority of the “lower level” employees were very hard working and cared about the quality of their work. One person in my group was a shining exception to this rule. We dubbed her the little princes based on her pissy snotty prissy attitude. She had the worst work ethic and the greatest sense of entitlement I have ever seen. This emotionally stunted mental midget was hardly qualified to do the job she was hired to do, but she always wanted to be trained to do more prestigious work. When another coworker and I asked her if she PLEASE help us since we were swamped with work she snapped at us exclaiming “you’re not the boss of me”. I am not jealous of her because she whined and cried to get everything she wanted, or because she got paid to sit on her infantile ass and surf the net shopping for shoes and purses all day. I am jealous of her because she has more facial hair than I do.