AstraZeneca reviews

4.0

79% would recommend to a friend

(7,918 total reviews)
avatar

Pascal Soriot

89% approve of CEO

79% positive business outlook

AstraZeneca has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 7,918 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The AstraZeneca employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Pharmazeutika & Biotechnologie industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

8K reviews
1.0
Sep 22, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The Alderley site in the UK is a beautiful location to work at. Nice restaurant, gym facilities etc. The people there and at other sites are by and large great people with the majority of them very dedicated to the company and also to what it stands (stood) for and the work that it was doing. Quite a few ago, it was a great place to work..

Cons

Short sighted management - which started long before the cuts started happening is bringing a once excellent company to its knees. Morale is at extremely low levels. Short term cost savings in critical areas whilst squandering resource in non critical areas. Continual reorganisations at ever increasing frequencies. Cutting of staff beyond functional levels mean internal processes are falling over. Failing infrastructure and facilities, and dysfunctional/ un-managed/unclear systems and processes combined with insufficient staff have created an environment where it is extremely difficult for remaining staff to carry out their roles. Infighting between and within groups and "toxic" environments becoming more common.

3.0
Jan 26, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

1. Good natured very talented individuals 2. Fair pay and decent benefits 3. Learning and development 4. Rewarding work (if you win the ticket to work with an actual business team)

Cons

1. Constant uncertainty and "no mission or vision" 2. Terrible leadership in IT, 0 partnership with business leads, who run their projects and programmes, "Playing against your teams" 3. Amateur and unprofessional career development and progression. "Give us a ring for the role mate" culture. 4. Absent HR. Policies are probably written on palms with pens/markers. 5. Leaders have no conviction

2.0
May 12, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I like their emphasis and career development and felt like my managers genuinely cared about me and my development. I also liked that there was a culture of when you take time off, you are actually off. There were no expectations to work while on leave or be "on call."

Cons

1. They monitor how many times you swipe your badge in the office and if it is not at least 3x per week, it is a problem. I went on vacation one week and got asked why I wasn't in 3x that week. My line manager had to explain to HR that I was on annual leave. It was not a problem in the end, but the fact that someone was tracking me so closely made me very uncomfortable and feel like Big Brother was watching. 2. No flexible teleworking options. They used to allow you to telework more, and now the company is cracking down hard. The company has announced that they will penalize your bonus if you are not in 3x weekly in 2023, and they applied that retrospectively to on-site attendance in 2022, which was quite bizarre and surprising to both employees and managers alike when they executed on this. 3. Overworked and under-resourced for priority studies, which puts so much extra pressure on employees. 4. Culture needs lots of work. They are constantly changing their policy on conference attendance and say you can only go if you have a business reason (which basically means if you are attending an important steering committee meeting or similar). It used to be that you would go for learning and developing and meeting people, but this has changed. It means that most clinical scientists end up not having a good "business reason" since we typically aren't steering committee members, and only physicians end up going to conferences. 5. The open office environment is also terrible--I had to spend countless mornings hunting for a space to work because there are not enough desks for everyone in the department. It feels like you are working in a call center because there aren't enough quiet rooms and as a global company, we are all on calls daily with our colleagues from across the globe. So it looks and feels like a call center. Very challenging to actually get reading/writing/data review done in such a chaotic environment and I never end up sitting next to my actual team because there are no assigned desks.

Viewing 19 - 21 of 7,918 Reviews

Glassdoor has 10,187 AstraZeneca reviews submitted anonymously by AstraZeneca employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if AstraZeneca is right for you.