Just want to start by saying that I don't normally write reviews of any kind but, if one person reads this and decides not to apply/accept an offer from IQVIA as a result, I'll have done a good deed.
Where to begin? Wish Glassdoor would let me give zero stars...Absolutely awful office culture; the work environment is very sterile, bland and quiet. Completely devoid of personality. This is probably due to the incredibly high churn rate. If you've been there for more than a year, you're considered a veteran.
You are expected to do very long hours on projects, including weekends, so forget about a social life (I was actually reprimanded for going to an end of project celebration dinner...). And yet, the bonuses are minuscule and you get paid less than the market rate. A fun game we used to play was to calculate our pay per hour; one of the most sobering experiences of my life. By the way, the CEO is the highest paid person in pharma...
The whole employee assessment/promotion process is so cold and devoid of any sense of humanity that one might wonder if it is actually run by AI. However, when you witness the nepotism, brown-nosing and office politics first-hand, you realise that it can't be. Because employees are pitted against each other by virtue of how they are assessed, this manifests as a bizarre Stockholm syndrome whereby employees convince themselves that they should work as long as possible and play nice with Managers/Principals/VPs to get ahead. This also results in a complete lack of camaraderie among fellow hostages - I mean consultants.
Now to the actual work. Like I mentioned before, you are expected to work sweat shop hours. This is because you are staffed on multiple projects at once with ridiculous deadlines. And this is because the VPs that sell these projects don't think about the people that actually have to do them; just that they've managed to chip away at their sales target and are one step closer to a bigger bonus.
But you might say "the amount of work isn't so bad if you enjoy it, right?" To that, I would generally agree. However, this is some of the most repetitive, commoditised, tedious work imaginable. After a few projects you start to wonder whether university was worth it. And if you struggle with the work at all, you are given no support.
Also, most of the work you do is pointless. A glaring admission of this is when you are told, "the client wants to use up some leftover budget." Regardless, imagine having done 100 slides (most of these end up in the appendix which no one reads) and then be told that the Principal on the project prefers different style bullet points, or the VP prefers boxes with rounded edges rather than sharp edges.
Also, imagine being in 2 or 3 meetings a week (per project) that don't really seem to go anywhere. Oh and you have to take minutes on these meetings that don't go anywhere (no one ever reads these of course). Depending on your manager, these minutes may undergo multiple revisions. I remember one notable case of this; I think the notes had 4 or 5 different versions and went out a month after the meeting it referred to. By the way, this task falls on the most junior person on the team, regardless of their actual position in the hierarchy. Imagine having slogged at IQVIA for 3 or 4 years, worked up the ladder, and then be forced to take superfluous notes because the budget doesn't support more junior team members.
Oh and there's project team updates and such that, in some cases are helpful, but in most are not (and sap away at the limited time you have). This is simply "the way projects are done" I'm told. Because a "real project" has to have certain activities for it to be considered to be running well. Even if these activities are pointless and time-wasting.
IQVIA spends nothing on training and development either. The company is so cheap that it's as if you are working out of the back of Ari Bousbib's van. It acts like it's a huge player in the consulting space, but you never receive the benefits of this as an employee. Because of this, you do find it difficult to make lateral moves into other jobs. You aren't really qualified for anything other than the fugazi work you do.
All of these elements add up to extreme employee dissatisfaction and ennui. This leads me to the strangest part of all. It's obvious that most of the consultants hate their jobs/lives. Even if you don't overhear their conversations, the churn rate is black and white. And, yet, no actions are taken with regards to this at all. It seems management either do not know how to improve their employees' experience of work, or just don't care. I think the latter.
