medical laboratory technician

laboratory technician

scientist

product manager

intern

Idexx-Laboratories

This is a highly variable work place. Overall this is a good place to work, but some of the managers are not good, and there are some very unhealthy places to be in this company. The culture is mostly about results. You may do some of your best work ever here, but when something bad happens it may not be corrected. Ultimately the environment you are in at IDEXX depends on your manager and reporting line, and what tone they set for treatment of others.  

IDEXX has has implemented an internal survey system that helps them find the cancerous departments. This has helped, but like most large companies that have had fast growth, big problems still exist because it is very difficult to ensure all managers are skilled, ethical, and fair. Until there is a culture of people standing up for things that are wrong, and that not being suppressed, this will continue.

The same thing that drives the company to make great products drives them to want to be excellent in how work is done. The work you do here is something you can be proud of. Data driven product development ensures products that are very valuable to customers, which is very satisfying.

Review process based on people's opinions that may not understand your job description or your boss's marching orders. (This is called a "360") If your job is to push back on issues or control something, people can be unhappy with your perceived attempts to undermine their success.

IDEXX does not have pay parity or enforcement in pay or opportunity. 

Bad role clarity in many roles is a breeding ground for problems in some places. 

Some managers will play favorites with who has to do most of the grunt work, and who gets to travel for special trainings, conferences, or approval for tuition reimbursement. Some managers will block people from being able to move to other departments. 

There is a use it or lose it policy for PTO at the end of the year with no carry over allowed, so you often will lose a lot of your time off if you have a project that is very busy toward the end of the year. It can be very difficult to get anything done in the last two months of the year, because everyone is taking time off at the same time so they don't lose their PTO.  Sick time got lumped in with PTO recently (industry trend, not just here), so if you have young children you will probably not have vacation time.

Lack of alignment between the business and developent areas of the business leave people on product development and support teams in rediculous and unavigable political situations.

People are often asked to do a job for years without the title before being promoted. In most of the cases where I saw this happen the person left IDEXX fed up. 

Some buy vs. build decisions are not analysis based, and result in a lot of problems later. Sometimes we build things that are simply not in our capability or expertise.

The past. This section shows the company does try to fix their problems: 
It used to be that people would work full-time on the IDEXX payroll without any benefits for years, and be told they were "temporary". That has gotten a lot better, but there are a lot of people walking the halls who were originally permatemps and had to wait three or more years to be made "real" employees. This was happening after the sub-prime mortgage crisis when employees had no choice because unemployment was very high, but seemed to stop happening after IDEXX got an organized HR group and the economy picked up.

Some managers used to play favorites with who can take an extended vacation, and who cannot. (If you are higher performing, they may not want you to leave and won't allow you to take that time off.) Now PTO is tracked through an electronic system, so that doesn't happen anymore.

When layoffs happen, often those close to retirement or those on medical leave are let go first, with some managers. It has been a while since this has happened, and hopefully I don't see it ever again.

**Memphis, TN Location only**

1) Typical day at work: Great pay!  However, you pay in having to work through lots of unsavory happenings. Lots of gossip, poor leadership, unfair treatment, favoritism, unprofessional behavior, condescending demeanors, jealousy, manipulative & lazy leadership, & they'll will push you off the bus while smiling to your face. 

2) What I learned: Little-to-none OR Micro-controlling training. It's 0% or 100%. The lab, the company trains up. Great opportunity for employees who want to learn a trade or do something different! Major PRO! Bad for employees who already have that education. Major CON!

If you have the Bachelor's or Master's degree, you're treated as though you know nothing & re-trained to do it whoever's way in order for that lead to sign you off on the training manual (manipulative and controlling). 

3) Management. Horrible, unprofessional, demeaning, manipulative, & will smile to your face while pushing you off the bus. They leadership treats employees different. If you're the favorite, you got it made! If you aren't the favorite, you get the short end of the stick. That's the only consistent thing about working here. 

HOWEVER, not everyone in leadership is bad! 1-2 are pretty decent. However, the golden apples are saturated with the other bad apple's  unwillingness to do their share of responsibilities. They get tired and the life in their eyes fade away. Sad. 

4) Workplace culture.  Riddled with gossip, sabotage, unfairness, laziness, and poor management. Best just to keep silent, keep your head down, don't make drama, & try to go unnoticed. 

You're also just a number to them. They don't care if your technique is sloppy. If you can do 65 samples in 1 hour, it better be 70 in the next hour. It's almost as though they're begging you get carpal tundral syndrome within the first 90-days of working there. 

5) Hardest part of the job: having to deal with negative people that are jealous of education, happiness, and the desire to learn and grow. 

Leadership favoritism. Example: Sick time. If you're a favorite, you can show up late, call out, no bid deal. No consequences. If you're not, they expect you have doctor's note every time you're sick and they guilt trip you for not going in. 

They're ALWAYS hiring and ALWAYS short-staffed. That makes it difficult for those who actually show up because responsibilities are an unattainable number and too much for the man-power they have on the floor. MAJOR RED FLAG. 

Work related accidents? Don't count on them to pay for it or the time you have to take off to heal. They won't. They'll utilize every single loop hole they possibly can to wiggle out of paying you. Sad stuff. 

Floating holidays. You get 6 extra PTO days off. The catch? Well, if you're a favorite, sure, those PTO requests get approved, if not, then leadership doesn't approve them. Example: Christmas and New Years are not recognized holiday, so while the lab *may* be closed, you have to use PTO. Or, go unpaid. Lab workers get 4 holidays a year (and they're not what you think!) - Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving. NOT Christmas or New Years! O.o 

6) Most enjoyable part of the job: Meeting some really nice gems in the lab. Mostly everyone is nice, except for a handful of peeps that are whirlwinds. They're all just trying to get through the day like you and go unnoticed and avoid any sort of drama. Unfortunately, drama tends to pull everyone in. Sad stuff. 

**Memphis location is a BAD apple. Try to avoid this location. I don't believe ALL of Idexx Labs are ran in such a horrible and unprofessional manner. Don't get discouraged! This was just my experience, hopefully, if you're working here, or just got a job offer, it's better for you! Good luck~

Within my first year, I loved my job and thought that this was the place I was going to retire from. I enjoyed going to work and never once woke up and had one of those “should I go in” moments. It tends to pay more compared to other labs and the shift differential is nice but you don’t get your shift differential when you take PTO and your PTO doesn’t roll over and you cannot get paid out for what you don’t use. Basically, you use it or you lose it. Unfortunately, after my first year there, things rapidly declined. If you are good at your job, then you get stuck there. I asked my supervisor what the plan looked like to get people in our department crossed trained and the response was “there isn’t one.” The lab has a percentage they are suppose to have cross trained and that was never met while I was there. The supervisors are nice, but are ineffective. Repetitive call outs are allowed and are quite common especially in processing with no repercussions. My particular supervisor received constant criticism due to the lack of responsiveness (pto that was requested would be left unapproved until the last minute), lacked any type of communication, showed favoritism, would show up to work whenever. It takes a lot to get fired from there, which unfortunately keeps the bad apples there and drives the good people to leave. It has become a very toxic place to work. I see myself as a positive person, but I had to get out of there because I wasn’t liking how that place was changing who I was. The negativity there spreads very easily and there is a lot of it there and the supervisors do not do anything about it. It’s a “lab” but more so a factory. In addition to the lack of cross training to vary your work, there are a lot of metrics that you are expected to hit and how the company uses these metrics to judge how many techs there needs to be is unrealistic. Just like a factory, doing repetitive jobs can cause injuries… this was also the case for my department. People were doing the same job constantly and wrist and shoulder injuries occurred and the team lead told one of the workers to “suck it up” until they themself had a wrist injury. The requirements on how fast you need to work was concerning especially for it being a diagnostic laboratory. Within my department, you were expected to read a slide in 60-90 seconds, so there are times stuff is missed just due to how fast you have to read at the microscope in order to meet turn around time. Unfortunately, the balance between quality and quantity, leaned more towards quantity than quality. Lab management made it seem like they were interested in your voice, but it was all talk and no action. Ideas from the employees to improve their departments went unheard. They would conduct a “my voice survey” and the employees would voice their complaints. The major complaint was stress and instead of fixing the root causes of the stress, the solution was to just bring in a masseuse one day a month… a bandage that didn’t actually fix the underlying issues that were causing the stress. 

Let’s just say that this place is a joke. I worked for idexx for over 2 years. Let me just start with why I was excited about advancing my career here. I am in school for MLT and eventually getting my CLS degree so I had decent knowledge of certain things (which was good because the first day I started before even finishing my SOPs I was thrown on a bench and told to help). When I was hired on I was told the only thing that would hold me back from moving up in the company was myself. BOY, WAS THAT A LIE. I worked there for over 2 years proving myself “worthy” enough for a promotion or to be trained on a different bench. NOPE. They would rather train new hires that run their mouths and that are the same ethnicity than to bat an eye at a good, long term employee. The “management” (if you can even call them that) are claiming to be there for you, when in reality you are just another person to talk about to another manager. This place can and will be the death of some people. The stress is intolerable as well as the gossiping 3rd graders that work there (even though majority of them were 29+). This place is lucky it is still in business considering all the people who want to quit but don’t just because they have holidays and “good benefits”, if you can even say it’s worth that. Oh, and these “huddles” to discuss an employees resignation and explain on why they quit shouldn’t be held. I was informed that when I left and had my exit interview, that what I had talked to my site manager in privacy about was shared amongst my coworkers. Hah. Guess they never thought I’d find out? Or just thought that since I was told that “none of this would be shared, and held in private” that this manager wouldn’t run along and spread the word, like all of them do, that I wouldn’t suspect it. Well, I know about it and I did expect it. Which is why I am warning all of you. DO NOT WORK HERE UNLESS YOU THINK YOUR LIFE IS WORTH NOTHING BUT STRESS, DRAMA AND CHUMP CHANGE. They couldn’t offer me enough of anything to get me back through those doors, unless they did a complete and total company clear out. Oh, I was also told on hire that idexx gives reimbursement for tuition. That was also a lie. After doing everything except getting on my knees and begging my managers for some type of reimbursement or even a promotion I was always told “it’s not in the budget”. Even though they bought new machines, hired 5+ new people, gave 3+ others a promotion, and always had money to throw at the committee for food and decorations for stuff (that I might add was decided on by usually one person in general), that this said person wanted.
In conclusion, I would like to just say don’t work here. The amount of unprofessionalism is unfathomable, as well “favoritism” towards certain “clicks” or people, is outrageously idiotic and makes this company a 0/100 in my book. All I can say is thanks for the two years on the same bench, and I suggest you move on unless you want the same fate.

Worked here at the NJ reference lab as a tech for quite a while, and had never worked overnights prior at any other job. You tell yourself its not so bad, and you'll adjust to it but the truth is no one ever does. It totally drains the life out of you no matter how many hours you sleep. Being a young adult, I gave credit to my coworkers who were mothers/fathers or who had to work another job, don't know how they managed. 
The lab itself is set-up quite well. As long as there's no unforeseeable issues, work goes relatively smooth. The only downside is that the work volume was almost always so high for the amount of staff. The whole work flow rests on the processing department so if they have an issue, the whole lab has an issue. 
If you like a job who REQUIRES overtime 90% of the time, then this is your go-to place. Some people would work twelve hour shifts everyday just because their department was understaffed or did have enough equipment available to handle the heavy work load. And you had to finish your work and meet TAT. TAT is everything for management, if it's not met, expect to be reprimanded if there isn't a VERY GOOD REASON.
The pay was the selling point for me when I was interviewing. While working there I was living comfortably and always had money left over each check to do with as a wished.
My coworkers were wonderful, and I made a few lasting friendships. However, towards the end of my time there I felt like they were hiring anyone they could convince to take the job. It was more like hiring for quantity to bear the workload than quality in terms of hiring professionals who at least had some lab experience. And in a lab, when you're testing samples from patients, many of us didn't agree with a lot of their hiring choices.
Management itself, not the greatest. Understandably its a large corporation so theres feedback coming to them from employees and hire-ups which can make things tricky and overwhelming. But after a while, I got sick of the politics and games you had to play trying to get real answers instead of "we'll see" or "I don't know". 
Promotions, from what I saw, were only given to favorites or if you were willing to volunteer for a schedule/position that no one else wanted, leaving them desperate. 
Work/life balance, not what they make you believe it is. Mind you, they do give a lot of vacation time, however, if the days you need off don't work for their cookie-cutter schedule, good luck. 
One thing that did benefit me when leaving though, is that other employers looked very highly at my resume having worked for IDEXX (jobs in a similar field). When I left(on good terms albeit) every place I interviewed with was VERY impressed by it.
So, if you're looking for a well paying job, with harsh overnight cookie-cutter schedules, political management, and a work load that will almost guarantee OT - then this is the place for you!

Quick run down. 

Very good benefits and the pay is good. If night shift (most likely) it will be a $3 shift diff, so thats pretty good. Dental is delta and health is aetna.

Small staff but LOTS of samples that comes in every day, forcing overtime since you can't leave until everything is done. Rarely do you get out on time.

Vacation/Sick days are combined as one. Start off with 18 days. Come in later in the year, its cut in half. Also if due to the staff size of the lab, requesting time off is a mad dash. Only 2 people of the ENTIRE LAB, not department but THE WHOLE LAB can be requested day off per day. If that person is in the same department, too bad, you can't. Oh the PTO days aren't carried into next year so if you don't use them, you lose them.

No life at all, for night shift. Work, come home, use whatever hours left before sleeping for whatever business/free time, sleep, repeat. No matter how early you sleep, you'll think and feel like you'll get used to it on some days, but no it won't. Weekend rest is actually more like 1 day rest, (sunday usually unless you work the Sat.)

Management is ok, but you gotta be on top of them to get things done. Also, they want to be different from other labs so they are quite stubborn about changing SOP's to match others. They think they're efficient, but compared to other labs. No it isn't. I don't know why they don't wanna be the same. Information regarding to benefits, data, work related news, etc seems to be different from the rest. I was told one thing here and while at a different lab in a different state, they told me something else. Unsure whose right, but with other staff coming from over the U.S, I think the outside labs are correct.....

Co-workers are really nice, depending on departments. Will help you through the night and will be willing to be friends outside of lab, if you're not sleeping.

Hours are long. I mean LONG. You will come in depending on the department and get out 6:30-8:30am depending when you come in. However due to the amount of staff and samples, you get 1-2 hours of extra hours of OT. It is uncommon if you have to stay longer than that. There will be times when you get out in the afternoon. Break time? You clock out for 30 min for lunch, (30 min will fly by fast) and you get 2 15 min breaks that paid. However due to the amount of work, every technician will either do 1 or none of the 15 min breaks either to breathe a bit or just get work done so they can go home faster.

They only seem to be interested with people willing to take night shift since the turn over rate is actually high. I thought i was able to handle it since I normally slept really late, but was I wrong. REALLY WRONG. The pay and the benefit was the main factor of selecting this job.

I worked in the Microbiology department for several years and the job just got more and more stressful and they say they appreciate your hard work but they don’t. It’s the most toxic, unprofessional, unethical place I ever worked in my career. This place has a high turnover rate because none of the Managers have any lab experience, and there is one notorious Manager who is one of the worst human beings I have ever met. He cares about no one but himself, and he only promotes people who he can control and do his bidding. If he was fired or at the least transferred to another facility I would like to think the environment could improve. I loved the work I did and when I started I had planned on retiring from Idexx, but after years of being lied about, stabbed in the back, taking orders from people who had never been in a position of leadership, and the toxic work environment turned good people on one another. I’ll be the first one to tell you I made mistakes and I was not some perfect employee. If you are desperate for a job because you haven’t had any luck finding one, I would say as long as you have some thick skin give it a shot until you find something better, because this place is a known sweatshop in the lab world. I know several people who have left and found a much better job, and some took a pay cut just to get away from Idexx and the toxic work environment. They don’t do drug screens so there are people there who are unreliable and miss work, and most positions only require a high school diploma. I’m not saying this to sound like some snob, but I worked hard to get my B.S. in Clinical Laboratory Science, and I have a mound of student debt, only to have that one awful manager tell me my education was of no value at Idexx, but that only your time spent with Idexx was of any value, which is a lie, he just didn’t like me. There are some good people who I miss working with at Idexx, but I’m sure I will see some of them around in another lab one day. I hope this was helpful to those trying to make that final decision.

Don't be fooled by the fact that this is a reputable company, which going on their website has promise in the entity they present.  Yet working at the Totowa Lab, they do no represent ANY of the values the cooperation claims.  

Management is an absolute nightmare at this laboratory.  The turn over rate on employees became comical, as no one lasts more than a few months.  In 3 years there, I had over 6 different Supervisors.  

There is little to no work life balance, not only because the hours are usually 11:30-8:30AM, but because you will never leave on time and are expected to stay until you are needed.  Being that the lab is so disorganized they constantly are making radical changes, as hours, roles and so forth.  

Attendance policy is so strict if you are more than one minute late to clock in you are reprimanded and written up.  lunches and bathroom breaks are monitored down to seconds, you are seen as a work horse, for production; therefore any moment not at your station is closely observed.  

It is an immensely negative work culture, being that no one that works there is happy, except stay because of necessity or language barriers. It saddens me to see so many people in a situation that is so negative towards ones health.   Management plays favorites with those who are willing to sacrifice more of their life balance to give to them for production.  

Promotions are given to favorites, where you will have someone in a leadership roles with absolutely no experience, therefore aiding in the detrimental environment. 

Their perception on employee appreciation simply includes buying sugary treats, either cupcakes or donuts.  Not even a healthy outlook even when asked or simply just a thank you that is genuine.

The company itself, Idexx, is a great company as there are many incentives and benefits that are given to employees; however, the Totowa Lab night shift is a very toxic workplace being ran poorly. The assistant manager that is currently there is running the lab to the ground. Due to poor leadership skills in management, the millions of supervisors that runs the lab to also have poor leadership skills. Each lab is ran independently so there is not one lab that you find running the same. The way it is ran is based on who is your manager is.

Miscommunication is the main key factor that is making this lab a 
failure. There is poor communication between management to supervisors and management to employees. There is a 50% chance that you will be notified of the millions of changes in policies that occurs through the lab and it will most likely be via email…which most employees do not check.

Promotions is based off of who the assistant manager currently like. I have seen very good employees stuck in the same position because the manager chooses to not to promote them or they have to complete “projects” in order to show initiative which is unacceptable. I have seen good employees leave because of these biased judgments. I have also seen mediocre employees get promoted into management positions because they were friends to supervisors or management. There are employees who have been there 10+ years and are stuck in the same position and they are proficient at every bench.  Then you will see employees who have been there less than a year and are promoted to a management position the next day.

Having been in the veterinary field for over 18 years I found myself burning out physically and emotionally. I needed something still within vet med but not directly in the clinic setting. Idexx was the perfect fit.

The pay even at entry levels is decent, the benefits are quite good, and the company is great to work for. It is a fast paced environment with TAT deadlines, but quality over quantity is most important. The overnight shift is the busiest, with 3 times the staff and volume as the day shift, and includes a higher base pay plus shift differential. Cross training between departments and advancement are highly encouraged and regularly available.

I realize that atmosphere can vary from lab to lab but at my location it was great. Negativity was nipped in the bud, open dialogue, feedback and ideas encouraged. Of course there are bad nights sometimes but most coworkers are willing to put in the work to get things done. My department’s supervisor and manager were excellent and always available to jump in when needed. This isn’t the place for those that have a “just a job” outlook. There are actual lives that depend on you, and you need to understand and care about that.

My position was at the N. Grafton, MA location in the Patient Sample Management dept on the overnight shift. The only reason I left was due to unrelated personal health issues. I would go back in a heartbeat if I could.

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