implementation consultant

front end developer

senior application engineer

retail solutions consultant

platform engineer

Medidata-Solutions

The devil is in the details.  This is Medidata.  What appears to be polished and aesthetically pleasing to the naked eye, is not exactly what churns deep down in the finite, inner-workings of the company.  Overall it is a great place to work...really.  The CEOs are like two frat brothers who just want to cross all of their pledges into their elite family of Tech gurus.  The culture is second to none and is certainly open, and dressed in its Sunday best of slick, next generation innovation.  It’s the Beau Monde meets the technologically savvy - a real pseudo Silicone Valley in all it’s glory.  It’s a mover and shaker in the Life Science Industry, truly making a difference in Clinical Trials, and Patient lives.

But....

Beneath all of the sparkle and smell of new technologies, is the stinch of employees overworked and militarized for the sake of revenue.  They work tirelessly, bent over laptop screens and wide-eyed at monitors for countless hours, putting on their Sunday best to please difficult Clients, all the while wearing yesterday’s soiled undershirt.  A lot of the Project Managers are doing enough work for 4 people, and are yet still expected to perform at top notch levels, with assembly line tactics.  It doesn’t matter if you have 15 projects going on at once...as long as you’re “billable” and adding to the overall revenue numbers.  You can’t blame your Clients for feeling angst when you take longer to tend to something - all 20 of them.  I get it’s a business and revenue is important, but at times the expectations don’t match what’s actually going on down in the trenches where the employees are working hard and getting their elbows dirty.  Do we want a pat on the back for doing our jobs?  No...but a clean cloth to wipe our faces when we get mud splattered on them from being in the trenches would suffice.  

Perhaps Medidata should put as much energy into rectifying the balance of work with their diligent employees, as they do rolling out new products - entirely too fast I might add.  Perhaps they should hold Sales accountable for over-selling and over-promising deliverables, only to stick Professional Services with the cleanup bill.  Timelines are too tight, and often times unrealistic.  Clients want you to bend over backwards to meet unreasonable milestones.  And Medidata?  They ask ‘how high’ when the Client says ‘jump’. 

Like I said before - Truly a Great place to work...but also a great place to feel like too little butter spread over too much bread.

Fine if you have less that 2 years experience.  At that level pay is competitive.  Raises and promotions are almost non-existent, so after 2 years you're better moving on.  The company doesn't reward dedication or quality work.  

3 years with no raise or promotion.
Co-worker with 15 years makes 10% more than new hire.

Compensation is based on salary and bonus.  In very rare cases you might get $5k in stock that vests over 4 years.  Older posts might mention a stock purchase plan but that is gone.

Standard dev work.  They use old frameworks and the apps don't see heavy traffic.  Doesn't practice SRE or DevOps.  Lots of silos; time wasted finding the right person to talk to.  Sometimes you'll get blocked because something outside the code broke on the live site and it takes days for them to figure out root cause and fix the issue.

Management is very political and plays favorites.  Expect to be treated as 100% replaceable.  Frequent use of PIP on good engineers.  Management no zero interest in your career growth; no feedback or training.  Best bet to success is to buddy up as high up the ladder as you can.

The hardest part of the job is how much of the SDLC is completely out of your control.  Occasionally you'll be pulled off work to train a coworker how to use SSH.

The most enjoyable part of the job is the flexibility offered.  Work from home is generally available.

What a brilliant bunch of guys with a dedication and work ethic that is humbling. The Product R&D team I was on is terrific and our manager and product manager were great too.
They are very liberal about PTO and flexibility for working from home is very nice.
Work hard, party hard.
Senior management is a little distant and disconnected and sometimes they make promises the team can't deliver on without prior consultation. Other product groups may not be as wickedly great.
The work they do is sooooo beneficial, taking clinical trial management into the 21st century to bring safer drugs to market faster and safer.
You tell folks you work for Medidata Solutions their ears perk right up. Lots of respect.

I worked at Medidata Solutions full-time

Pros

- Probably the best office I will ever work at. - Amazing work from home policy. - Great insurance provider. Probably the thing I miss most.

Cons

- Very political culture. Many discussions are ended by saying that things aren’t politically feasible. Most meetings with higher ups have a Q&amp;A session where everyone sits in awkward silence. Some people are trying to change this but they need to be supported more. - Huge management hierarchy. Differing priorities at different levels cause many necessary changes that do have management buy in to never happen.

Advice to Management

Flatten management. You don’t need 7 levels of management between an engineer and the CEO. Maybe 2. Abolish the architect position and trust your engineers with more responsibility. It is one more level of politics and in fighting to deal with.

While the company itself has many opportunities to grow a career, the department in which I worked which was client-facing was stretched very thin with little support from managers, who were also working with clients and thus had little to no time to train and develop their teammates. Because of that, conversations with my manager only occurred when client projects arose. In addition, achievements are usually overlooked since managers are not able to adequately monitor employee performance. I would recommend staying away from client-facing duties here.

Clinical trials are becoming increasingly complex and as a result oversight workloads are increasing. However resources are not keeping pace and clinical operations professionals are struggling to complete their oversight responsibilities. A recent study conducted by Medidata in association with Informa Pharma Intelligence highlights the root of many of the challenges and reveals important solutions.

Understand the issues and challenges:

Workload volumes increasing faster than resources
More data sources and volumes
Struggles with patient recruitment
Late and incomplete tasks and activities
Difficulty identifying issues quickly

Good company mixing a great historic environment with the new French parent company...this can be challenging as people try to operate under new guidelines which don't always align.

Management is great and supportive...the people are great but sometimes set in their old ways.

At times, it seems like there is a sense of "backstabbing".  When processes have new ideas, there is always a culture of "why do that...we have done it for 10 years like this...why change" and people afraid to lose jobs over process change.

- Master in Clinical Trial Study Design using Medidata Rave.
- Worked on Technical side of Clinical Trial Software for various activities.
- Expert in Clinical Programming for Pre and post production activities.
- 6 and ½ Years of Experience in Medidata Rave
- Expert in Custom Functions including RWS CFs.
- In Depth Knowledge on Rave backend objects
- 12 Years of Experience in Software Development in Asp.Net (C#) and SQL Server. 
- Possess Problem-Solving Skills, Ability to Follow Industry standards and procedures. 
- Ability to quickly master in new concepts, applications and a Team player.
- Excellent troubleshooting skills, attention to detail, and rapid, constant learning.

Great company, great culture, most people want to do the right thing but middle management often holds back progress. Medidata would benefit from a shift away from a middle management leadership structure. Middle managers often posture for the attention of senior leadership and it is at the cost holding back individual contributors and great minds. A company that prides itself on change is often held back by legacy employees that have reached the middle management level and become comfortable with status quo. This hinders progress and drives the best talent away from the company.

Medidata is leading the digital transformation of life sciences, with the world's most used platform for clinical development, commercial, and real-world data. Powered by artificial intelligence and delivered by the #1 ranked industry experts, the Intelligent Platform for Life Sciences helps pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device companies, and academic researchers accelerate value, minimize risk and optimize outcomes. Medidata serves more than 1,000 customers and partners worldwide and empowers more than 100,000 certified users every day to create hope for millions of patients.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Implementation consultant 3 salaries reported	$73,783 per year
Front end developer 5 salaries reported	$151,000 per year
Senior application engineer 4 salaries reported	$145,000 per year
Retail solutions consultant 4 salaries reported	$82,438 per year
Platform engineer 3 salaries reported	$150,000 per year

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