laboratory technician

machine operator

packaging technician

laboratory assistant

chemist

Neogen Corporation

I'm writing this as a previous employee who willingly put their two weeks' notice in. I wasn't fired or anything so this is not a review from a jilted ex-employee with an axe to grind. I worked in the lateral flow department as a Chemist I for seven months. 

Literally the only good thing about working here is you get a paycheck and your coworkers are cool. 

The work itself is monotonous and frustrating. You rarely have the materials you need even though they're SUPPOSED to be available so you have to spend 2-3 hours every day hunting down the supplies you need. Once you do find your supplies, they're faulty so you're slowed down even more. It's hard to explain what exactly I'm talking about but anyone who has worked in this lab will understand what I mean. In addition to the issue of supplies, the equipment and instruments you have to use are in poor condition or in scarce amounts. In a given day, 6 people may need to use a certain instrument of which we have 3. (These are random numbers to illustrate the issue). So you can't get your work done because there is literally not enough equipment to go around.

The day-to-day schedule is highly variable because it is a manufacturing lab, so your work is based on consumer demands. There are stretches of time where you clock in and have to pretend to look busy for 10 hours because there is literally NOTHING to do but you still have to go to work. And then there are stretches of time where you're busy for your entire work day and you aren't able to take your 15-minute breaks. (They make you take your lunch though so that you don't get OT pay).

The documents (Standard Manufacturing Procedures) that we use for everything are unclear and inconsistent. There is a lot of knowledge that you're just supposed to know even though it isn't written down anywhere even though the whole point of SMPs is to make everything as clear and idiot-proof as possible. Lots of mistakes are made that aren't even the chemist's fault because there was NO way for them to know that they were making a mistake!

The management is bossy and demanding. I understand that they're supposed to tell you what to do, yes, but they don't give any consideration for the actual effort that is required for the task. "Hey employee, I need you to do this thing that requires a minimum of 4 hours even though you only have 2 hours left in your shift and if you don't get it done I'll get frustrated with you". 

No advancement whatsoever. There is a joke that it is called the "lateral flow lab" because you can only move laterally. 

The starting pay is the same for everyone regardless of experience: $16.50/hour. I worked with people who had masters degrees and they made the same wage I did even though I only have a bachelors degree. 

The benefits are mediocre. You have to wait 60 days after you're hired to begin receiving them, so hopefully you have other health insurance or you don't need anything requiring health insurance for two months. No paid maternity leave AT ALL, you have to use your PTO/sick time and FMLA. 

During the peak of COVID, we still worked our normal schedules with our normal pay. We received a one-time, post-tax bonus of $250 as a form of appreciation. 

The 10 hour days, 4 days a week schedule can be a pro to some and a con to others. I loved it at first because having a whole extra weekday to get appointments and errands done was great. It got old after awhile though because I found that I would come home so exhausted that I fell asleep after being home for three hours. Overall I'm neutral on that aspect of the job, it really depends on your personal preference. This job is also good for people who like leaving work AT work. Once you clock out, you're not on the hook for anything. You won't get managers calling you with questions while you're at home.

The dress code is casual so that's nice. Jeans, T-shirts, and close-toed shoes all day every day!

Overall, this is a decent option for when you NEED a job and you have a bachelor's or better in a physical science. They hire just about anyone and they'll keep you for as long as you'll stay. It's also a good option for fresh grads who need lab experience in order to progress in their careers. But if you don't desperately need a job or if you can find literally anything else, don't work here. You'll be miserable.

Neogen is a short term experience farm, the management treats it like that and you'll be much happier if you do too.  The rate of pay is astronomically low considering that most positions require a bachelor's degree.  Management runs under the assumption that they can always hire new college grads, so enticing people to stay with fair salaries is not necessary.  The turnover rate bears out this reality. An average career length at Neogen is about one to two years.  The company does put on lavish parties and gives away rather expensive prizes on a pretty regular basis in order to try and slow the turnover, but when you're paying in the bottom 10% of the industry in most cases, thats just not enough.  

   In terms of advancement, there is almost none.  You will occasionally be offered a chance to move literally just to mix up your experience, but even those lateral moves are often declined by managers would would rather not have to expend the effort of looking for your replacement.  Managers are more often hired from outside the company than lifted up from within, probably owing to the fact that very few people in the company have more than a year or two's experience. 

   I have never heard of a raise request being granted at Neogen.  They will offer you a raise if you can prove you have a better job offer elsewhere, but most often people will just accept their other offer.  Sometimes a small bonus will be offered, with massive amounts of extra work, sometimes amounting to a doubling of your workload, for a yearly bonus that's less than $1,000.

    If you are looking for positives, there are some, but they are very few.  If you are not that hard working, it is very difficult to get fired from Neogen.  The only way you will get fired is if you sleep most of the day, or get caught smoking marijuana.  In terms of performance, if you do the absolute minimum amount of work, your job will be safe.  The primary reason for that is that managers don't like hiring and are just glad you haven't quit yet. Another is that this job does not require any experience, which is quite rare.  

   Overall, if you are looking at a job application for Neogen (which is very likely considering how often they are replacing people who have quit) think about what you want and need.  If you don't need a job right now and teh experience doesn't seem exactly suited to the job you do want to have eventually, then I'd say don't bother finishing the application.  If you are desperate for a job (like I was when I accepted a position) or beleive that the experience could help you land a job if you worked for a year or two and don't mind being paid the same rate you might make as a fast food manager, then it's worth considering.

If you are thinking Neogen could be a place to make a career for yourself however, I'd advise you to reconsider that assumption.

What was once a company desperately in need of progress and an injection of positive culture, is now a company that thousands of people are proud to be a part of. The changes I'm seeing every day--a pivot toward objective decision-making, the deconstruction of knowledge silos, and leaning into the implementation of project-based management and goals, to name just a few--is proof positive that NEOGEN is distancing itself from the cultures and practices that tainted our reputation with the workforce in the first place.

A typical day for me is fairly predictable. I'm either working on a series of projects I'm involved in, or when those are caught up, I'll work on the individual OKRs (think: goals) that I was directly involved with assigning/creating. I never feel overwhelmed and whenever I need support, I always feel heard.

I am not micromanaged. I am afforded flexibility to create solutions. My experience with management above me has always been reasonable and in fact, I credit them with the guidance and leadership they provided to help me blaze my own trail professionally. Rather than say, "No", I've been challenged to "Make us say 'Yes'" and that has been instrumental in my career growth and shaping my approach to navigating the business.

Culturally, NEOGEN has improved immensely over the last 10-15 years but like most things, there is still room to improve. It's clear there's an underlying initiative to ensure we put People and their needs first, but we still have work to do on making NEOGEN the premier place to work in the eyes of the workforce. I trust that the C-Suite recognizes this and keeps it on the front burner.

For me, the most enjoyable part of my job is providing the company with the information needed to make smart, objective decisions. Each day, I get to work with a plethora of intelligent, savvy, and equally motivated people that challenge me to be my best self and allow me to challenge them. It truly feels that NEOGEN is working to become the biotech company I've known them capable of being, and one that clearly looks like it belongs in the 21st century.

I am writing this review in hopes that this will save someone else's time. Poor management, went through multiple changes in supervisors.

My job was nothing like what I had applied for- I filed for 4 hours a day, and did the grunt work the others did not want to do or were too lazy to do. I was more than capable to do more, with a previous AP internship in which I was training others. 

From April 2018-December 2018 I had no way to clock in other than my phone, as my manager moved me twice and I had no access to a computer, so I used data on my phone to clock in and out every day.  

The supervisors I had in my time there had poor management skills or knowledge, and often times there would be yelling fights or talking down about employees to others, which to me was terribly unprofessional. Everything there was very passive aggressive, and it made for a workplace culture that felt tense. 

The office space is small for the amount of employees/filing cabinets are occupying it. Hopefully the new invoice system will end up taking away the mass amounts of paper dealt with there, as files would be lost or people wouldn't sign them out as instructed to do so, and I would take the heat for it. 

There was no room for advancement for me, in fact, the job description that I had seen when I applied to the position was not at all what I was doing. As stated, I was only filing, and going to work everyday to file was discouraging. 

I am sure the company as a whole is fine, it is a large company with many possibilities, but I believe the Accounts Payable department is not paid enough attention to, and many issues have arisen that were not properly dealt with. 

I don't like writing a negative review, because this may be my separate experience, but I hope to help the next AP intern hopeful and give them information on what I went through the year I was there.

Neogen has been growing rapidly over the last few years, and this has come with some growing pains. The current corporate culture is becoming more interested in the appearance of production than in achieving actual quality production. The emphasis is often on implementing new management techniques that actually make work more difficult, but sound good when described on a corporate newsletter. Similarly, site improvements have been made that are of negligible impact to the workday of the staff, but look very good for tour groups being brought through - new floors for the break room, for example. Benefits have slowly been getting worse, and the requirements for employee behavior are becoming more and more strict, without any concurrent increase in compensation. Sadly, even if a person's job involves the operation of heavy machinery, they are likely to be on a pay-scale similar to that of a big-box grocery store greeter. On the other hand, overtime is often plentiful, but also often mandatory; this can make a big difference in paychecks, but a worker will be sacrificing time for money, or vice versa, depending on if the company is in a 'feast' or 'famine' period.
In the end, it's a better job than minimum wage, and for those who don't value their free time, the plentiful overtime can make a big difference, but it's not the kind of workplace that an entire career can be built upon.

Since the pandemic began there have been 2 positive cases in the building I work in. The first one I didn't find out until the day after. Management basically swept it under the rug. The second case was an individual that I work with every day... I did not know they tested positive or anything. I found out the first morning they came back to work, they were only off for 9 days! Granted, Neogen only gives 15 days of PTO but that is for everything. Vacation, sick time, personal... This is by far the most unorganized and mismanaged workplace I've worked at in my adult life. Drama galore.. cliques, childish/ high school like behavior. There is a shift complex that is borderline childish at times. Zero accountability. Its like there are different rules for different people. Have to watch everything you say. Nothing ever changes here! Hard work is not truly appreciated,  nor is it compensated fairly. I went to HR about day to day issues I was experiencing and was brushed off by the lead HR to someone who was starting their 2nd week and knew hardly anyone. Another thing, they don't do actual reviews. They expect you to review yourself! Absolutely a joke of a company. They only care about the shareholders and their bank account.

Abysmal pay, bad science, toxic atmosphere, lack of communication, lack of compensation, the list goes on. If you're hourly, expect a hair above minimum wage for highly technical work with forced overtime (70 hour weeks). If you're salary, expect to make no more than a McDonald's manager with forced overtime (60 hour weeks). You read that right, you have to pay out of pocket to come to your forced overtime, and you don't make any extra money. There is a company wide lack of communication and extremely low morale. Products are rushed through R&D with little regard for the manufacturing process. QC rotates though employees so fast that a person who has been there over 6 months is considered senior (this is not a joke). Employees are given no regard when bringing serious issues to light, and are often questioned when safety hazards are brought to management. Higher ups see this company as solely a stock number, and do not care about the employees at all. This company is a joke, and should be avoided like the plague. Do not buy their products, they are shoddy and poorly manufactured. Sales people are treated like demigods while working scientists get a salary considered laughable by the industry. 

DO NOT WORK HERE.

Working for the company for less than six months perhaps shows best what kind of a place it is to work for. 

I was asked to accept the job on the spot, and was reprimanded for asking for 24-hours to think over the offer's compensation and incentives (side note: they will not tell you anything about the benefits package ahead of time -- which, frankly, isn't all that great anyway). I was told I should've been grateful for what was given to me and that I needn't have applied if I wanted to ask so many questions. 

That should've given me my first clue that this wasn't the place for me. Having to report to multiple managers (the hierarchy of which was never fully explained), and being told that I should only do things the way my predecessor did and that any suggestions otherwise were "stupid" and "useless" and "not what we do around here," were just a few of the additional problems. 

Even when I asked two of my superiors for help with the situation -- I was told that my predecessor wouldn't have been unhappy about it and I needed to reevaluate how I acted. 

The hardest part of the job was the lack of voice and respect I had, and how others in entirely different departments had some say in the functions of my job. 

All of this and more caused me to begin looking for a new job about two months after starting.

-Monotonous work
-Constant overtime
-Faulty equipment that ends up making your job unnecessarily harder and tedious
-Terrible building layout and incredibly claustrophobic
-Everyone looks like they're depressed (they are)
-Took my manager over 5 years to get promoted and they still make peanuts
-This job exploits freshly graduated undergrads and has them working for next to nothing.  My peers essentially formed a tiny union and threatened to quit if their wages weren't raised/if they fired someone for a dumb reason.
-They fire people at the drop of a hat, even their best employees.

A homeless guy walked in the building once and started making a huge scene. They used that to propose new "security measures."  Even though all of the doors to get in the building require key cards, our higher ups were proposing implementing key cards at EVERY door in the building and even suggested that you would need your key card to EXIT rooms.  They said it would be useful if there was ever a fire so they could "see who made it out safe" but its more like them totally policing their workers and making sure that they are at their desk doing work.
There is very little upward mobility at this job.
I never really enjoyed a second at this job.  This has to be one of the most depressing environments in this industry.  

While the work itself was enjoyable and interesting, and the technicians were fun since they hire a very young crowd, the internal workings of Neogen were terrible. 

The main problem was that the managers were not trained properly and should not have been in the positions they were in. They promised promotions to people and never followed through, did not appreciate dedication or hard work and only promoted people they personally got along with or liked. They micromanaged everything, times peoples break times (but would take ridiculously long breaks/lunches for themselves even if we were busy and needed help or had questions), and generally made working there pretty miserable. And the kicker was there was no HR rep for the longest time because they couldn't keep anyone in the job for more than a few months so there was no one to lodge any complaints. The pay is terrible and not competitive or remotely a fair reflection on the work or skills done. It was also basically a dead end job which is why their turnover rate is typically 6 months to a couple years. They are more concerned with expanding the company in other countries than taking care of the people they have working for them.

Not friendly for nursing mothers or people with families. Terrible.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Laboratory technician 20 salaries reported	$17.60 per hour
Machine operator 3 salaries reported	$20.00 per hour
Packaging technician 2 salaries reported	$17.25 per hour
Laboratory assistant 5 salaries reported	$15.80 per hour
Chemist 3 salaries reported	$17.67 per hour

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