Pros
Top notch laboratory instrumentation, government has decided to make BioVectra a Canadian centre for mRNA vaccine production, excellent scientific colleagues with exceptions noted below.
Kontras
I was hired to work on lipid nanoparticle (LNP) formulation. I have a PhD in chemistry and 6 years of LNP experience. My manager knew effectively zero about chemistry, eg. insisted that volumes of dissimilar liquids were additive. So 50 mL of ethanol plus 50 mL of water would equal 100 mL of liquid. THAT kind of Dunning-Kruger ignorant. Despite knowing very little about anything, it was made clear to me that I was to follow his orders. I had nothing to do with planning experiments, was not permitted to innovate, had to listen to him take credit for all the advancements that were being made...you get the idea. Reporting to a guy who wanted to compete with you rather than make you a part of the team became incredibly frustrating very quickly. It's nice that they promote people from manufacturing jobs to run labs, but they should first ensure that these people have a modicum of management ability. Despite his ignorance of many scientific subjects he knew a lot of other things and was in fact very good at certain aspects of his job. Unfortunately, he was all about control and utterly failed in his responsibility to the company in my view. The pay is poor. They also promised me $5,000 for relocation. My costs were closer to $17,000 but they paid me less than $500, as hidden in the fine print was the fact that they amortize the relocation payment over 2 years. Cheap and sneaky.