A Life all-employee meeting tomorrow where once again our intelligence will be insulted.

what happened to KM and LS?

Maybe to Eugene.

Wonder what became of Camarillo!!

LIFE absolutely lies to their employees. It should be shameful, but when you evalluate the insurance cut backs in light of a huge CEO "bonus", it's really not surprising that the company is dishonest. It's safe to say that this applies to their business transactions as well.

not to Eugene

LIFE has too many small sites all through the US by way of acquisitions. May be not closing but consolidation? Heard that oligo manufacturing is moving somewhere west.

"Someone is winding you up. No way they are closing Eugene"
agreed.

This is just plain crazy.

Someone is winding you up. No way they are closing Eugene.

This is just plain crazy. Now they are going to dismantle Molecular Probes and destroy that business too - more than they already have, anyway?

Eugene closing

I am at a large international show or about, the reputation of Life (especially on the Invitrogen side) is now considered poisoned by all the reps I talked to, it is a nightmare for them. Business is way down in NA.

Sure you are.

What is going on in Eugene?
People there are getting fired every ... day.

UK is a two-faced manager and unworthy of trust.

Sales ar up in NA, just not against the unrealistic targets of clueless and greedy management

I am at a large international show or about, the reputation of Life (especially on the Invitrogen side) is now considered poisoned by all the reps I talked to, it is a nightmare for them. Business is way down in NA.

Uplaksh Kumar is the best. I like him a lot!
astrology compatibility

and when were you let go?

We do not have LIFE products in our labs anymore. From their quarterly earning transcript, seem like people still buying but not growing. Wonder if most of purchases are on the legacy AB side.

Have you never seen the Life pricing model, the more you buy, the more we will creep up price on you. Check around, the power of 1%. Never do any run rate business with them, buy in bulk, at the last minute at the end of a quarter.

The slowly creep up pricing until everything comes crashing down, just like their field force, they get rid of them and let things crash for a year and start all over, it's called selling disposable...

Camarillo was a lost cause. The move to MD did nothing except waste shareholders capital. Still can't ship quality products on time. That's why I am not buying from LIFE anymore.

Someone must still be buying from them, but I can't figure it out. I should be a "sweet spot" customer--next-gen sequencing, qPCR, oligos, gels, antibodies, media, westerns, etc., but have virtually nothing from LIFE in the lab anymore. Last swap-out was gel stain, after 2011 price increases, ridiculous price per gel vs. Pierce.

KM was the only person of the Senoor Leadership Team of LIFE who actually cared about his employees. Perhaps that's why GTL fired him.

KM was vastly overpaid and COMPLETELY WORTHLESS.

Camarillo was a lost cause. The move to MD did nothing except waste shareholders capital. Still can't ship quality products on time. That's why I am not buying from LIFE anymore.

TaterHEAD does actually "work" at both LIFE and ebiosciences....

Uplaksh was one of the few really good people who was part of the whole Camarillo to Frederick transition. He treated everyone with respect - which is more than could be said for the Camarillo site leads! I feel sorry that he had to inherit that absolute mess that had been created there by Invitrogen's mismanagement of the three "merged" companies.

Me too. Uplaksh is a good guy.

I like Uplaksh Kumar

Do you mean conscience?

KM hadn't a chance at LIFE. He was given the POS SOLiD platform which was doomed from inception. He should have stayed in the Cell Systems business which is more his area of expertise. I'm sad to see him go. He was the last President at LIFE who actually has a conscious. The company lacked morals, now it is completely void of hope.

That same Taterhead essay is also copied word for word over on a BD thread. Short of the possibility that Taterhead actaully works both places maybe this is just another racist diatribe by Asian people.

What LIFE needs is a discount coupon for the Mattress SuperStore.

Thermo has announced to their employees that they are not interested in acquiring companies in the diagnostics market. Life is the main player considering Danaher just bought Beckman. Not to mention Life and Genprobe's headquarters are a few miles from each other.

Boy I would hate to see GP destroyed by Life - and boy would it be. I would also hate to see them in Thermo's ham hands. Maybe Novartis but that won't last long. Pharma's really are desperate about the patent cliff to be getting back into diagnostics. I just don't see why GP is doing this. Course I don't know who their biggest stock holder is. Probably it's one entity trying to cash in to salvage an empire crumbling elsewhere.

Anyway, ilmn was once a one trick pony with a lame leg but they actually diversified nicely instead of focusing all their efforts into making their own platform robust - like most peole would have. Either brilliant stragegy or dumb dumb luck. Most of their growth will come at the expense of Life so we'll see.

that depends, if Life acquires Gen-Probe then I would say Life is more poised for growth

Or, if they could come up with some scheme internally to generate growth (rather than price increases that slightly increase revenue as sales numbers decrease), they wouldn't have to rely on acquiring other companies to juice the spreadsheets.

that depends, if Life acquires Gen-Probe then I would say Life is more poised for growth. Illumina is a one trick pony.

For now...

When buying a stock one typically looks for growth. Which company do you think is better poised for it? Which company is more firmly entrenched in higher gross margin markets? Life went for it on solid and blew it, it is going to be very interesting where they come out on the IT platform.

"Nice indeed. With revenue increase percentage that is only 46 points smaller than ilmn."

Yes but Life has 4 times the revenue and much better EBITA

What happened to KM, Head of Genetics Systems? Yet another one bites the dust!

Nice indeed. With revenue increase percentage that is only 46 points smaller than ilmn.

Nice quarter. Keep those stupid mid managers in sales and you're on your way to a steady decline. No question bout that.

Kind of bizarre that they can promise something that has yet to be delivered ?

So, is this life saying, for many performance metrics, that IT will not be competitive, and they have neither the vision or cranial horsepower to make it so. If that's the case, pathetic.

The Solvers ... have to agree that, upon submission, they grant Life Technologies non-exclusive, fully paid license to any and all intellectual property associated with the submission.

Got to love the fact that to submit an entry to the challenge, you have to grant LIFE a free and forever license to all the IP in your submission. And then nobody wins the $1,000,000...

re: read comment: ... I think that they can fix this in the next 6 months or so, and they are going to have to in order to stay competitive.
---
wow, global outsourcing R&D---
https://www.innocentive.com/ar/challenge/9932755

The Solvers ... have to agree that, upon submission, they grant Life Technologies non-exclusive, fully paid license to any and all intellectual property associated with the submission. The Winning Solver will assign exclusive ownership of all intellectual property to Life Technologies as per the terms of collecting the full award. This Challenge’s treatment of Solvers’ IP rights differs from a typical RTP Challenge, so read the Challenge Agreement (entitled Life Technologies’ Grand Challenge Terms and Conditions) carefully.

Man o man ! There is now two types of Life Tech rep, the good and the recyclable. The good are selling sequencers. I feel so bad for the legacy AB folks now on the gene ex side (or dark side)... ouch ! Nightmare ! I bet M.C. didn't explain that one when she said business as usual... What's going on at Ambion ? I don't see much coming out these days or is it in the usual Invitrogen destruction path.

Start your engine, they are looking at your run rate curves even before they calculated your new plan. If your post-yearly rate is not bad, you got another year to spare. If everyone around sucks, you will do some open coverage, work your ass off and then next year, as a reward, your manager will nix you of you are maxed out... even after a year of saving his ass. Ahhhh the beauty of a great system. Life Tech a great place to work !

Probably the usual middle manager who got nervous. Now he-she can say that he has an open territory to cover his back for lackluster numbers. An old Invitrogen trick. Ever seen a middle manager or a country manager pay for bad numbers ? The great leadership culture of Invitrogen. Funny how it's only one way.

v What he said!

I would like to say out here that they fired, in a cowardly fashion might I add, our local sales rep. A man who went through a lot for Invitrogen and a good rep. Can't believe it. I certainly will be looking at other media and enzyme vendors. How can a manager can do this ?

So exactly why did you get fired?