Over the past three months, I have been living in Indianapolis working for Eli Lilly. I learned a lot, getting to explore a new company and city.

Eli Lilly

Eli Lilly is an incredible company. The people and the culture as a whole are incredibly friendly. The company has three governing values: Integrity, Excellence, and Respect for People. At first glance, one would expect that such values are just a PR blurb. I can say with certainty that they are not. Integrity and excellence are not really a choice to be made. In the world of Pharma, the FDA will make sure that you are being upfront about your work and that you are producing high quality product. However, the respect for people is a huge deal. I experienced it from the perspective of an employee (specifically in the manufacturing side of the company). Simply, the employees are treated excellently. Movement around the company is encouraged, allowing employees to stay stimulated and continue to grow their skills. At every point I saw the company as an entity respecting that employees are people with needs that extend beyond and sometimes conflict with the company’s needs in the short term. Lilly hires people for careers and people stay for those careers. I think the most telling thing about Lilly is that every single person from HR to managers to coworkers was clear that they are at Lilly because they want to be and that while they would love to have many of the interns back, if it is not where someone will be happy, there are no hard feelings if that person moves on. Simply put it is a great group of people to work for and with.

I certainly learned a lot at Lilly and enjoyed my time there. I met a ton of great people. When I chose to go to Lilly it was because I felt that the company would be a good company to work for. I wanted to try out a large company and seemed the right place to do that. It delivered, great company to work for.

Indy

Indy is a growing city, it is fun but is not to where it needs to be yet. I have never been somewhere so bike and pedestrian friendly, one can go anywhere on their bike. Beyond simple transportation, there are some really beautiful bike trails just for riding. There are plenty of places to eat burgers, pizza, and tex-mex, but the variety is pretty limited to those. Certainly not the richness of food you would expect to see in a city of that size. And that is emblematic of Indy as a whole, the diversity seems to be somewhat lacking. The craft beer scene is however not lacking at all, plenty of options there.

The housing in Indy is super cheap, but at the moment it is limited within the city center and there seem to be few families living there. There is however a lot of development underway. I hope that with time and new development, the city center will become more family friendly.