Pros
The product is excellent and the impact on human health is superb. It is an excellent place for bio and chemistry folks to work at the cutting edge. Similarly as optics and nanofabrication engineers, you will be working at cutting edge. The new HR VP has implemented several good changes except the flexible time off policy. Overall she is doing a good job. Stock grant is good but does not scale up more than 10k with promotion. The campus is beautiful. Engineers and co workers are generally top of the line in the development group and the biology and chemistry team. Same goes for the supply chain team overall. Work life balance is great in most groups. The company has good prospect. Overall this is a great place to work but may not be suitable for your career unless you are in the right group with the right manager. CEO is however doing a great job. Women engineers are being promoted to technical leadership role which is a big plus.
Cons
1. Base pay is very low compared to other companies like Qualcomm or ASMl. And I am not considering the SW companies. Performance is not reflected in yearly raise or bonus.You get the same pitiful 2 to 3 percent raise irrespective of your performance. 2. The biologist and scientists are paid less than engineers who are probably paid lower than the marketing folks. So priorities are messed up here. 3. You will not be paid bonus and end up with 0 pay because commercial could not make the right forecast. Even if the company makes profit you might end up with zero bonus. Happened twice in last four years. Assuming 2019 will be the same. Glad I left before that. 3. If you are a SW engineer you will be doing extremely low end and low pay job and be led by folks with no programming skills and background. Exit before you are burnt out. Much better salary elsewhere. 4. The quality team here is a joke. People are doing document control and do not get exposure in any real quality engineering work. For your own self respect do not join quality group at Illumina. Same goes for validation group. To be promoted all you need to do is carry a bag and jump from one meeting to another to make development team’s life easier. 5.The SD consumable and the instrument LCM team is mismanaged by the middle management to an unbelievable extent. The consumable managers have no clue on what they are doing and should be fired enmasse. Look at the current project and talk to engineers to gather feedback. The instrument LCM team on the other hand is not sure of its existence. The need of this group and the reporting structure and promotion and stock sharing plan needs to be investigated at highest level. The Hayward and Singapore LCM team is a competent manufacturing team. 6. Flexible time off is not really flexible time off. Different groups are interpreting it differently. 7. Power of i, career development plan and idp are all a big joke in most groups. Power of i is not actually anonymous and you can be hurt if you are very forthcoming. Be careful of what you write. However giving too positive feedback will just result in your manager getting promoted when he has no real impact. 8. Promotion in development and R&D teams is very slow compared to manufacturing and LCM team. 9. System integration team is overworked and are underpaid for the work that team is putting in. It is unfortunate that they are paid the lowest. Also you develop a lot of tribal knowledge than transferable skill set there.