Pros
Great salary and benefits: -10%+ yearly bonuses with 20-50% stock awards that vest over 3 years. -4 weeks vacation to start and company shut down between Christmas and New year -$300/month commuter benefit, charitable donation matching, and $125/month student loan payment -401k is just OK with 100% match for up to 3% and 50% match for an additional 1-3% I am lucky that I work on a team with a manager who is supportive, empathetic, and reasonable. The people I work closest with are smart, helpful, and generally easy to work with. Like most places, your experience will vary depending on the department and immediate team. Vertex as a whole is extremely successful, and I take pride in working for a company that focuses on rare genetic diseases and research.
Cons
All the comments about senior management in GMDA are spot-on. The comment about adding barriers instead of value is particularly accurate. Extra layers of process and review add inefficiencies and confusion. Decision makers are either unresponsive, unreasonable, or can't agree with each other. They also want their hands in every. little. thing. Vertex talks a big talk about wanting to support its employees, help them grow, maintain work-life balance, "push decision making down and out" (please), but never follows through. There is a lot of unnecessary pressure and finger-pointing that leads to fear and burnout. They badger and bribe employees to complete an "optional" development plan so that they can say they got 100% participation and claim they did something to support employee development; whether the content of these plans is actually useful is another story. Vertex also talks big about innovation and excellence, but, in my department in particular, opportunities are decided by seniority instead of merit. I am told time and again that I'm ahead of my peers who have been here longer, and yet they get most of the choice projects and growth opportunities. People are ridiculously sensitive about fairness.
