Assistant Systems Specialist
Pros
Great chance to learn the IT organization. Co-workers are wonderful. Everyone for the most part has a "can-do" attitude and is willing to make sacrifices for the team when needed. The company, if hired as a regular, has amazing perks and benefits. You do get a strong feeling of a "greater cause" while working there.
Cons
Terrible management. My direct manager was wonderful, everyone else up through the EC level is disconnected, disorganized and speak in corporate platitudes that share nothing about the future of the company or its direction for fear of what would surely be guaranteed mutiny. There is also little opportunity to move up within IT. They would rather hire a foreign contractor for a cheaper salary than promote within. Training opportunities and chances to actually learn something new is incredibly rare, and mostly only for the favorites of the department. The org structure is also so complicated that it's impossible to know who does what and who is in charge of which process/system or software. Filling positions often takes 3 months minimum. You will interview no less than 7-9 times. And they have a very 'cog-in-the-wheel' way of managing an organization. Also, the company as a whole is quickly becoming a soulless ghost of what Genentech used to be in the late 90s-early 2000s.
