It's a toxic environment where careers die
Pros
A position at Genenetech pays pretty well.
Cons
Genentech and other bay area based biotech firms carry a reputation of being discriminatory and harassing toward women and older employees. To top it off, now that they are owned by Roche, there's a chance Roche-based (foreign, German) employees wind up being in project management positions in which they resort to old school yelling. It is such a wasteful company, there are so many upper executive level people and headquarters located in Switzerland that seem to contribute to nothing except too many odd hour tele-video meetings and higher drug prices with their salaries...if Genentech/Roche would force those people out instead of older employees wanting to wait a couple of years before retirement they would cut costs and probably get the drugs out quicker. What is even funny, you would think working for a bio-pharmacy-medical company you would get free healthcare with all the money they make, but you do not. Their cheapest, base level HMO is more expensive than Intel's, a CPU company (which is free, i.e. nothing comes out of your paycheck for that plan...this is true for at least the Portland metro area in which Genentech and Intel have a significant presence in Hillsboro). Maybe if they would get rid of all the waste and upper level management that don't seem to do much except look out for themselves they'd be able to afford at least a free HMO healthcare to all employees.
