Pros
They get to the point at Gilead and avoid the fluff. It is a place run by scientists. Imagine everyone working like they are a post-doc. Large company with established HR and supporting administration roles. The reimbursement for professional education (certificates/master's degree) is good. The matching retirement with immediate retirement vest is nice. The employee stock purchase plan is now basically worthless, only a 6 month look back when it used to be a 2 year look back. Like everyone says, you will learn a lot if you want to at Gilead. You can be given extremely critical tasks with thin staffing. Everyone needs to work hard and long hours. You meet a lot of people with much industry experience and it definitely helps build your network.
Cons
The starting pay is below other major companies. The chance for advancement with the company is slim. At Gilead, doing high quality work and meeting goals does NOT mean you will advance. You will know within 2 years if you have a chance at advancement. They only pick a few people to advance up the ranks and these few are the ones they want to develop and promote within the company. If you get no promotion within 2 years. It means it is time to move on. It is extremely difficult to get management approvals since most everything needs to be approved by your dept. VP. The middle managers have very little control over any decisions or any of the budget. Also, the managers are working managers yet they are in meetings 6-8 hours a day. That means it is hard to make progress since the people actually doing work are always in meetings and near unavailable. Gilead employees have a lot of fear. If they make a mistake and own it, then that will kill their career since mistakes are unacceptable. This makes accountability a core value unpromoted within the company. A culture of owning a mistake and making it right is critical to having character and trust within an organization. Otherwise, blame is just passed since staff are in fear for their jobs. Since pay is below prevailing wages it is difficult to recruit and retain talented people. It puts an enormous burden on the few employees pulling the brunt of the weight. It is common to be working all nighters until 5 AM, sleeping a couple of hours and then working a full work day starting at 9 AM the same day.