Cliques and politics:
I've worked in many biotech companies over the years and this is by far the worst in terms of people forming cliques and playing politics. I've seen very good people get pushed out of the company just because they dared to disagree with the "in-crowd". It's made the company very closed-in and stifled innovation because nearly all major decisions are based on limited viewpoints.
Much of this seems to be because a large number of middle management are all extremely young, directly out of grad school, very self-confident, and with no experience in the private sector before Adaptive. Overall, it's a very difficult environment to work in due to the high amount of gossip, behind-the-back chatter, and immaturity.
Limited growth:
Aside from that, the salaries are very low compared to most other biotech in the area and there's limited room for career growth. For the higher positions, either you are hired into the position or you have been with the company since near the beginning. Then you can become a director. They have directors of everything now, which causes a problem in itself because every director thinks they are the authority over every other director, resulting in a lot of conflict.
Where's the science?
Also, for a biotech company, there are surprisingly few actual scientists, and for a company based around the immune system, it seems extremely odd that the number of people with experience in that field are probably in the single digits. Adaptive is more of a tech company playing science than a scientific company incorporating tech. Even the CEO has no background in science...
Job security:
One of the most shocking occurrences was when the entire Seattle office got called to a meeting just to watch the south San Francisco office get fired in front of us via teleconference. It was a very surreal experience and has constantly made me worry about my job security, although I would probably be better off somewhere else anyways...
