Pros
Gilead specializes in viral diseases, but already lost ground in HCV and COVID-19 therapies, while the last straw is HIV, but it's losing its foothold to ViiV healthcare, which launched the long-acting HIV medicine. The benefits package is okay, but considering the company is located in Silicon Valley, it's minimal compared to other biopharma here such as Genentech, Illumina, JnJ.
Cons
The RnD has chemistry, biomarker, biology, etc., I have to give the credit to chemistry, which is still the best in RnD, but it's losing talents due to the toxic culture. Biomarker is functioning as clinical PD, it's mediocre compared to Genentech and other pharma in Bay Area. Biology is the worst, please please STAY AWAY from that department. There's no clear direction of this whole RnD department, the leadership has no idea about what they are doing, scientists are supposed to do research there, but this department is more functioning as the company's BD branch, with no productivity, no achievement, didn't add anything valuable to company's portfolio. Whole viral cure pipelines were bought from research institutes, most of them are not working, but the RnD management insists to develop useless garbage given the money they've spent on licensing them in. The environment of biology RnD is profoundly toxic, the managers fight for projects from the upper-level management, and they sabotage and undermine each other all the time. The employee under them don't talk to each other, but always report other to managers. No collaboration within the department, people see each other as snitches. No matter how politically correct it advocates here, the people who got promoted are all white males who discriminate against people of color, especially look down upon scientists who are immigrants from foreign countries where English is not the prime language. A lot of them have no credentials, no experience only got promoted due to knowing how to play politics there. The base pay is terrible in Bay Area, worse than most of the biotech startups. People are very unhappy here, nobody smiles, and my coworkers who stay here longer than 3 years only stay here for the underpaid salary. The department discourages employees' passion, creativity, and scientific curiosity, the only people who can thrive are people who are calculated, sophisticated sometimes vicious. STAY AWAY STAY AWAY STAY AWAY