Kite. Where dreams go to die. - Anonymous employee Kite Pharma Employee Review

1.0
17 Sept 2022
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The final product is very meaningful to people that are afflicted with certain types of cancer. The company is expanding treatment options for cancer patients. The benefits are good and the bonuses were good for 2020 and 2021.

Cons

There is a lot of virtue signaling and the company and leadership are highly influenced by special interest groups. Expect to be invisible and for your career to stagnate if you're not part of some special interest. The company is very risk averse and doesn't invest much in process development. The science is cutting edge, but the production processes are antiquated and difficult to operate. Not much thought is given to designing processes that are fit for purpose. Innovation stops at R&D and ideas for meaningful improvement in the production processes are often stopped due to the company's bureaucratic and overly conservative culture. Also, people may seem nice but many of them are only self interested and don't think of what could benefit the team and company. In general, I would not recommend the company but it is a better choice (for pay and benefits) than most biotechs including Genentech/Roche.

Explore other reviews about Kite Pharma

5.0
11 Feb 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Amazing staff and growth potential

Cons

Like most companies hard to understand exactly what upper management goals are

1.0
16 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Benefits from the parent company are the only pros here.

Cons

The work environment is extremely toxic and hostile towards those that are efficient and good at their responsibilities and roles. The workplace favors extreme incompetence across manufacturing, technical training and quality departments. I’ve never seen a company where associates can get into physical altercations and still keep their jobs. The people leaders that tried to hide that altercation should be cut immediately but that’s not what they like to do over at kite pharma where instead of focusing on the cure they like to focus on other people’s bodies. They like to reward incompetence with less responsibilities and praise while those who are competent enough get reprimanded with made up lies. There’s no point in providing feedback to the people leaders because they will twist your words in order to make it so that it looks like you are going against their precious core values. It doesn’t matter what you say because once they’ve made up their minds that you’re not exhibiting enough teamwork and inclusion then that’s it. If you’re not competent enough at your job then for sure there will big bonuses and raises waiting at year end review. People leaders will absolutely twist and turn the HR processes that are designed to protect personnel against them. There’s a lot of heavy abuse when it comes to making a complaint against any individual. Lots of biases involved since it seems that no one at this company have friends outside of work so they take everything as a personal attack on their “friends”. Lots of individuals needs to be tiptoed around on eggshells or they might get offended at the slightest breeze, people leaders don’t see that these people are the problem but insist on turning a blind eye labeling it as anti-inclusive , anti-teamwork, anti-collaboration and whatnot. Never know when the next person is going to get offended and start acting like they have been a victim their entire life

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