Advice for new employees - there is an in-group at Cytokinetics, and you won't be in it. That sounds cruel at first, until you realize that about 20 or so people at the top have been working together for 20+ years. There are two employees at the very top who make all of the decisions, and they haven't been employed anywhere else for almost 30 years. The resulting IT strategy and AI strategy are fit for a company of less than 100 people in the late 90s. These strategies hit you in the face after your new hire orientation, when you realize that you are behind the curtain now, past the beautiful corporate branding that made you accept the job offer. And now you're staring at your new reality - a company that shuns AI, that still has plenty of missing or manual systems, that has backwards computer systems, and that no executive wants to make it better because they don't know any better. Plus they need you to work in the building to justify how much money they've spent on it - so forget remote work, unless you are an executive and then you can work wherever you want. The long term executives been at Cytokinetics as the world changed around the. My manager, an SVP told me "I think about the stock price every single day." Not the patients. Not making things better.
Shady practices? Many of them. Upfront - a generous intern program. Behind the curtain - many of the interns are executives' children. Hiring practices include encouraging the hiring team to "fact find" which means they encourage employees to use their own network to privately request feedback about candidates behind the candidates backs. Not illegal, but unethical at best, and forget about a candidate's sense of privacy. I was shocked and appalled at this practice, and never participated in it. I had a team of five, and three of them were harassed and bullied by the QA team. One of them ended up quitting because of it. (Did I report this to HR? Yes I did.) This is the place where I received the worst emails of my career - mean, bullying, unprofessional emails, telling me I didn't know what I was doing and to stay out of the work I was hired for. I never retaliated. But trust me, no one cared. Not my manager, not HR. My manager, who was an SVP, never wanted to hear anything negative, so most of his team just told him how great everything was. He was waiting to buy that big house on the lake. Are there layoffs coming? Yes there are. Current employees, you need a plan. The privileged executives have the money to be able to commute and have a stay-at-home spouse, while others early in their career who can't afford to live close by struggle to commute in from Fremont and Santa Cruz. The execs don't understand their privilege, or how their love of the building negatively affects many workers. Let's face it, they've overspent like they've been a commercial company making revenue. They've been fooling themselves and spending money like crazy. I hope you really, really like the building because they have a long term lease which is incredibly expensive. Don't get me started about the horrible Royalty Pharma deal, either. Or the cringe moments where a male manager gives his female subordinate a bouquet of flowers and a kiss on the cheek for a job well done. In front of 100 people, I might add.
There are a few especially toxic departments. Stay away from Dev Ops, Quality, and Drug Safety. There is a revolving door in these departments for the good hardworking people, and the toxic folks are friends of the execs and are protected and stay. I talked to HR several times during my stay, and nothing about bullying, harassment, or upgrading systems was ever done. If you’re good at not getting much accomplished, but you manage up well, you'll probably do ok at Cyto. Beware of antiquated systems, antiquated employees, and shifting the blame. The culture you were promised in your interview (and mine) may be nowhere to be found. I honestly recommend avoiding this place.
