Pros
High pay, flexible schedules, great benefits/perks and excitement around emerging technologies. Fate Therapeutics is an equal opportunity employer who gives people of various backgrounds (and education levels) an opportunity to work in their MFG department. Mid-sized startup gives an MFG employee the opportunity to learn about allogenic CAR-T therapy production if they never had the opportunity.
Cons
Disorganized, weak leadership, haphazard spending, no clear vision or mode of direction, an uneducated, apathetic lazy crew, political favoritism, judgmental/subjugation culture. Much of the problems starts with the leadership. As an emerging company, there a few guidelines set for how employees are to operate on a day-to-day basis. This means that the leadership should take charge and set the tone for the entire team. Instead, there were many petty squabbles between various leads, managers, supervisors, vice-presidents and directors. These rifts between leaders meant poor communication and overall weak, unengaging leadership. As a result, the MFG team was tasked with managing their own affairs. This is were we saw the emergence of cliques/ favoritism/ exclusionary / bullying tactics through a judgmental & subjugating culture. There was certainly a pecking a order within the group, and no matter how much talent and leadership potential you may have, there will always be a clique of technicians stopping you from ascending above them. This problem was exasperated by the poor training regime. You were not allowed to perform job duties without receiving the proper training. Most of the members of the Process Development team were too lazy or unbothered to establish a robust training program. Most of the technicians were thus parked at their desks, forgotten about or ignored until we were all laid-off.