Good if you own over a million dollars in Gilead stock options but otherwise beware - Anonymous employee Gilead Sciences Employee Review

Seems the happiest people at Gilead are the ones that own stock options worth a million or two or more. I would tolerate a lot if I was in that situation too. For the rest of us 97% of former and current Gilead employees, the situation is not a happy. For starters, 1. As mention on other reviews, Gilead does like to run lean on resources, this would not be a bad thing in itself if management reward job performance other than the cost of living pay increases every year. I think the employee handbook mentioned something about a work/life balance but I really believe management has their own version of the employee handbook that states 99% work and 1% life balance. 2. My observation of management it seems, incompetent managers seem to keep their jobs if they know how to play the Gilead culture game, work your subordinates to the bone and keep the bottom line lean. I really think that maybe about 70% of the managers at Gilead lack people management skills or have none at all. 3. Some of the review that state Gilead does not perform employee surveys are wrong, they have done 2 company wide company and management surveys since I've been there, although that's 2 surveys in the over 8 years I've been with the company. Executive management knows there is a morale issue lately and have conducted the surveys in attempts to say "hey, we care and listen to you!". The results of the surveys were not that flattering for executive and upper management. 4. It seems that every time senior director or vice president joins the company from outside of Gilead, people lose their jobs because new management wants to "bring in their own people". You have more of a chance of being struck by lightening then losing your job because of a direct result of the company's financial condition. I've seen a lot of people lose their job or forced out because management wanted to clean out and bring in a "new crew". 5. Company culture is very strange to me. Gilead is a very successful in what Gilead does, brings successful drugs to the market, makes tons of money and makes investors happy most of the time but Gilead's company culture is like a start up or a struggling company because of the "we like to run a lean company" = many people wear many hats and you are expected to perform outside of your job responsibilities many times. This related to the work/life balance point I made earlier. There are many pluses to running lean and in certain situations, it's almost a requirement but Gilead either knows it's employees are suffering in the work/life balance area or Gilead is way more concerned about reporting to stock holders that management is running a "tight ship", music to investors ears. The reason I rated only 2 starts is because the ratio between pros and cons is in the cons favor.