Pros
Great medical advances. Good 401k match (10k). Good benefits in general & 3 weeks vacation, but I’m not sure they’re any better than those at any other big company. One paid day of community service per year. Good community service opportunities. Very good soup/salad bars. Some very smart and kind co-workers and at least one good manager (but I think that’s true at most companies). Beautiful location and nice gym. I had one great manager. Too bad they reorged (for no good reason) and just introduced chaos and turnover into a system that was working fine before the reorg.
Cons
No salary or perk can compensate for a manager that treats you like you’re a expendable piece of crap. And HR doesn’t have an effective policy in place to handle managers that go haywire (outside of blaming the employee, creating the retention issue that Gilead is becoming/is already famous for). Too many remote managers, which doesn’t help bridge possible communication gaps. Can't they at least require teleconferences or require remote managers to travel to the Foster City site (or are they too precious for that?)? No clear progression of "disciplinary actions" so a manager can fire or manage you out on a whim (like his/her marriage is on the rocks or he/she's on a power trip). I find that when managers feel they can get away with anything (especially bc they somehow managed to stay at Gilead 5+ years), smug, arrogant, and complacent behavior can develop.