Pros
Great people! Very bright, very committed and fun to work with. Excellent pay and benefits. And lots of little perks like a concierge service and onsite massages, haircuts and car washes. The best corporate cafeteries I have ever eaten at. High prestige. People in the field know and respect Genentech and that halo gives off a nice glow.
Cons
Very high pressure and the corporate structure and conflicting institutional imperatives make it very hard to get things done. this is particular true in the various marketing and sales related functions. Clinical and legal set the agenda in the company and take very conservative positions in terms of marketing and sales efforts. That is fine but the people at the top of marketing and the commercial side of the company are continually putting pressure to deliver a bigger number and develop innovative and cutting edge programs. As a result commerical is continually butting heads with legal and clinical and the conflict takes place at the level of product manager to attorney. The product manager has no leverage in that discussion but they get little support from their upper management or forgiveness when they can't deliver. Genentech is moving more and more towards being simply another big pharma company. The merger with Roche will accelerate that. The mis-match in culture between those big pharma people being brought in to run the company and the people who came to Genentech because of its more "independent" reputation has made it difficult for many of those people to move up in the company.
