BioMarin Pharmaceutical Employee Review

I have been working at BioMarin Pharmaceutical

Pros – Good people, good products. You're doing mostly orphan drug work for small, underserved patient populations, which can give you a pretty good feeling when compared with cranking out yet another drug for blood pressure or cancer. Decent atmosphere, but very business-like. There's not a lot of joking around or playing around - people come to work and go home.

Cons – Management often sets unreasonable timelines, creating unnecessary anxiety within study teams. I don't feel that senior management does a great job of communicating what they want at the start of a project, and I haven't seen any evidence of an overall company plan that we're all working toward. Molecules exist in their own little worlds, and teams seem to be in a constant battle for resources and attention. Also, it's a little quiet - they're breaking out of their shell as a small company into something bigger, but it still has the attitude of a small company (ie, poor work-life balance, very serious, expecting employees to basically give up their lives to get the work done).

Advice to Senior Management – I understand we want to drive drugs to market, but setting unrealistic timelines can cause real problems when programs feel pressured to move forward without a fuller understanding of the molecule. You can't go into phase III when phase I is still up in the air, and telling a team to just "do it" won't magically make it happen. Someone at the top needs to take a real look at everything this company does and come up with a reasonable, realistic business plan, and then communicate this plan downward so that people know where their priorities should lie. A little bit of upper management input would go a long way toward smoothing out the rough patches.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend