Dow Pharmaceutical – “OK Company with Lots of Room for Improvement”

Pros

Good salary for the North SF Bay area. Dow is a small fast-paced company, and you have lots of opportunities to wear lots of hats. Very results-oriented environment.

Cons

Communication from executive management and sharing of information across functional areas is sorely inadequate. Micromanagement is king at the senior management level. Dow struggles between trying to be a service provider business versus an internal drug development company - doing neither role really well.

Advice to Senior Management

The new direction of Dow / Valeant to reduce internal R&D headcount and costs and focus more on acquiring later-stage drug products may benefit stockholders in the short term, but this is not likely to be a good long-term strategy if Valeant wants to be a growing specialty pharma company.