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    Gilead Sciences Reviews

    Updated April 16, 2018
    595 reviews

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    3.2
    StarStarStarStarStar
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    Gilead Sciences President & CEO John Milligan
    John Milligan
    102 Ratings

    595 Employee Reviews

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    Pros

    • Great benefits, great leadership, teamwork (in 42 reviews)

    • Great team of people to work with, good benefits, good work-life balance (in 31 reviews)

    Cons

    • Work-life balance is a struggle (in 109 reviews)

    • No work life balance because of the heavy work load (in 29 reviews)

    More Pros and Cons
    1. Featured Review

      Helpful (4)

      "Great company to work for"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Administrative Coordinator
      Current Employee - Administrative Coordinator
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I have been working at Gilead Sciences full-time (More than 5 years)

      Pros

      Great benefits, great leadership, teamwork

      Cons

      No plan to implement WFH Fridays

      Advice to Management

      WFH Fridays

    2. Helpful (1)

      "Therapeutic Specialist"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I worked at Gilead Sciences full-time (More than 5 years)

      Pros

      Arguably the most successful U.S. drug company... ever. Generous equity stake & overall compensation. Truly game-changing patient treatment options for multiple disease states. Launching the first-ever QD HIV regimen was a uniquely exciting & rewarding experience.

      Cons

      As the company grew, the culture suffered in all of the typical/cliche ways. But, to be fair, has any company ever been able to actually avoid this?

      Advice to Management

      Find ways to create more autonomy for top-tier salesperson talent. Everyone understands the current level of regulatory scrutiny and the consequences of non-compliance. Current "micro-management" focused on this issue passed the level of drastically diminishing returns long ago. Elite and seasoned reps need more opportunities to problem-solve "outside the box" in order to deliver elite & seasoned rep results. The best way to limit regulatory non-compliance liability is with severe & decisive discipline that makes no exceptions. But trust first within reason.

      3. Join the Gilead Sciences team
      See Our Latest Jobs

    3. "REVIEW"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee

      I worked at Gilead Sciences full-time (More than 3 years)

      Pros

      Challenging, team environment, interaction with many functional areas

      Cons

      Promotion priority given to men

    4. Helpful (3)

      "Great Company - Poor management"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee in Foster City, CA
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee in Foster City, CA
      Negative Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I have been working at Gilead Sciences full-time (More than a year)

      Pros

      Gilead is definitively best in class biotech for the quality of the Research and TAs. Very high level staff in every dpt
      Extremely IT driven with fast working pace
      Attractive Comp&Ben

      Cons

      The system is spoiled by very low level HR people - among the worst I faced in my career
      They are not able to identify abusers, and treat them as such.
      A strong improvement is needed here

    5. "Good company"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I have been working at Gilead Sciences full-time (More than a year)

      Pros

      Great benefit, teamwork, great coworkers, diversity, inclusion

      Cons

      Inefficiency in workflow/decision making causes extra work and lost of edge in market

      Advice to Management

      Make decision-making process more efficient

    6. Helpful (2)

      "Horrible place to work and worst managers ever!"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Therapeutic Specialist
      Current Employee - Therapeutic Specialist
      Doesn't Recommend
      Negative Outlook
      No opinion of CEO

      I have been working at Gilead Sciences full-time (Less than a year)

      Pros

      I can honestly say there are other big Pharma s out there that great employees better than Gilead. Maybe when the stock was good but now it’s stuck in the $70’s for over 2 years, people came and stayed. I can’t imagine people wanting to stay for the stock now.

      Cons

      Management are full of micro managers, constantly shuffled from divisions to other divisions without experience or contacts. Hiring from outside would be better but Gilead protects its own. Way overrated and salespeople are arrogant as hell. Presidents club is based on history of territory and nothing to do with success of Rep. I can’t say anyone in my division is happy, just too lazy to get out. When managers can get away with unethical behavior because they’re protected based on who the know, it brings morale down. I knew it was bad but couldn’t imagine it to be this bad 😡

      Advice to Management

      Stop playing politics! Hire best people for job even from outside and stop with the cronyism, Invest in good people coming in from outside instead of always pushing the same internal rah rahs who know how to play the game

    7. "Growing Company"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I have been working at Gilead Sciences full-time

      Pros

      Exciting Business Growth that are different from other healthcare companies

      Cons

      Extremely hardworking
      Very US-centered company

      Advice to Management

      Being more inclusive for other parts of worlds beside U.S.

    8. "Opportunity in Bay Area"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I have been working at Gilead Sciences full-time (Less than a year)

      Pros

      Fast paced, good salaries, self motivation and a science based company. Company has very intelligent people who are experts in their areas.

      Cons

      Frustrating IT area, does not have it together. People work long hours and are expected to make deadlines.

    9. Helpful (4)

      "Beware of toxic and unqualified managers/HR policies (or lack of) that are coddled and protected at your expense."

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Devops in Foster City, CA
      Former Employee - Devops in Foster City, CA
      Doesn't Recommend
      Positive Outlook
      No opinion of CEO

      I worked at Gilead Sciences full-time (More than 3 years)

      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.

      Advice to Management

      PLEASE ONLY HIRE MANAGERS WHO RATE HIGH ON EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND COMMUNICATION SKILLS.

      Don't assume that a good scientist/statistician is a good manager. If they have terrible communication skills and fear/hate people, they can't compensate for that by having 3 PhDs or whatever else.

      Don't allow management to dump criticism/ambush employees in a year-end performance review when REASONABLE demands haven't been clearly voiced and documented before. There shouldn't really be any surprises at those year-end reviews. Those "surprises" are the ultimate in passive-aggression and are the hallmarks of an insecure and vastly underqualified manager/HR department (with perhaps also demonstrate a sadistic streak).

      It's ridiculous that I know some people have been contractors for 3+ years without being offered perm employment.

      Don't reorg just to make it look like you're doing something.

    10. "Therapeutic Specialist"

      StarStarStarStarStar
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Therapeutic Specialist in Foster City, CA
      Former Employee - Therapeutic Specialist in Foster City, CA
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I worked at Gilead Sciences full-time (More than 3 years)

      Pros

      Great benefits, Great science, very good training, good team environment

      Cons

      a lot of focus on number of calls per day

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