Illumina Reviews

Pros

Good product but as is obvious company is no longer innovating in core technology. Every product is just a rehash of the next one while trying to acquire competing companies. Still is the leader in short read but incremental progress. Needs to get pacbio or grail to grow. Covid care was good.

Cons

Significantly low pay compared to other companies specially if you are competing with tech companies and not just pharma. Hr initial offer is so low that it is insulting. For starters where San Diego semi giant staff pays 165 k base 55k stocks and 35 k bonus...illumina senior staff is 155k base 12 percent bonus which is not paid most years or just a fraction and a stock of 50k. People are leaving for element and other places for 35 percent higher pay but Illumina responds with 3% raise. It is pathetic and I moved to a more expensive place with almost 75 percent raise if i include stocks. Should have gone much earlier.

Pros

Illumina has very very good at externally marketing itself as an employer. Media publications, in particular, tend to herald it as the "Google of biotech" and for better or for worse the recruiting team tries to play up this image. A couple pros I found: - Brilliant people. Like, really really smart. A lot of PhDs, MDs, dual MBA/MS degrees walking around. A lot of folks with very in depth knowledge about a relatively novel and admittedly complicated field. I was particularly impressed by the bioinformatics folks as well as some of the more seasoned process engineers. - Beautiful campus. Lots of well-designed buildings, coffee bars, koi ponds, an onsite gym. This was very much a pre-COVID perk, but for aspiring applicants it should be open as time goes on. - If you're in HQ, then you can live in San Diego. People really like to ham this up when getting folks to join. It's true, San Diego is very nice, but the location can be a double edged sword. More on this later. - Working for a "winner". Remember that board game you played as a kid, the one with Boardwalk and Park Place? Yeah, that's Illumina's market share in the industry. It's not a surefire protector against layoffs and the like, but it does help a bit with job stability and gives you a "brand name". - Vacation benefits. I have some issues with the entire comp/benefits package (more on that below) but the vacation benefits are amazing. 2 mandated shutdowns a year + FTO. FTO is also a double edged sword as that depends a lot on your management/org structure, but I was fortunate enough in my Illumina experience to have management that was supportive of vacation and wellness.

Cons

A lot of my downsides aren't new: they have been expressed in multiple reviews here and both in internal employee surveys. - Lower velocity & higher bureaucracy: The company is growing, and with that comes layers upon layers of bureaucracy, multiple reorgs, and a lack of clear vision from upper management. Everyone is trying to do everything at once, there's not enough high visibility projects to go around, and everyone wants a piece of the pie. - When Everything's on Fire, Nothing Is: This has been mentioned in previous reviews, but there definitely is a culture in the GQO org of "I need this, and I need this now." Priority is not assigned, and if it is then it is always at the highest priority. Not only is it exhausting and a lead-in to burnout, it also numbs the employee to responding to an issue if it actually *is* high priority. "Oh this request is high priority? Yeah, so were the last 5. Just throw it in the back of the queue." - Meetings: Everything is a meeting, and maybe about 50% of these things need to be. Everything needs to be thrown in a PowerPoint, and maybe about 50% of these things need to be. - Compensation: I said in the Pros that vacation is nice, but compensation is anything but. I actually debated putting this one here because, if you work at Illumina and are reading this, odds are you already know that compensation is poor. And by "poor" I mean something else but I don't want this review to get banned from Glassdoor, so I'll settle with "poor". That's why you see it plastered all over these glassdoor reviews. I know this, you know this, honestly HR probably know this. This is the thing: I'm not really sure if it will change. You know what I said about Illumina's recruiting being good at marketing? Yeah. Why compensate your folks more if you're "the Google of genomics" and people are clamoring to get in?

Pros

The company looks to ensure employees will fit within the culture. Coworkers are very inclusive and generally good people. The product vision/impact is meaningful.

Cons

Not as competitive pay. Sometimes too fast paced. Certain areas lack program/project manager roles and therefore a lot of logistics fall on regular engineers to manage.

Pros

So many perks, the pay is great as well as the free time off. The people really make the place great!

Cons

Some groups are overworked. Department fit is very important.