Vertex Pharmaceuticals Reviews

Pros

I can honestly say this is one of the most incredible companies to work for. The energy is palpable. The people are collaborative and motivated to bring medicines and hope to patients. The culture is heavily science-oriented, but everyone feels like part of the mission, even those who are not necessarily scientists or physicians. Very strong leadership team. Amazing performance as a company. Opportunities abound to make an impact, and grow.

Advice to Management

Keep doing what you're doing; keep offering people the opportunity to contribute their expertise to the strategic goals; keep up the open dialogue with employees; keep recognizing employees for their accomplishments.

Pros

The culture is incredibly cross-functional, which is made enjoyable by having some of the most talented, hardworking, kind employees in the industry. The projects move at a very fast pace, but hearing regularly from patient speakers/visitors makes it easy to stay motivated and connected to the mission of helping those with serious diseases. The benefits are awesome (ample vacation time, flexible hours, great cafeteria/beer hour +more), and there are a lot of fun internal events that help connect employees on a personal level as well as connect them to the business and values.

Advice to Management

-Continue to recognize employees (at any level) for their hard work
-Stay transparent with your management strategy and keep an open mind to employee feedback

Pros

Good salary and compensation
Good work life balance and beer hour

Advice to Management

Stop spending time and money on diversity propaganda and rather do something in the organization for actually supporting people of color. People who bring new disease area never gets any actual appreciation while someone who cannot calculate pH and solubility gets platinum and palladium VOCAPs. Focus on talented people and advance them so they can stay.

Pros

• Good salary and compensation
• Beautiful office building in Boston Seaport

Advice to Management

• Stop spending time and money “Diversity & Inclusion“ propaganda. People see right through this facade if it is for headlines only.
• Stop reorganizing, renaming and fixing something that wasn’t broken every 5 minutes
• There are multiple levels of management and bureaucracy and bullying styles both encouraged and rewarded. Hold your leadership accountable.

Pros

-Benefits
-No set hours
-Friday beer hour with food
-Location in Boston Seaport
-Career development and career opportunity if you go after it and have a good manager advocating on your behalf
-People doing the lab work/middle management helpful and well-intended

Advice to Management

You're going to drive away all of your talent and have major difficulty recruiting with how fast people get burned out and leave (2-3 years max). Employees who can have lives at home will produce more quality work and be more efficient. Burnt out employees leave and make mistakes.

Hire more full-time, mid-level CMC associates/sci Is with applicable experience to help push all projects of interest forward within your extremely aggressive timelines, realize some timelines are unreasonable with current staff and slow them down, or indicate which projects are truly priority/put others on hold.

Leadership made it clear that this pace will not slow down, so those who know better and want a life outside of work will leave to seek it.

Pros

Good products, great benefits, nice office

Pros

high caliber sales colleagues, autonomy, work/life balance

Pros

Working on life changing products

Pros

Amazing people, collaborative people, strong mission driven and visionary management

Pros

Working at Vertex means being part of a transformation in medical care for patients with CF, which is something most people spend a career in biotech/pharma without experiencing. There are some really special and talented people at Vertex as well, who got in early and were part of that story.

Advice to Management

Hey, you know the hemorrhage of employees out of GMDA? Pay attention. It's real, it's serious, and it's a warning. There is a reason talented people who were at the company for MANY years are leaving; look at your functional management. If you keep chasing degrees, process, and structure while ignoring your people and foregoing the deep historical knowledge they have of the company and the therapeutic area, you're going to make Vertex like every other pharma company out there (maybe that's the goal, but it's terribly sad). You're moving towards being out of touch with the CF community, and that's not how a patient-focused company should be. Consider that what new management from big pharma views as amateur is actually what's made Vertex successful to this point. You're not adding value, you're adding barriers.