I am going to rant a bit about Gilead, so please be patient with me. If you join us, don't expect any normal work-life balance or any feeling that you are respected and valued as anything other than a cog in the huge Gilead money makingmachine, because you likely won't get it. The senior executives pride themselves on the fact that the company maintains high profitability performance is considered, but time served and relationships seem to play a bigger role. Gilead's policy clearly states that promotions will be given only when performance warrants it and there is "business need" for someone to be pushed up. So the effective result is that some people who have exceeded the expectations of their current position can linger there for a very very long time until Gilead decides there is a "need" for the promo or until some other the employee gets sick of it and leaves the company therefore opening the space for promo.
Do not get me wrong, many good things can be said about Gilead. You can get useful experience here, build friendships and relationships. Most of our folks are outstanding and smart. Yet, if you want to have life and family you might want to go and look for work somewhere else.
Gilead looks very good from the outside and is by all means a well-respected company, but its inside culture seems to be an old boys' network in many respects, and is slowly decaying from within. There are a several sparks of optimism in the hiring of some new senior executives and I do hope that they will be able to have a positive impact on the organization. At the same time, I think it's equally possible that they will be limited by what seems to be a fear-based culture here.
Finally, if you are visiting this site you probably know that we are planning a reorg and may be laying off many people very soon. It’s going to be a novel experience and I am not sure how this will work as we are already so understaffed.