Vantaggi
Flexible work hours, good 401k matching, free shuttle service to work for regular employee, decent health insurance and other benefits, lots of freed food and other small perks such as T-shirts, jackets at work. Great work place if you want stability.
Svantaggi
Have been working at Genentech in research > 5years. Worked at three other companies before, including a major pharm for years. Came to Genentech for its reputation, probably should not - I was doing great at last company. What I feel and what I often hear is that Genentech hires the best talents but now very few of these talents can grow at Genentech - so many are leaving in past couple of years. It was better years ago when Genentech was expanding, even lots of low talents got promoted to managers then. Career advancements are really tough these days. Many base level employees are rated by on one manager's opinions, not hard facts and upper management don't know or care. Recognitions and promotions often go to who have most connections or who use most other peoples data in meetings not truly hard working people. Lots of managers are not accounted for their poor managing. Now bay area is recovering, Genentech salary is not that attractive anymore. In recent years Genentech had successes in several FDA approvals, but technology internally is not superior than rest of industry and missed some great license opportunities on biologics or antibody technology.