* The salary is too low for the Bay Area; They won't sponsor your green card in a postdoc. I know one postdoc couldn't afford to take care of their child's medical condition during the worst inflation phase. I advise against taking this job if you are the sole breadwinner, especially an immigrant on a Visa. Your American counterpart can drive Uber for supplemental income, but you CANNOT.
* I was not told while joining that Genentech actively prevents its postdocs from getting hired for FTE roles. After joining, I was told by a very senior old timer proudly, "We make it extra difficult for Genentech postdocs to get hired internally." like it is supposed to be a good thing. It is called "not promoting from within" in the normal world.
* Find postdoc mentors who promote postdocs early. Steer away from mentors who make vague promises about promotions while joining.
* Prepare to be treated like a trainee rather than a subject matter expert. People forget that you have a Ph.D.
* There is so much ignorance towards running the postdoc program that annual slides are not even updated sometimes, and I have heard: "Oh, these are numbers from last year; I forgot to update them this year."
* As a postdoc, you can not apply for K-99, and in my personal experience, there is a very low probability that academia will accept you. If that's the case, you are stuck with the largest industry employer who won't promote you forever, and you keep seeing outsiders with comparable skills getting hired for a 2x 3x salary.
* Culture depends on the department. I saw dirty politics, I am better than you syndrome, bringing each other down, a lot of ring kissing, and ra ra drink the kool-aid approach towards AI in general. The division/ team I was in was high school all over again and rapidly promoted inexperienced managers who didn't know how to cultivate a healthy culture, and toxic people gained clout.
* If you swear fealty to certain modeling software cul- sorry community and have snake oil salesman energy, you will progress much faster than being a good scientist.
* Furthermore, Google "Genentech postdoc" and go to Reddit; you will find everything wrong with the Genentech postdoc program.
An important lesson I learned: Don't let anyone dim your light with corporate toxicity; as a scientist, remember what made you fall in love with science in the first place and keep that love alive!
Since the negatives outweigh the positives in this review doesn't mean I hated my job, but I certainly think that there is a lot of room for improvement, and management just turned a blind eye to it. The Genentech Postdoc program has much potential to improve itself while being a better launchpad than it is right now with all the resources available. I wish to see it improve so that some of the brightest biologists can have a better time focusing on important science.
