Illumina Reviews

Pros

Engaging work and smart people

Cons

Move really fast and decision making is quick

Advice to Management

Create realistic timelines

Pros

Ok not so bad at least

Cons

Ok not so bad at least salary is paid

Advice to Management

Ok

Pros

Great managers and team environment

Cons

Low pay For current employees

Advice to Management

Pay more to keep employees

Pros

It's easy to coast if you are reasonably intelligent and don't let yourself get sucked into the constant chaos/drama.

Cons

There is little to be gained by putting in extra effort. The same people are in charge of every project regardless of outcomes. Managers are not empowered to motivate employees with pay and promotions; decisions are made at higher levels by people often without direct knowledge of who does what. Strategies, priorities, and budgets seem to change month to month. Whatever you are working on could become obsolete at any time, and no one will be grateful for your efforts. Slick internal communication promoting how great the company is, and emotionally appealing reminders of company's mission featuring people suffering from diseases, substitute for tangible rewards to motivate employees.

Pros

Nice employee benefit and work environment. Top management focus and keep improve the safety in workplace.

Cons

Fail to recognize long year service employee contributions and efforts

Advice to Management

To reduce the high turn over rate, new staff paid higher than long year service staff. Disappointed fans slowly left the ILMN ballpark.

Pros

Intelligent and hardworking people who want to make an impact; modern offices and great campus perks; promising technology

Cons

Leadership (from what I've seen HR is one of the worst) follows a dictatorship model - employee ideas are presented as the work of their leaders, favoritism runs rampant even when it isn't deserved or earned, anyone else who has an opinion is immediately hushed or told to stay in their lane. You aren't empowered or trusted to make decisions, even at your own pay grade. As a manager, it's impossible to downplay to your team that it's happening and still look yourself in the mirror each day.

Advice to Management

Your top performers started leaving several years ago when they saw the downward spiral of the culture. You are left with: those who haven't yet, but will figure it out and leave as well, those who just want a job so they follow the "stepford" model laid out for them, or the few in the ranks of heavily compensated and rewarded. You aren't too big too lose, so work on your culture before it's too late.

Pros

Great technical people, awesome campus, good life work balance (depending on the division), decent benefits, do not really live the values as advertised

Cons

Sub-par pay, not great Sr. Leadership, terrible mid-management, career opportunities limited by stale management and weird policies based on minimum years in position and not just on merit and readiness

Advice to Management

Flush out people in management roles that ended up there because of seniority and not because of merit. Most decisions are decentralized, and when you have poor decision making at the periphery, the entire system reflects it

Pros

Company mission Employee benefits Life balance (Flexible time-off) Beautiful campus and location-San Diego

Cons

Political, unorganized, and sometimes toxic work environment. Attractive company values only in writing but NOT in practice: - teams do NOT collaborate deeply: extremely" cliquish" and political with tons of closed-door meetings for upper management only; - NOT open – transparency? Not at Illumina! Promotion is mostly based on networking or friendship with managers rather than the actual performance. (some PhD level scientist make less than $45/hour, women specially) Lack of diversity across teams. Lack of recognition for hard work. Lack of resources and red tape for any request that costs the company nickels and dimes. Very poor management. Managers lead from behind and are not trained or encouraged to prepare their teams for success, often look down on subordinates. It is common for managers to come to work by 10am, leave by 3:30pm, and spend the rest of their “work” scheduled for “meetings”. Morale is very low as the company continues to layoff great people

Advice to Management

Value your employees, lead from the front, use company resources to learn how to manage or become better managers, stop playing office politics and only promote inner cliques.