Illumina Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Illumina

Pros – Excellent technology
Leader on the market

Cons – -very toxic environment !!!!!!!!!
-no salary reviews( if ou don't count 1-2%)
-lower management needs improvement immediately

Advice to Senior Management – -read employee's reviews

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Illumina

Pros – The people
The technology
The vacation policy

Cons – Very political
Competitive when we should be cooperating
Egos at the top

Advice to Senior Management – Cull the egos from the herd

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Illumina

Pros – Working with new technology and a few interesting people.
Good personal time off system.
Holiday events and happy hours are fantastic.

Cons – Recruitments, selections and promotions are based on internal political
agenda, for example hiring friends to guarantee personal loyalty at the expense of other
highly performing and more-qualified employees.

Managers believe that the more people they manage and the
bigger the budget, the higher the chance that they will be promoted. This results in raging
battles around budgets, strategies and operations.

There are many management layers in the organization, thus,
hindering communication and resulting in slower execution.

Muted level of commitment and enthusiasm teams. Even
successful results cannot be shared and celebrated due to animosity and internal negative
competition.

There is a high rate of absenteeism and a high employee
turnover rate.

Advice to Senior Management – To quote Gandhi: "Be the change you want to see.” The most powerful leaders are almost
always the role models for the change they seek. If the CEO practices bad politics, no
amount of training or coaching will change the management team.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Illumina

Pros – If you like these things then this company is for you.
Fast paced
Need to adapt quickly
Embrace constant change
Good benefits
Great co-workers

In my experience:
Managers provide guidance
Senior Managers provide updates regarding company strategy

Cons – Yearly raises not up to par with workload
Sales are rewarded more then any other branch.

Advice to Senior Management – If people are working hard all year, please allow all branches to have one meeting for 2-3 days to build relationships.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Illumina

Pros – Empowerment
Fast-paced, can-do attitude prevails
Supportive management
Authority and accountability pushed down to low levels
Beautiful facilities
Respect for all employees

Cons – Work-life balance favors work, difficult to take a vacation
No offices, even the CEO is in a cube. Management privacy is difficult

Advice to Senior Management – Invest in stronger IT systems and IT staff to support general operations. Infrastructure is too frail to support growth. Staff too junior to develop robust solutions

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Illumina

Pros – One consistent thing I have read in these reviews that is very true is that this place is very fast paced. This forces you to prioritize and will prepare you very well for any other organization (as no one lasts long here, whether it be through their own free will or the company's)

Cons – No respect and no work life balance. Sacrifice of weekends and evenings is consistently not just expected, but required (yes you read that correctly). Poorest quality management I have seen in all my years as a working professional, as there is zero reward for excellent work, hard work, and effort. Only the most blatant of kissing up will get you anywhere here, and it is very sad to see this go on right in front of you. This is due to the very cutthroat and often immature politics that plague this organization.

Very blame ridden environment, with lots of blame passed between departments and not very much inter-department collaboration.

Company often times appears to refuse to get affairs in order, with everyone scrambling at the last minute due to poor execution and bad leadership, and very unclear direction.

Advice to Senior Management – Let Roche come in and take over. It would be better for your employees, customers, and the scientific community in general

You've exploited and ruined this company, and you should be held accountable

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Illumina

Pros – Highly capable co-workers that strive to meet extremely aggressive project goals and deadlines.
Before Oct 25, 2011 there was a solid cooperative environment with many people doing everything they can to help each other. There was a fair amount of in-fighting between groups over responsibilities, but it was getting better.

Cons – Terrible morale, which simply gets worse every week. Since Oct. 25, 2011, much of the development team has no incentive to do more than the bare minimum. Many former employees who have been recently forced to leave due to no desire to re-locate, have since found jobs elsewhere. This is encouraging those still working for the company to seek opportunities elsewhere.
There is a large rift between the bulk of employees and senior management. Senior management seems oblivious to the problem or is simply too inept to address and improve it.
Major favoritism with respect to promotions. Some groups see its team members promoted annually; others see team members go 3 years without a promotion.
People resources are a hot commodity. A workforce that was lean before the RIF in October is now starving for resources on projects that are making the company money or will be doing so within the next year.
Company seems to never provide enough instruments to its own departments to enable proper development and timelines.

Advice to Senior Management – Fire some VP's and your chief medical officer. It should be obvious that when you fire 10% of your workforce that you should fire some of your most highly paid and under-performing upper management! Try setting aside enough money for next year to meet VCP funding for your employees. It may go a long way to reducing employee turnover.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Illumina

Pros – Although the benefits and perks at Illumina are amazing it's the the employees at Illumina that keeps the company strong. The yoga/gym/recreation on site and the monthly happy hours / half yearly sponsored corporate parties allow us to network with so many individuals from various pars of the company. Illumina does know how to care of its own. The salary is pretty competitive with stock options, bonus, raise, etc.

You learn a lot of valuable skills at Illumina in such a small amount of time. They expect you to hit the ground running. 1 or 2 years at Illumina is the equivalent of 3-5 years at a regular company.

Cons – When I came on board with Illumina, I was hired specifically more certain skill sets. I have seen myself and others included have their positions radically evolve into something completely different. Regardless of whether or not you are satisfied with the change. Projects and priorities could shift instantly, leaving things a bit chaotic at the office.

Illumina's core values don't seem to align with your personal goals and end of year review, which tends to lower your raise/bonus. Whether this is on purpose or not I leave that to the employee.
There seemed to be a disconnect in communication and goals between upper/middle management and rest of the teams.

Advancement and movement across the organization was difficult and hard get approval of for some employees. No structure was in place to show you a path to becoming a senior person on the team or move into a manager or assistant director role.

Although Illumina does hire outstanding employees, there seemed to be a lack of basic MS skill sets or analytics for some of the employe thereby having no understanding of their data the to create presentations critical for senior management on how their business line is doing.

Turnover is quite high. The burnout and level that you are running at Illumina can be exciting but also stressful.

Advice to Senior Management – Structured and concise path for growing and advancing to the next level at our position.
Find a way to keep top talented employees from turning over after several years. Turnover is quite high.

Former Employee – worked at Illumina

Pros – - Very dedicated workforce. Have worked with some excellent colleagues from headquarters and have made professional and personal friendships for life here.
- The technology and services that this company offers truly are state of the art. Regardless of how the company functions, Illumina is providing valuable tools and services to the scientific community.
- Very nice perks for U.S. employees, offer more than other tech companies I have been at.

Cons – where to start? Very disorganized with no structure, no respect for overall workforce from management, and extremely unfair and unethical treatment of employees. Company is very top heavy with blatant favoritism being common practice amongst upper to senior management. No regard for one's personal life, as that is seen as nothing more than an obstacle that doesn't allow you to perform as best you could. Global operations are nothing short of a joke, as there is zero global cohesion with managers running amuck and treating those under them as unethical and bad as they want since no one is looking. Suffice it to say, overall treatment of employees is something that needs work here.

It is possible to get ahead in this company, but at a high cost. If you pander to management, play their ridiculous games, and kiss up to the right people, you may make it. Can be a long road depending on how much your willing to throw people under the bus and backstab, which are examples of very common tactics here that most legitimate good employees grew tired of (and therefore walked). Hard work and effort put in may get you an occasional compliment, but will get you nowhere in terms of your career.

Company is run like a start up, but has been around for 10+ years. You often hear people boasting about the "lack of process due to crazy growth." May have worked for the first few years, but really it is time that this place grew up. Also, not having structure is nothing to boast about, it's just saying that you are proud of being disorganized (and yes, it behooves some people to have this place stay disorganized, as disorganization can make a good cover for incompetence).

Advice to Senior Management – This company used to be a place that one was proud of to work for. it is not a coincidence that you have been losing your top talent these last few months. You are failing your employees, and your customer base as well (check scientific community boards that talk about Illumina's "arrogant attitude" and really bad sales/negotiation style if you don't believe this). You need to trim much of the fat from up top, actually hire managers that are qualified to run international business rather than just promote from within to save money.

Many of the mid level managers have created a toxic environment, and are not familiar with the industry or business on a global scale. a revamp here is needed.

Also, please, please, PLEASE for the sake of the few good souls who remain there work on an appropriate work life balance policy. You cannot possibly demand this much from your workforce for so long and expect them to not burn out and resent you.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Illumina

Pros – This is a very engaging place to work. The technology is exciting and you will never be bored.

Cons – The fast pace can be difficult to keep up with and information is often hard to obtain. There is a lack of infrastructure to adequately support our products. Improvements have been made, but additional changes are needed allow rapid and prepared responses to customer problems

Advice to Senior Management – Plan. Bring all interested teams into the development process early. A lot of time and money could be saved if problems are addressed early

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend