Pros
Very talented engineers and junior management. There us a lot to learn from you colleagues
Cons
Unfortunately middle and top management up to and especially including CEO are outsiders and have very little knowledge about the industry. The very first thing that struck me after joining the company was that there was nobody in the top tier management with biotech or medical science background. You cannot just take someone with great experience in network devices or printers put them in charge of the whole R&D team and expect any breakthrough in the field Illumina is in. The result showed up soon. After the previous CEO Jay Flatley retied, the company rolled on on the momentum but soon ran out of juice, not without help of the disastrous decisions by the leadership team. It is not easy to run into the ground a well established company that enjoys monopoly on the world market but the current management managed to do exactly that. The middle rank management was reshuffled quite often but every time it was the same story nobody who would be able to direct the company efforts to establish itself as a leader in biotech and medical field. Unlike the medium tier the top management would cling to their positions and not let anyone in. The disastrous example with cancer research efforts is one of the example how inept the current management is.