Pros
Prestige of hospital and academic medical center Great and helpful colleagues; outstanding nursing staff Benefits: not as good as some larger private employers, but great variety Wage Works option for commuting costs -- subsidy Gym membership -- subsidy, though not free. Mission Bay has better options than Parnassus, but good facilities Options for advancement
Cons
Commuting and congestion around Mission Bay. This will worsen with major construction projects and the basketball arena. Difficult enough to get out of the Mission Bay campus on baseball home game nights. Will worsen with the basketball arena. Some managers are not provided with enough support or training for onboarding new employees. It is not appropriate to tell new hires: "oh, we don't do onboarding in this department." If your program, dept or projects has/have multiple funders -- feds, corporate, and foundations, you should expect conflicts between the funders and more input -- some call interference -- from donors or funders. This can be difficult, offputting, and disheartening to clinicians, PIs, or lab heads accustomed to more free rein from NIH or CDC funders. Thus, implementing a more entrepreneurial spirit or culture, particularly if candidates come from Lean Six Sigma heavy clinical environments, or the consulting work, can be very difficult. Foundation funding can be year to year and not the five-year windows many in research academic are accustomed. It can be very difficult to hire mid-level or junior staffers for one year, even post-doc fellows, with "pending or likely re-funding" in the job description. San Francisco had less than 4% unemployment. Most people in the expensive SF Bay Area need more job security than a one-year assignment. If that is what you can offer, recruit from the local graduate schools more actively, for students getting graduate degrees at night or in executive MBA or MPH programs.