Kite Pharma

Lol I can’t speak for the Santa Monica location or what dept you’re in but the el segundo location is shit for people in manufacturing. We just had the 2yr anniversary and not a single person from mfg was acknowledged. Upper management here are garbage and can’t seem to figure out why people are leaving. Everyone else can see it though. So if you’re in mfg good luck but if you’re in any other dept you’ll be appreciated more and it’ll be fine

I work in Santa Monica for Kite. I am used to consulting and working for large companies. Kite did everything it could to get a product first to market - and they did. In order to get things done quick, to beat competition, things were not done with the full structure and governance that a larger company would have. We are now having to go back and fix a lot of that. There are now two groups - those that worked their asses off and got paid BIG with the Gilead sale, and those that are new coming in hungry to cure cancer. It's a growth phase. With growth comes a lot of pain - but also a lot of opportunities!

All the sites have a different vibe. Santa Monica is split between HQ, R&D, PD, and clinical MFG. I would say the culture is pretty good overall. Management is fairly accessible and there’s always events going on. It def has a small office feel to it even though GILD is a rather large biotech. However, they are mostly hands off. It’s somewhat nice that GILD bankrolls everything so that Kite isn’t too fixated on P&L (at least not yet). That being said, I do hear that el segundo has retention issues. They do run somewhat independently from everyone else. I’m not entirely sure what causes the moral issues over there. It’s definitely not indicative of the company as a whole. In terms of cons, groups and sites are somewhat siloed. They hired too quickly and there’s so many new groups and people around it’s not clear who does what and what everyone’s R&Rs are. Also, too many alumni from Baxter and Amgen who aren’t really used to working in an environment that doesn’t have all the processes and rules in place, so they kind of bumble around trying to recreate their former job here. But why oh why would you want to do that. If your former employer was so great why leave!!? Most of the cons are probably due to growing pains. Kite went from a couple hundred employees 2 yrs ago to over 2k now. A bunch of them cashed out and left after GILD took over leaving the new folks coming-in to pick up the pieces and figure things out. Overall, the company is starting to centralize and groups are starting to work together more. I would say the pros outweigh the cons by far.