Which is Better?

Would you prefer working at a company with a high salary and standard benefits or at a company with a lower-than-average salary with great benefits? Genentech, one of the big biotech companies in the SF Bay area, pays their employees with salaries lower than the industry average and gives them great benefits instead. Genentech offers on-site daycare for about $1000 a month. I've been told by my co-worker, whose husband works at Genentech, that there's a long line of parents on the waiting list because this is a good price. Each employee gets 12 paid holidays and 3 paid weeks of vacation per year. At the end of 6 years, a Genetech employee gets to take a sabbatical that's 6 weeks long.

I'm sure that Genentech can splurge on benefits from all the money it saves by paying their employees slightly lower salaries. And sometimes Genentech does splurge a bit more. Last month, all of the employees got to take the day off to go wine-tasting in Napa...in company-paid buses!

The drawback, though, is that you start with a lower salary base for future salary increases (which, at my company, is a percentage of your salary base; the percentage is dependent on the company's financial performance and individual performance). And if you ever decide to leave a company like Genentech, you have a lower salary to negotiate with for your next job.