Varian Medical Systems Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Varian Medical Systems full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Large and leading in its field; Good compensation and benefits; You can hide as much as you want; You will like it if you like slow moving geeks;

Cons – No vision; Geeks run the place; Management focus on next quarter's results -- look at their compensation packages, and you know why....; Very old-fashioned and slow-moving; Extremely conservative; Not very diverse; Career advancement opportunities very limited; Lots of politics between departments as people try to collect brownie points

Advice to Senior Management – Get fresh blood into the place ! Wake up -- management practices from the 70's don't work anymore....

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Varian Medical Systems

Pros – Be part of a company that fights cancer.
There are some great engineering minds that produces cancer treatment machines.
Many good and dedicated people (unfortunately not recognized at all).

Cons – Many silos within department/group
Poor management
Lack of vision in corporate depart, doesn't align with BU
Unbalance work force
Poor communication
Old company = stuck in old ways

Advice to Senior Management – Need some new blood in the company. Improve hiring and review process, need to open their eyes and identify good people vs incompetency. Stop being complacent.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Varian Medical Systems

Pros – Great people: very smart, capable and friendly. They are loathe to do layoffs, thought they did one in 2009 of about 5%

Cons – Terrible management at highest level. Regulatory compliance is not a priority, Everything is driven by Engineering and the priority is to ship product - whatever it takes.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to your employees, especially those at the individual contributor level. You have not created a healthy regulatory compliance environment. You do not mentor and promote people.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Varian Medical Systems

Pros – Good People, interesting projects, freedom to do what you need to do, relaxing workload

Cons – Feels like upper management just wants you to be standard. Hard work is appreciated but not prized or valued.

Advice to Senior Management – There needs to be better communications across groups and departments. Its like the business side doesn't communicate with Engineering sometimes.

Current Employee – been working at Varian Medical Systems

Pros – People really care about what they are doing to advance cancer treatment

Cons – IT Leadership is very weak

Advice to Senior Management – Bring in some new talent

Current Employee – been working at Varian Medical Systems

Pros – Remote working from home and flexible schedules

Cons – Work laptop set up was never done correctly. Work laptop alway had performance, applications and freezing or shutting down issues. Accused of going directly to tech's support even though, I had 27 open incident tech support tickets open and unresolved. I was always accused of doing something not work related and later discovered and proved that i was not, but no sorry's.

Advice to Senior Management – In the end my contract was ended via email, with no heads up or call from management. i left management vcmls to please call me and explain, and no call backs at all

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Varian Medical Systems

Pros – The work Varian does towards improving the lives of people with cancer is wonderful. I love being part of the cutting edge in cancer treatment.

Cons – It's not how well you perform but how well you suck up to the top executives that determines how far you go. There have recently been many changes with very inexperienced people beng placed into positions that they are not competent to run. The majority of the workforce are not feeling as though Varian is a career company anymore. The focus has gotten off the customers, and when we lose sight of what put us in these positions, we no longer can be the best.

Advice to Senior Management – Put customers first again. You have to start from the top to gain the trust and admiration of the customers to put Varian where they once. And top executives need show employees they're appreciated for their work not by who can brown nose the best.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Varian Medical Systems

Pros – Work was consistent and backlog plentiful

Cons – employees were expendable and unappreciated.

Advice to Senior Management – Raises should equal cost of living especially when company profits were double digit

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Varian Medical Systems

Pros – PPL accrual is very reasonable, profit sharing is nice, employee incentive plan seems to be disappearing but nice for now

Cons – Varian has moved from a family to a military. There are many new senior and executive managers who show no respect or care for their employees.

Advice to Senior Management – The company used to value the following: Our customers come first and our employees are our greatest asset. Now, the message you send: Our customers come first and employees are easily replaceable. Do you realize what is really going on at the bottom level?

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Varian Medical Systems

Pros – Engineering people are serious about making a product that cure cancer.

Cons – poor employee objective setting and evaluation; political; backward technology; poor leadership.

Advice to Senior Management – replace them.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend