Medtronic Reviews

Pros

In general, the company is well guided by the 50 year old mission written by founder Earl Bakken. The opportunities for learning and career development are there, although you have to work to find them and take advantage of them because the company is large. My best manager in my career to date was at Medtronic. There really are some smart people at this company, and people who leave consistently say that the caliber of people at Medtronic is higher than what you'll find at most companies.

Cons

For every fantastic manager I've had, I've also had a terrible one. Medtronic needs to better train management to lead: give specific feedback, give the coaching and resources employees need to succeed, set a vision and make sure all work falls within that vision. Lack of accountability has led to poor management and messy integrations. Facilities outside the Twin Cities lose the mission-based focus.

Advice to Senior Management

Promote honesty, accountability, trust, and respect. Don't monkey around with important decisions such as sales force integrations and company mergers.

Pros

Mission, high pay, generous benefits, onsite cafeteria and daycare, training if budget allows, community involvement, opportunity for growth for some employees

Cons

Croneyism, unfair/subjective practices in promotions and layoffs, too many "leaders" and silos, inefficient organization--many groups/leaders duplicating efforts in different business units, all positions are not posted--there is a subjective process and a cover for promotion of favorites into both leadership and non-leadership roles--employees and the government should be questioning this practice, if you are not a "yes person" you will pay a price and employees are not allowed to express negative opinions of leadership or status quo.
Stockholders need to start asking more questions--how many VP's, Directors, program managers do you really need and are those salaries really necessary?

Advice to Senior Management

Too many "leaders" VP's, Directors, program managers, and "yes people". Employees are afraid to speak up in order to make this a more efficient org and to add value to their jobs. In order for the new CEO to really learn what is going on, he needs to speak to the employees--not the "leaders" who have a vested interest in maintaining status quo.

Pros

In MDT, you may get competitive salary and benefits. The working environment is nice and cooperation in colleagues and cross functions are great. You can also expand your knowledge through very various selected training or courses. Their products are also very profitable. The company is very quality oriented which is a good news for patients.

Cons

The middle or lower level management is very bad. Some managers or director don't even have basic domain knowledge and even worse they act as domain experts to provide wrong direction. Some managers even only presented happy data or even mis-leading data to claim good work. Shame on that.

Pros

Flexible benefit and nothing else

Cons

Management supports favoritism and output orientated mindset.

Advice to Senior Management

Requires change of management styles

Pros

Good salary and benefits.
Decent work life balance.

Cons

Lack of strong senior leadership and strategic direction.
Way too much focus on bottom line and no long term vision.
Layoffs have been demotivating and have cut a lot of talent.
Disconnect between leadership and other employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to and retain your engineers. you will need them.

Pros

exceptional talent available to work with

Cons

too much bureaucracy to get anything done

Advice to Senior Management

limit the amout of bureaucracy

Pros

There are plenty of opportunities to grow. The company pays well and provide great benefits.

Cons

Because of its size, decision making tends to be cumbersome.

Pros

benefits is good compared with other companies I had worked

Cons

The management team is not functioning

Advice to Senior Management

Please recognize employees' contribution to the company

Pros

Good Pay and benefits.
Nice to work on products that help people live better lives.

Cons

Gotten too bureaucratic as the company has grown in size.
To much time wasted on HR produced programs.

Advice to Senior Management

Get back to the grass roots and cut out several layers of management.
Cut back on the 500 or so Vice Presidents.

Pros

Good pay and benefits. Field personnel are very highly qualified.

Cons

It's become every man/woman for him/herself. Leadership looks forward only as far as the next quarter.

Advice to Senior Management

Time for some REAL leadership. Anyone can improve the bottom line in the short term by layoffs and cutting benefits. As the market turns around (it will) any savings realized will be lost as new employees are hired and trained and pay & benefits are increased in order to retain employees.