Nikon Reviews

Pros

Great Brand and Products.
Potential to work on great assignments with good outside agencies.
Good perks and benefits including company parties, free tickets to Mets and Jones Beach Concerts.
One of a very few companies still offering employee retirement packages.

Cons

The tenure of most of the employees means that there is consistent resistance to change and it is virtually impossible to bring new initiatives and ideas into the company.

Most of those employed at Nikon for more than five years would find it very hard to find employment elsewhere, they are stale and are not up to date with modern business practices.

The overal environment is very negative, especially across the divisions. There is too much resistance and competition between the groups to maintain the status quo that team collaboration is virtually impossible.

As is typical of a Japanese company there is a glass ceiling for most employees - all upper management are recycled from Tokyo and not selected from the US staff.

Advice to Senior Management

Leadership comes from the top - provide employees clear direction, goals and objectives.
Clean out the lowest performing 5% of employees per year. It will make the world of difference.

Pros

Great products
Known and proven brand
Good benefits

Cons

Brutal - unrealistic at time - deadlines
Decision making is not it's strong point - which leads to the above mentioned deadlines
Work - life balance isn't very good
Loyalty asked for but not given back in return
Pay is rather low for the level of responsibility demanded
Politics is worse than Washington, DC - perspective employees beware

Advice to Senior Management

Empower your people to make decisions
Hire more people to get the job done
Work on the work-life balance - the demands - are unrealistic
Value your employees for what they offer - whether they are there 1 month or 10 years

Pros

Stable environment with solid benefits. The company does do nice things for their employees, birthday presents, baby blankets for newborns, Health Day, bring your kids to work day... in the summer they raffle off concert tickets to Jones Beach and Mets tickets... preference does go to "favorites" but that is to be expected in any work place. As long as you are a competent employee your job is pretty safe and the environment and people are pleasant.

Cons

Standard office politics... also because employees stay so long and the company is "stable" rather than "growing" there is little room for advancement. Morale could be low at times.

Pros

If you're looking for stable, this is the place. Many long term employees enforce the long term nature of employment in most cases. This comes at a steep price. Benefits are better than most.

Cons

So many long term employees and little growth means little to no room for career growth. Can sometime be quite a downtrodden place to work with low morale. Pay is severely on the low side for comparable at other companies and considering the multiple combined tasks many employees are expected to maintain.

Advice to Senior Management

Change the attitude of the culture or lose many employees once the economy improves and jobs are available.

Pros

Some of the perks you can get, great products

Cons

No communication between departments. Hard to get information needed, Employees employed longer than 5 years are considered useless. Upper management is unprofessional and not to be trusted. Impossible to get a promotion within.

Advice to Senior Management

Reward the employees for work well done. Nikon takes too much away from the "little people" and gives to the upper management.

Pros

you willl have exposure to most technologically complex and highest end technologies
can develop excellent engineering mind
can work togeher with top talents and best engineerint mind if lucky

Cons

unclear way to reward and promote people
decision making process unclear, message from top management not clear and consistent
need to have connection to get promoted smoothly

Advice to Senior Management

lots of places to improve companys HR systems, the way rewarding employees,
way to run business, way to run product development, hope he has enough bandwidth

Pros

good environment, good brand and good products . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Cons

professional development, senior management, lack of training, you feel undervalued and lack of urgency . . . . . .

Advice to Senior Management

listen to staff, take some pride on your work, let young employees to take more responsabilitiy and develop . . .