Thoratec Corp Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Thoratec Corp full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Great co-workers and dedicated staff overall
Life saving products
Challenging and interesting work

Cons – Program scope changes too frequently

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Thoratec Corp full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Company is high GP. Lot of cash flow

Cons – Management spends money lavishly. They have no centralized vision. The director level of management does not know what they are doing. They take trips just to get out of the office and call it supplier visit or audit. Engineering on the NPI side is made up of all fresh out of school not it all, they no nothing about design. Thoratec can not bring their focus together. They don't have a working next gen product. One trick pony.

Advice to Senior Management – Collaborate instead of fighting one another. Get a leader who knows how to lead.

Current Employee – been working at Thoratec Corp full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Thoratec offers an amazing pipeline of life saving products that are unmatched throughout the world. There are extremely talented individuals that have long tenures and provide excellent guidence.

Cons – Product development is extremely slow due to the nature of the product (Class 3 med device). This company is not fast paced to release new product resulting in multi year projects. Also, management is quick to hire from outside rather than develop from within.

Advice to Senior Management – Promotion/development from within would inspire those that have greater aspirations to move up within the company.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Thoratec Corp

Pros – Some very good people in the engineering and technician ranks.
Life saving technology.

Cons – R&D senior management at HQ is dishonest and incompetent. They are only interested in quick & dirty fixes and covering their behinds.
At all locations old timers rule, no way to get new ideas considered. Hence, "next gen" is nothing truly new.
All designs are outsourced so engineers are just paper pushers.

Advice to Senior Management – Make yourselves look good by listening to those who know better.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Thoratec Corp

Pros – Co-workers are the best part of this company.

Cons – Mediocre managers with limited experience.

Advice to Senior Management – Many managers have less experience and technical expertise than engineers.

Former Employee – worked at Thoratec Corp

Pros – Balance between work and life
Good Benefits
Friendly environment

Cons – Low pays
EEO is a bit questionable, when you see a particular group of people getting hired
Biased ethnic grouping, who are loud and use language other than English.This is NOT professional. No action from management or HR

Advice to Senior Management – Job Referrals are good, but please pay attention to qualifications rather than employee connections

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Thoratec Corp full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Steady paycheck and they make a good, life-saving product.

Cons – Management is 'old-school' and still in an R&D mode. The best hope for Thoratec is that they are bought out by a larger company with experience in medical device (J&J, Roche, etc..), so that new blood could be brought in on the top layers and really make it a strong medical device manufacturing company in all the areas required in this regulated industry. Without a complete changing of all the executive guard (lets go with Director and above), Thoratec will never reach the heights that it should have already reached 10 years ago.

Advice to Senior Management – Work on selling the company.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Thoratec Corp

Pros – Incredible work culture, very interesting products, all levels of management more often than not promoted from within, friendly inhabitants (with a few notable exceptions)

Cons – Penny wise pound foolish budget decisions (they wasted at least two weeks of my salary to save a few hundred dollars buying the cheapest possible equipment; eventually I had to go out and buy some of my own).

Advice to Senior Management – It's okay to spend a little extra money buying decent equipment, because the amount of time and salary wasted attempting to buy the cheapest junk is at times incredibly frustrating and seemingly a criminal misuse of investor money (yes I know that's not how the accounting is calculated, but budget gimmicks don't hide the monumental waste of time and money, which translate into lost opportunities).

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend