A bright & young company, pulled down by old/outdated ways
Pros
The company has incredible vision with inspired and intelligent talent. People here are extremely knowledgeable - from the technicians, to the business operations folks, to the scientists/engineers, workplace services, etc. EVERYONE IS SO SMART. The vibrancy that is felt when interacting with any of my colleagues is unmatched, you can tell that everyone is so passionate about what they do, what the overall mission is, and how to better society. I write the "cons" section with a sense of sadness and regret because of how incredible most of my colleagues are. There are some really nice benefits like a stock purchase program, 401k, HSA-based health plan, and donations matching. Agilent is making a deliberate and concerted effort to be environmentally and diversity/inclusion conscious. We also have some time off specifically dedicated to volunteerism.
Cons
Agilent has some significant rot from within; due to short sighted business decisions, toxic senior management, lack of hiring, and comfy/uninspired employees from "the HP/Varian days". - On R&D: Some R&D program managers are not willing to take up requests from Marketing while sandbagging development timelines (i.e not responsive to customer feedback or market trends). For example, certain technical issues have been left unaddressed for years - compromising scientific integrity. I have brought up some severe product issues, only to be told that "it was designed this way" or "we will address this in 5 years". Additionally, the development/tech stack for some SW teams is quite aged. - On Management: Executive-management (Presidents, GMs and their VPs) are hilariously removed from the day to day struggles of their employees. For example, I have witnessed a division President talk about buying his fancy house and RV in one of the richest areas of the country. Another one encouraging a dreamy vacation in Montana. They talk as if they have done the work, but have only resided in non-management positions for a short while. They are so far from the reality of the burdensome processes that slow the business down or the struggles of daily life. - On staffing: My division has suffered from attrition, turnover, mass retirements, and lack of backfilling because "we have no budget" even if we are growing revenue at a rapid and furious pace. Newer employees have a high turnover rate because they are shocked at the lack of support their role receives and the insane workload that comes with picking up the slack. Backfilling is done AFTER as person has left, so there is no mentorship for younger (millennial-ish, 25-35 y/o) employees. Agilent is very lucky that extremely skilled younger hires are backfilling multiple roles and wearing multiple hats. - On employee demographics: When I first entered the company, the population tender older, boomer old. I was the youngest of my group when i was first hired (at age 26). I thought this was a good thing at first, thinking Agilent took care of their employees. True, but those older employees are now retiring at a rapid rate. Due to the lack of hiring, younger employees are not mentored appropriately and are forced to "figure it out". A common phrase is "drinking from a firehose" as if this is a very normal thing. I worry about the young hires because they are thrown so much work immediately, not paid enough to compete with big tech salaries, and do not have redundancies to take a vacation or even have children. - On Product Management: PMs do everything are the singular point of contact for everything, while being responsible for everything throughout the product value chain - it is very old "Wall St 30" style of product management. At other companies, Product lines are managed by a product managers at various stages of their Product Management career. In Agilent's case, 1 product manager = 1 product line (~3-5 instruments plus accessories) taking care of the marketing, commercialization, product definition, and technical details. I'd say that Agilent PMs are exceptional - if given a modern product team and structure, these folks would make incredible Directors of Product at other companies. Compared to lower level product managers at other technical companies, PMs are severely underpaid, under resourced, and overworked.