Aging technology- If you work at R&D, you will be greatly disappointed, because there are little to no innovation in the company. PerkinElmer grow by buying a technology (company), shut it down and milk the sales on that specific technology. The logic is real R&D is expensive. In my years with PerkinElmer, I haven't seem anything that's ground breaking. When a technology got old, they just stop releasing the new version, or just release version with small update (i.e. adding a touch screen and changing the color)
Direction- It's all about money. The stock is doing well in wall street, if you are a shareholder, you will be happy. The company appear to have been turn around to the outside world (the analysts at Wall Street gave them good reviews for the last two years). But people within are slowly losing their passion. Management tried to create meaning (to tell employees it's not about money, it's about saving life) by giving presentation on how the technology is being used to cure cancer etc. It got people excited for a few weeks, but soon they realize it's nothing more than a PR trick.
Management: People with marketing background in life science (who can't hold an intelligent conversation with a scientist from another company; it was embarrassing) are running most of the R&D operations.
I am not going to talk about salary, growth and all that stuffs, because other reviews are pretty spot on. They like to tell you the salary is comparable to other companies on the specific job title. That is true. But what they don't tell you is that you are often doing the job of two to three people.
