PerkinElmer Sr. Software Engineer reviews

This is a place that does not invest in its employees. There are no consistent employee reviews and most of the staff did not get any kind of raise for the last several years. My observation since the merger has been that when PKI wants to move in a new business direction they lay off existing employees to hire new ones rather than train their existing staff. Since there is almost no opportunity to grow in your career this means that you watch you skill set become obsolete and it is only a matter of time before your position is gone from a layoff. Even 2 years after the merger with CambridgeSoft there is no clear path forward for R&D and it feels like the management has been spending all of it's time in power plays. The morale among those of us in the lower ranks is very low. I have worked at some really great companies, some pretty bad companies, but this work environment is just toxic. It is as if everyone is operating in "crisis mode" without understanding how to be a good crisis manager. People spend a lot of time worrying about their job security. CambridgeSoft was not a "great" place to work - but at least it felt like it was mostly about writing good software and there was the flexibility to innovate. I have sat through years of PKI quarterly reports saying that business is good and we are growing while our competitors are declining - however none of this is because the company is actually innovating. Most of that $$ is coming from buying new businesses and the CambridgeSoft products are only going to keep the lights running for so long.