Working at Philips has been one of the most frustrating experiences of my career. I cannot even sum up all the ridiculous experiences I've had, but here are some of the chronic problems at Philips
- No (or extremely difficult) career progression. If you want a promotion or a raise, you better be ready to fight for it. And your manager better be ready to fight for it too. And it still may never happen. It took me over a year to receive a promotion that had the full support of everyone in my team's leadership because the vague "Philips" had to approve it.
- Anything HR-related. It will take 10,000 years and might simply never amount to anything. It will take 6+ months MINIMUM to backfill roles when turnover happens, and EVERYTHING has to go through the beauracratic slog.
- No transparency about business decisions. "Philips" will make decisions for your team and for individuals (including you) that make absolutely no sense and are often completely impractical or even impossible. You will be expected to execute their vision though. Never mind that nobody will have any clear idea what that vision is...
- Along with the lack of transparency comes the confusing hierarchy. It will never be clear who is making decisions (never mind why) so you will have no recourse when a decision is made that negatively impacts you, your team, and your customers. Whoever is telling you the news is probably just the meeting-holding messenger (see notes on culture below)
- Terrible culture. If you love meetings and hate doing actual work or accomplishing anything, Philips is the place for you! Philips rewards people who are extremely good at... being in meetings... and provides no support for the actual team members doing work. Your best bet for a career in Philips is to ditch the work and practice schmoozing.
- No job security. Though I was not laid off, I witnessed dozens of others be laid off around me. Again, it was never clear why these decisions were made, who made them, or what the end goal was. Skill and contribution didn't save anyone- people who were literally irreplaceable were laid off for no apparent reason and with no recourse. This is a Forbes 500 company, not a tech startup. Why work here if NOT for stability? What good are any of the benefits if you may just end up unemployed?
