Stryker offers technical challenges and a rewarding career for motivated and bright engineers.
Pros
Great gadgets and technology to do design work on, it's very rewarding to build and improve surgical products that are used to improve people's lives. Stryker is a very honest company to work for and they take care of their employees very well, even in times of recession. The offset to this is the pay is average when times are booming, but the security and good working conditions are worth it. If you are a true engineer that cares about making a better product, it's a great place to work, since management actually cares about the quality and performance of what we build. Most products are manufactured here in the US so that's also something to be proud of. Stryker products tend to be some of the best on the market. I am proud to see them in use when I know that I contributed to the design. The workplace atmosphere is pretty open and there is a lot of sharing of information and teamwork, and very little negative competition between engineers. Michigan is a beautiful state and it's fairly inexpensive to buy a nice house here.
Cons
The pay is average, but the trade-off is that they don't tend to lay people off. The company is dedicated to hiring people with the correct psychological profile, but sometimes that overshadows technical ability. Stryker is a medical device manufacturer and as such is subject to FDA regulation which translates into a lot of rules and procedure to follow for an engineer to actually design a product, but that will be true at any medical device company that is adhering to the law so it's not a criticism of Stryker so much as the whole medical industry. Sometimes the management loses track of the real work an engineer is trained to perform and that leaves the engineers feeling like they don't get to do what they think a real engineer should be doing. Management will let you burn yourself out if you want to, so it's up to you to set limits and defend them. If you're good at your job, there is no reason to work 60 hour weeks. Vacation time is a bit on the lean side, negotiate that when you're hired or you won't get much.
