Stryker reviews

(Generalist Mahwah, NJ): The company has gotten to be way too political. I've witnessed an alarming number of talented and intelligent individuals leave the company for the competitor primarily because of low pay and no opportunity to leave their current cell to a higher position. The yearly pay increases are an embarrassment, but there is an agenda behind it. Stryker does this on purpose to exploit their hourly workers to work overtime so the worker can pay the bills and somewhat live a decent standard of living. If they give higher raises, less people will do the overtime and the production numbers will never be met. There is no such thing as an 8 hour work day on a salaried or hourly level. In my cell, there is mandatory overtime everyday. People don't mind doing the OT during the fall and winter months because here in the Northeast, you can't do much outdoors. But when the nicer weather comes around (and it doesn't last long), managers don't want to hear nor care about you wanting to spend time with family or enjoying your hobbies. It always seems to work out this way; the mandatory OT comes during the nicest time of the year. Some folks just threw their hands up in the air and just leave after 8 hours. Enough is enough. While Stryker would like you to be their first priority, there are others that MAKE that work life balance happem for themselves as it won't come to you any other way. Stand your ground and make it clear that you have a life outside of the company and be consistent with it. Allow them "carte blanche" and you have lost control of your life. Adecco (temps) seem to get away with whatever they want, come and go as they please, and can get away with quality issue after quality issue with no consequence. That hurts the cell's bottom line with our TOPS awards, CAPA's and NCR's. Yet, if a Stryker employee has more than three quality issues, out the door you go. A couple years back Stryker management did not tolerate this behavior from its temps. As an hourly employee, I have responsibilities that should be performed by a support member who draws a salary. I have much more responsibilities than the average "Generalist" and this is where the company gets talented workers at a deep discount rate. The average pay increase is 1.5-2.0% which is not enough to cover inflation and constant tax increases in a very high cost of living area. Wait until socialized health care is in full swing. Our healthcare plan is downright awful. For a medical device company they should be embarrassed to offer such a plan. For an hourly worker, if you were to get sick, the ridiculously high deductibles you must satisfy could put you in a financial bind. United Health Care only looks to maximize its profits, and is also extremely invasive with it's "wellness programs." They offer incentives for you to stay fit and lower your overall monthly premium but they crossed the line this year by punishing smokers with a $600 surcharge for 2014 coverage if you are a tobacco user. They need to offer other Health insurance providers for employees to choose from so they can opt to pay a higher monthly cost in exchange for lower deductibles.

Despite a lot of the great things about Stryker, there are a number of down sides as well. First and foremost, base salary/starting pay is not competitive for young professionals. Stryker always wants you to look at the "total compensation" which is more competitive when you look at 401(k) and other benefits, however, for younger employees who need a higher relative cash flow to operate on a daily basis, the salaries are not good. Getting a promotion or good annual raise increase is subjective across the company and mostly depends on who your manager is. There are employees who get promoted every year for mediocre work, and some who may be in a given role for 5+ years despite consistently high performance (and everything in-between). In short, Stryker is EXTREMELY relationship based, not so much based on pure performance. Recently, Stryker has leaned in heavily to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I). At face value, I agree and think these are very healthy things to embrace in life and work. The key to DEI, in my opinion is equality, not equity. Equal Opportunity is something that we all should strive for. Equal outcome (equity), destroys motivation and incentives to do great work. With this, despite high performance, you may be getting the same amount of money as someone who goes through the motions and does an OK job. Stryker is top heavy. One look at the org chart and you will see a lot of employees who are manager level and above who may have 1 direct report. There numerous VPs who may have a team of 3 individual contributors or less. There are a lot of 'leaders' and not even close to enough actual workers. With this, decision making is slow and needs to go through many layers in order to actually get anything done. Additionally, until you reach Manager level (or higher in some scenarios) you have no true decision making authority. Change is constant at Stryker, particularly around Org Structure. In roughly 4 years at the company I had 8 different managers (2 of these were based on my decisions to change roles).