Edwards Lifesciences reviews

Edwards has changed a lot in the last few years. A new CEO, a recent mass layoff, a 40% drop in stock price, a Business Unit sell-off, and 4 new startup acquisitions. That's a TON of change in just a few months. What used to feel like a cohesive, patient-forward company now feels more rife with politics, confused team boundaries, and a sense of anxiety for some employees who fear what change they should embrace next. Edwards is still a good company to work for, but the honeymoon seems interrupted for now at least. The company is technically not strong. Don't come here to challenge your engineering fundamentals. Worst of all: HR has been a HUGE letdown. Zero focus on developing managers. Yes, there are courses people can sign up for on their own, but when you hit difficult situations, you are on your own or worse, you may get poor advice. You better have a manager that watches out for you and coaches you, otherwise, there is no corporate culture of continuous improvement when it comes to leader performance training and coaching. The company "celebrates" diversity through a rich DEI program, but it still lacks diversity in its leadership tiers. Overall, you may get a decent paying job here, but you may not learn much if you stay here a long time.

Although Edwards has amazing pros, I think the cons can really overshadow that. As an engineer, you will be overworked and your team will be understaffed. Edwards Draper prides itself in delivering results while running very very lean. Their method of training new engineers or engineers that transfer roles is pretty much just "figure it out as you go". There's not a lot of resources in place because everyone truly is overworked and doesn't have a ton of time to mentor or help others. The expectation is kind of to just put your head down and work hard and you'll be rewarded. The issue is that there aren't a lot of growth opportunities at the Draper site (compared to the Irvine location). They provide a lot of time off and sick time, the only problem is that if you take it, you're only creating a bigger burden from yourself down the road because now you have less time to get your projects and tasks done. Taking time off isn't truly time off because every day you take off is a day less that you have to get your stuff done, and only causes more stress. This is pretty common across all engineering teams because people are pretty silo-ed and you can't just have someone cover for you 100% while you're gone. Even as a sustaining engineer (like a ME or QE), you will have additional projects and tasks outside of your sustaining tasks. So your workload may fluctuate substantially based on if the manufacturing lines you are over have problems. Different lines are more prone to issues than others so your workload may fluctuate substantially. If you are working on a bigger project (like introducing a new product line), you are expected to sometimes put in very long hours (like coming in at the start of production at 5 am and not leaving until 5 pm), just because there's so much to do and so little time. Overall, the work life balance I think is the biggest con to working at Edwards.