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Thermo Fisher Scientific

Engaged Employer

Not a High Tech Company - Not an Employee Friendly Company! - Anonymous employee Thermo Fisher Scientific Employee Review

1.0
Sep 9, 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

False sense of security that comes from being in a large corporation. Benefits and 401K match generally good but benefits keep getting more expensive and covers less. Facilities are very nice and with lots of effort you can wrestle capital dollars out for your projects. Have some good opportunities for students and interns.

Cons

Employees are as disposable as paper towels! I've witnessed age and disability discrimination aimed at people of all levels and tenure. Company periodically does layoffs while advertising for similar jobs. Management competence may be the worst in the USA! Constantly putting people in high level technical management positions who have no technical training or experience. Company is a caricature of all that is wrong with corporate America in the 21st century - quarterly meetings to tell employees of record profits, while last 3 years average raises were - 0.5%, 0%, & 1.0%!! Attrition at my location is about 20% a year and senior, well trained folks are replaced with junior level (aka CHEAP) workers if they are replaced at all! Product quality and margin drop year over year and there is no connection for management between staff competence and project success. The CEO is one of the highest paid in the world while this is not one of the most profitable companies in the world. The upper management ranks are staffed with those that went to school with the CEO (and not a good school!), and equity is only doled out to those in the "Club". Most mid and low level managers have no equity at all. The company makes acquisitions and after a couple of years drives off the valuable employees (who often go to start competitors) squeezes who is left, drops quality, kills margin, and eventually shuts the doors! The company strives to be listed as a highly desirable employee but the work experience is so spotty across the company that for everyone who is happy, there are ten who aren't. Company expounds on "4 I" values while management embraces none of them in their practices. Management puts lots of barriers up for getting work done such as giving little authority to individual location managers as exemplified by the ridiculously low dollar value of signature authority. Most decisions and large purchases have to be run through headquarters. While capital is tightly regulated, expenses are not. The corporation is very reluctant to invest capital in existing businesses and is much more attracted to acquisitions. This is a very hard, cold, unappreciative, unrewarding place to work where few think their future will be better!

Explore other reviews about Thermo Fisher Scientific

5.0
May 23, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good company to work with. Provides good benefits. A growing company with a strong-solid background in the medical field.

Cons

Mainly a medical company (95%), but has invested in other areas (5%). If you are in the 5% area, it's difficult to transfer, even once you are internally an employee there.

2.0
May 26, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You'll get hands-on experience with regulated lab environments, which is genuinely valuable early in your career. The CRO world gives you transferable knowledge of clinical trial operations that other companies will recognize. If you're self-motivated, there's room to build things on your own. I taught myself new tools and built reporting dashboards for my department because nobody else was going to do it. Tuition reimbursement existed when I started, which was a real benefit.

Cons

Compensation does not match the workload. You will be overworked and underpaid, and when you bring it up, nothing changes. I repeatedly asked leadership to let me take on work that aligned with my career goals and education, but I was always "too busy" with my regular responsibilities for that to happen. They'll happily benefit from your output but won't invest in your growth. The tuition reimbursement policy changed while I was mid-degree, which tells you everything about how they view employee development. Benefits are underwhelming for a company this size, and when I needed them most, they fell short. A workplace injury made it very clear where employees fall on their priority list, and it's well below the bottom line.

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