These are my observations and my biased opinions:
Even though a lot of the managers come from within the good circle of people (though not all), the priorities that drive them end up at a "well, I will take the shortcut that makes me look great and let someone else deal with it". As with most older healthcare companies, the priorities on UI are low and I left partly because it got questionable for patient safety (not illegal, just...off). Some of this sentiment is different across various business segments due to structure, but where I was, it wasn't great. I will not share any stories due to the nature of companies being sue-happy, but the ethics line internally did not really help.
Edit: One thing that sticks out in hindsight is how many meetings I sat in where we re-prioritized the same known issues over and over. While every company deals with backlogs, at Philips, we often would have to dwell on the same problems that had known impact to find reasons to promote or defer it. A lot of UX design and test work was done, but somehow... there was this "stuck" feeling at Philips.
These management decisions can even stem to how you feel as an employee when they do things like force people to use centralized trash bins instead of having bins at their desk. Benefits are getting worse with time according to peers that have been there longer. However, people have been there a while and so there are a lot of people fine enough with the status quo who only complain loudly.
Software resources are somehow even more precious than most tech companies I have experience for or friends have. It is actually more akin to an old bank: old technology with important features that seemingly cannot get upgraded. Combine with regulatory needs and it is hard to move any working feature (80 hours to move a button within the same page). Oddly, and fairly, I will say that one software dev left and came back, so there are worse places.
Finally, as with all older, larger companies, so much focus is on conservative moves and keeping existing people happy. A lot of fellow engineers felt like they couldn't get any project done or new technology out. Generally speaking, it felt like management would often only go for a project that was proving successful for our competitors. Of the few more interesting projects, you find out, are usually at pace with the competition (might have a better look, but then might not have as many needed features). They will, of course, call everything they can "disruptive innovation".
All in all, I took the lower healthcare pay and so forth because I thought I could help people by making devices stronger. I felt like I didn't actually do a lot of good and felt like my name would go into products I didn't believe in, so I left. It has been a while, but I have no desire to go back.
