Vantaggi
1) The frontline engineers and staff are very smart and helpful. 2) The product it makes, implantable medical devices, helps people in need. 3) I've made some of my best friends at Medtronic. 4) People will go out of their way to help you. 5) Until the layoffs and cutbacks and rank-n-yank started four years ago, you could do some really cutting edge work.
Svantaggi
1) Middle Management has been so disempowered that they are reduced to being messenger boys and girls for top management. 2) Top management is cold, two-faced, and uses a management model of ante-bellum southern plantation owners. They never lead from the front and make the front line people pay for their mistakes with layoffs. 3) Over 4 years of layoffs 20% of the workforce, 3000 people are gone. I have yet to see a manager get laid off, let alone 20% of the managers. 4) The leadership of the place is like tenured professors. They think they know it all. That is true in the sense they knew the state of the art 20 years ago. They stopped listening altogether since then. 5) The organization has lost so many good people it has reached a tipping point.