Driven company with strong position in the market and the overall direction to keep it there
Pros
- Diverse project opportunities in many fields, lots of opportunity for gaining experience working with diverse project teams with a variety of skill sets. - Company culture on the whole supports professional growth and development, sees it as an investment in the company's future - Alcon historically reinvests about 10% of its income into the R&D budget, which for a $10 billion/year company means the R&D division has nearly $1 billion/year budget (spread across multiple areas). - Alcon's benefits on the whole are excellent, but have taken a hit in the last few years - R&D model in the last few years has been "aligned" to a science-centric approach.
Cons
- Large companies have momentum which is difficult to overcome, especially with the legacy products which make the best money. This tends to foster lots of "incremental upgrades" and support activities for existing products rather than breakthrough new ideas, especially in the medical device divisions. - Innovation is desired by the organization but sometimes difficult to come by, especially from long-term employees. "We tried that 15 years ago and it didn't work" is a common refrain, despite technical advances. - It's easy to feel overwhelmed in such a large company. - Alcon recruits the best talent, which means lots of graduate degrees, PhD's, and medical doctors. It seems employees with advanced degrees are more likely to be promoted to supervisory and technical lead positions, regardless of actual aptitude.
