Pros
I worked for Zimmer, later Zimmer Biomet, for almost 10 years. My tenure was under the current CEO. I stayed on for a period after the merger with Biomet before leaving as part of a post-merger severance package. During that time I worked at three separate divisions under the same functional group.
The company follows the old school, command and control management style as championed by the CEO. In keeping with that philosophy there are few women or minorities in leadership positions. One division I worked for included 150-200 people and had one woman at the Director level and no minorities in management. The Senior Leadership shares the same representation. At the time of this review there are 14 members listed as the Senior Leadership team and one is a woman. There are no minorities. The last time I checked the Board of Directors had a similar makeup. Women and minorities that assume roles (usually hired from the outside) tend to have short tenures with the company. One of the members of the Leadership team was a known sexual harasser around the division who made occasional racist and homophobic comments as well. In one case following one too many beers on an excursion with employees he shared the embarrassing details of a subordinates firing. It became a standing thing among the rank and file to share, with some amount of surprise, his latest comments.
Your success at the company will largely revolve around the success of your division. If your division is profitable you (and/or the division) will have access to abundant resources (additional employees, consultants, training, celebrations and awards). If your division is under performing prepare to be overworked and over scrutinized. You won't have access to the above resources and based on the covert black magic used to calculate the profit sharing, will likely not get any. The company continues to use "engagement surveys", employee evaluations (some managers use 360), and employee rankings despite most companies moving away from these. As such, there's a negative competitive environment and demoralized workforce. Most studies have shown these tools are ineffective at best.
There are some perks if you're based at the headquarters in Warsaw, IN. There you'll have some amenities like training from globally recognized firms, a decent cafeteria and coffee bar, a workout room, and access to a host of specialized subject matter experts.
Overall the manufacturing employees are hard working and take pride in their work. They are rightly frustrated by being unrepresented in decision making and by the churn of supervisors and engineers. They often are the best source of inside corporate information such as job layoffs due to either the sharing of information from employees married to mid-level management or the planting of information on the floor before formal announcements.
The company management highly values the "analytical" and "leadership" personality traits to the point that most people that are promoted are highly likely Type A. Laid-back employees that are well-liked in the organization are all too frequently fired or passed over for promotions. This happened to my favorite manager but also to many colleagues that I held in high regard that eventually it became an undisputable pattern likely related to the command-and-control mindset.
Post-merger many young, inexperienced managers were brought in from Biomet. Their processes and systems were highly suspect which seems to be confirmed from the recent FDA audit finding (you can find it in the FDA Inspections Database by internet search).
The majority of innovation is done through acquisition. As a result of this and mergers in general there's a never ending amount of integration and remediation ongoing.
All of that said, Zimmer Biomet may be worth taking a job at as it's a foot in the door to a well-known medical device company with a strong-hold in many orthopaedic markets. It can provide an opportunity to learn over a 2-3 year period. After that if you haven't been taken in by a sponsor to help with your career its probably best to move on. The pay and benefits are competitive within the industry and overall better than many development and manufacturing based companies. If you're willing to live in Warsaw, IN you'll likely have a pay premium and/or opportunity at a higher level position as recruiting to the area is notoriously a problem. The relocation packages were quite good.
Cons
The management team and the management model haven't evolved as they compete against tech companies for employees. As a result, it's a solid middle-of-the-pack company with the standard large company culture.
