Siemens

Siemens is a global, highly diversified corporation with good benefits and many career advancement opportunities. There is an extensive training infrastructure to bring employees up to speed. Good market results often lead to generous bonuses for the workers. Work-life balance depends highly on which division and locale you work out of.

The company has little regard for individual personnel; an employee is viewed as a type of company asset. While successes result in ready bonuses, any setbacks lead to immediate cutbacks and layoffs. Company management views this as being flexible, but the oscillating hire-fire-hire cycle means that there is high turnover and consequently a lot of inexperienced employees. The comprehensive training program exists partly to offset this.

Retaining experienced employees is sometimes worth more than the quick savings realized by firing them during a slump and hiring new ones during a boom.

In the highly technical know-how market in which Siemens competes, the competitors who weather downturns without letting go of their professionals have a marketing and engineering edge over Siemens, and it shows.