Great Sonicare products, too much Dutch management from "The Mothership" in Amsterdam
Pros
Great product, customers love it, does a great job cleaning teeth. Philips is a global company with many resources to draw on and has high ethical standards and really believes in sustainability and stewardship of the earth. Very good benefits including high match 401K with high salary deferral limits, excellent tuition reimbursement ($10K a year when I was there).
Cons
Unless you are tapped to be in the elite "Hi Potential" talent pool, moving up is very hard. This "Hi-Pot" group is limited to those employees only 40 and under (seems like age discrimination to me). They get special coaching, mentoring and training. Global Philips politics is rough at the higher levels of management. Fundamentally many believe that Philips has too many senior Dutch people in management in Amsterdam with not enough to do other than come up with management improvement initiatives that put a real drag on managers around the world and do little to nothing to help getting work done. The local marketing group was in constant chaos and turmoil during my time. It is a very dysfunctional group and management does not seem interested in fixing it. Many excellent people left frustrated with the management, hiring and promotion of incompetent people and lack of strategic vision. "If you're not Dutch, you're not much" is more than a saying, it's reality.