Edwards Lifesciences FAQ

Pros

Great Pay, Great Product, company ethics are among the best, Employees are rewarded when you go above and beyond. free coffee, cafe with fair priced meals for breakfast lunch and dinner. Free Gym, in door basket ball court, company events and sports teams/competitions. great people.

Cons

Very political with all of these diversity and inclusion groups.

Advice to Management

In some areas of management it seems to top heavy at times, to many bosses not enough workers.

Pros

Great benefits package, great technology, patient focused, beautiful campus

Cons

Politics, little transparency, work life balance

Pros

Good pay, great benefits, 4 day work week, low cost on-site gym, cafeteria with many food options at a reasonable cost, fairly reasonable work shifts, 5% 401k match, ESPP, low cost health, dental insurance, free vision benefit, 3 weeks paid vacation, 2 weeks sick time, etc

Cons

Work life balance, supervisors, pay raises, growth regardless of performance, work hours, etc.

Advice to Management

Change shift schedules at least by 1-2 hours, growth and promotions based on performance rather than seniority.

Pros

Edwards is a bustling, fast past manufacturing environment that is truly on the front lines of innovation in providing solutions to cardiovascular diseases. They hire top talent and there's a lot of really great, top notch young engineers there. The benefits are also very competitive-5% 401k match (vesting schedule), stock discounts, really great maternity AND paternity leave, and you get an entire week off around Christmas time. You also get ample sick time and PTO.

Cons

Although Edwards has amazing pros, I think the cons can really overshadow that. As an engineer, you will be overworked and your team will be understaffed. Edwards Draper prides itself in delivering results while running very very lean. Their method of training new engineers or engineers that transfer roles is pretty much just "figure it out as you go". There's not a lot of resources in place because everyone truly is overworked and doesn't have a ton of time to mentor or help others. The expectation is kind of to just put your head down and work hard and you'll be rewarded. The issue is that there aren't a lot of growth opportunities at the Draper site (compared to the Irvine location). They provide a lot of time off and sick time, the only problem is that if you take it, you're only creating a bigger burden from yourself down the road because now you have less time to get your projects and tasks done. Taking time off isn't truly time off because every day you take off is a day less that you have to get your stuff done, and only causes more stress. This is pretty common across all engineering teams because people are pretty silo-ed and you can't just have someone cover for you 100% while you're gone. Even as a sustaining engineer (like a ME or QE), you will have additional projects and tasks outside of your sustaining tasks. So your workload may fluctuate substantially based on if the manufacturing lines you are over have problems. Different lines are more prone to issues than others so your workload may fluctuate substantially. If you are working on a bigger project (like introducing a new product line), you are expected to sometimes put in very long hours (like coming in at the start of production at 5 am and not leaving until 5 pm), just because there's so much to do and so little time. Overall, the work life balance I think is the biggest con to working at Edwards.

Advice to Management

Please consider hiring more people, more technical lead positions that have time to help mentor/teach younger engineers. There's so much tribal knowledge that's lost as people move around.

Pros

Good atmosphere, wellness benefits, and modern facilities.

Cons

Work-life balance. Lack of headcount to cover basic tasks. Lower-average salaries.