Alcon Reviews

3.7

68% would recommend to a friend

(2,521 total reviews)
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David J Endicott

77% approve of CEO

64% positive business outlook

Alcon has an employee rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars, based on 2,521 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Alcon employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

3K reviews
1.0
6 Sept 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Met a small handful of good colleagues from the office, but they also have thoughts of leaving soon/are preparing to leave. - Provide company transport for employees (understandable as location is far)

Cons

- Reviews below are based on my experience and my colleagues experience in the office, not shopfloor. - Terrible company culture (very traditional, perhaps worse than SME, management believes in old ways of working). Malaysian culture, many Malaysians from the office. - HR department do not even have the background in their function, they all came from admin background, in short they are not qualified, but they can work in the function and slack away. Rude and disrespectful people with bad attitude. - Please do not be tricked by their certification - Great Place To Work. Do not believe what they tell you or sell you when they say it is a great place to work. It is not. They kinda forced employees to take the survey. Shall not reveal details; you will know how this is not a great place to work once you join the company. This opinion can be confirmed by new joiners (less than 2 months) as well as people who have stayed in the company for over 5 years and 10 years. If the company is really good, people will not share the same sentiments as me (at least 12 people). Advise not to join especially if you are in your 20s and 30s, dont waste your precious time. - Leadership team is made up of people in their 50s, 60s, some in mid 40s. Age is not an issue, the issue is these people have boomers mindset. Some can be rude and arrogant too just because they have stayed in the company for over 15 years. Some can disrespect your time and call for meeting at 5.30pm or 6pm. - The company and leadership team always talk about digital transformation and culture change, but amusingly they still prefer to be in their comfort zone and each do things their own ways, including the managers. They do not believe in new ways of working. What's the point to hire people or urge people to transform and make changes then? What a joke! - Some people here do not have the drive to excel, so if you are a bummer you can just stay here all the way and rot until retirement. It is really toxic based on the working attitude of the employees. - The work attitude of the employees here can be really toxic, they do not really care, they do not want to own projects, hence those projects are chuck aside with no progression. In short, there are SO MANY things in AML that have no real owners, whether project, or process, or little stuff. Many things do not have a workflow or SOP. You can determine how you want to do it - all you want. If a person left the company, the next person can do the way he/she wants it to be. It is a messy organization. - Although Alcon is a MNC, but in AML, the company operates like a family business, worse than SME. Slow paced environment. The funny thing is they think they are a fast paced big MNC company and are so proud. Yes, perhaps Alcon US offices are great, but not here. - High turnover rate - If you are hired to do job task ABCD, you will be told to do EFGHIJKLMNOP as well, and you won't be appreciated. - Employees here can be very delusional, including leadership team. Despite the turnover rate, they believe there is nothing wrong in their management and culture. In fact, they think they have a very good culture. Ha-Ha! - Little to no growth and progression. - This company likes to search for internal employees to fill up roles whenever someone left. But those people they get, some are people who dont have much experience or relevancy to the role. And they are accepted to do the job. And guess what happens after? - People who have put in efforts and hard work in their job are not promoted or recognized. People who slack away are promoted. - As much as they try to portray that they can accept WFH, no! The boomers really hate it. They'd rather see you physically in office doing nothing or drinking coffee, than let you do serious work in WFH mode. Strange bunch of people.

1.0
20 Aug 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

You will get stress with limited budget and resource. Motivate yourself to find new job!

Cons

Whatever you sacrificed your personal time just helping top management to secure their high pay and benefit!

3.0
3 Aug 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Pretty laid back especially if you are good at drawing boundaries and taichi. Good work life balance. Good career opportunities if the bosses likes you.

Cons

Full of boomers ready to retire, especially in Engineering. They treat women like their private secretaries (arrange group lunch e.g. for farewell, raise form, write protocols, write SOPs) meanwhile they sit at their desk and take a nap. The majority of SLT is made of Malaysian PRs. You dont even think about WFH. They like to boast they are automated. Industry 4.0 lah, lights off lah (meaning the shopfloor has no human). Thats been the talk for as long as I can remember but to this day still need a lot of manual work. They have a lot of dreams but no actual technical expertise to pull it off, and no capital. Bad career opportunity if you met a manager who dont care to promote you/ you offended some boss. Remember this is a Malaysian MNC. Pay very sad. I got paid 4k as senior. Variable bonus barely 1 month

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Glassdoor has 3,494 Alcon reviews submitted anonymously by Alcon employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Alcon is right for you.