Sink-or-Swim Culture With Minimal Training, Documentation, or Leadership Alignment - Human Factors Engineer Stryker Employee Review

There is a significant lack of structured onboarding, support, and role training. Employees are expected to ramp quickly and work independently with very little foundational guidance. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) and workflow documentation are either outdated, inconsistent, or completely missing. In many cases, there are no formal workflow documents at all, despite expectations that employees should already know how to execute complex processes independently. This creates unnecessary inefficiency, repeated trial-and-error, and heavy reliance on informal knowledge transfer. Support from leadership can be inconsistent. Instead of clear direction or structured guidance, employees are often left to “figure it out” on their own while still being held to high expectations for accuracy and speed. When concerns about lack of support are raised, they are often dismissed rather than addressed. HR involvement does not typically feel solution-oriented, and escalation does not always result in meaningful change. In practice, employees are expected to be fully self-sufficient with limited support systems in place. At one point, the expectation was explicitly communicated as “sink or swim.” Management feedback is also inconsistent. Employees may be told they are doing a great job, but when they question or push back—especially on new tasks that have never been done before and are expected on very tight timelines—the tone can shift from collaborative to dismissive or demeaning. This creates confusion about expectations and makes it difficult to have constructive dialogue around workload and feasibility. Job descriptions do not reflect actual work. In practice, employees across roles often perform the same core tasks with the same expectations, regardless of title. This makes role differentiation unclear and raises questions about how compensation decisions are made when responsibilities are effectively identical across positions. Setting employees up for success does not currently include sufficient onboarding resources, guidance, or a clearly supportive training structure. Onboarding materials and support roles do not consistently provide the level of responsiveness or assistance needed to build confidence in the role. In my experience, the onboarding support approach felt more task-oriented than people-supportive, which made it harder to ramp effectively. There is frequent ambiguity in priorities and expectations. Work is often assigned without sufficient context or a clear definition of success, leading to misalignment and rework. There are also concerns around data security and communication following a reported cyber incident. There was limited visible communication or reassurance provided to employees regarding the safety of personal information, which contributed to uncertainty and lack of confidence in how the situation was being handled internally. Micromanagement exists in some areas, while simultaneously, there is an expectation of full autonomy without adequate tools, documentation, or training to support it.