The company prides itself to have its roots in HP of the '50s. However this is not entirely true anymore. Agilent was spun off from HP in 1999 and then was split in two in 2014 with the electronics measurement business becoming a separate entity, Keysight. In the meanwhile Agilent closed or sold quite a few units, bought Varian in 2010 and closed or sold most of it and also bought Dako in 2013. Overall there were around 44,000 employees in 1999, Varian and Dako came in with around 5200 people and now there are around 9,000 left, with the majority of them being laid-off or becoming contractors in the way. There are quite a few leftovers from the big Agilent era, though. Each new starter is faced with an intimidating set or rules, processes and, most importantly, acronyms that he has to learn in order to barely survive. You can forget spoken everyday English, you will need to learn things like MU, MEIDAS, PFF, SU, AM, PS, IM, PO, SR, WLA, ACS, FSS, FSE, MRU, AE, TANGOE, CERTO, GIO, WPS, GIPO, FAMS etc, etc, etc, there is even an internal website with the meanings of all these which have nothing to do with what they sound like. There have been hardly any revolutionary, new products introduced by Agilent in this long period with most products being incremental, small upgrades to established products from the HP era or purchased from other companies. The company shows good results mostly because of the income it got from the selling of various units in the 00's. Rather demotivating environment if things turn slightly off plan. What you did in the past (last year) has no influence whatsoever, only what you do now is of relevance. If you are in sales then making 250% of your quota last year will not help you this year and if you only make 95% you will be out. Most of the former Agilent employees have been laid off rather than leaving at their own will. There are no careers at Agilent anymore, only jobs. In R&D projects are defined by the personal opinions of managers who are not necessarily scientists nor have an idea of the marketplace, most of the projects are canned when they are 85% complete. Global sales, service and support, finance, marketing, R&D and manufacturing are actually competing with each other and cross-charging each other at every opportunity. Having moved all support activities to Asia you are faced with the same attitude when your email is not working as when you call your bank or credit card. Bureaucracy has increased both because of the infinite processes that must be followed (up to 3 levels of approval for purchasing a $200 item) and because these are monitored by people in India. Things that take other companies 10 minutes to do take up to a week or more at Agilent. In all it is lawyers and accountant that make the decisions, not commercial people or scientists. Anything with more than 0% risk is rejected. In all Agilent still thinks and tries to function like a 50,000 employee company when instead they are only one fifth of what they used to be.
