Career Setback - Island of the Lotus Eaters
Pros
To be honest, the employee benefits are the best I have seen in all my various careers. 3M offers an employee store where you can purchase 3M products at production cost. Excellent salary. 3M really stepped up during COVID by sending all employees a COVID care package which included cloth masks (10), anti-bacterial sanitizer, and a zero-touch door opening tool. Zero on-call responsibility. The offerings for people that were affected by the (still ongoing) reduction in force (RIF) were better than I have seen elsewhere. Everything from coaching, expert consultants, access to job fairs, etc. It was by far the most well executed and organized RIF - maybe this is a negative?
Cons
I have never seen a company spend so much time, effort, and money on all the stuff they physically mail. All of the content was simply, “look how awesome everything is at 3M; you are valued” and had zero value other than to the people who were picked to pose in the articles. God help you if you want to make positive change. It is like the mob - they will whack you, your family, and your pets. You are good if you are okay with the “this is the way we’ve always done it” mentality. By far the most political environment in which I have ever worked. Everything is a favor and not “just do your job”. 3M is way too big for an individual contributor to matter. Everyone starts out shiny, hopeful, and wanting to help out your fellow 3M’rs but after a few months that all changes to frustration, anger, and despair. You are, quite literally, an employee number, an expense, and a line item on a spreadsheet. If you think you matter, I promise you that you do not. If you think you are part of a larger purpose or mission, I promise you that you are not. If you think your contributions have made a difference, I promise you that someone else took the credit for it instead of you (but you will never know). Management would let people go and you wouldn’t find out until you attempted to reach out to them and never got a response. When you finally get fed up with the lack of response and reach out to their manager, you are finally told that they are no longer with the company. When asked who their replacement is for XYZ function you are told that there is no one and there will be no backfill because there is a constant hiring freeze. Huh? I had absolutely zero 3M-funded training during employment. Whenever management was asked about funds for XYZ training, employees were given the runaround and eventually would stop asking altogether. For the first time in my IT career, I paid for my own training, event fees, and certification costs. This is a standard benefit afforded to almost any IT professional by a company (unless you work at 3M). I saved this for last. If you feel that this is inaccurate, please read some news articles before considering employment. Google “13-million-3m-earplug-verdict” to get a nicely summarized summary. Shady business practices and tactics. 3M touted itself as a company “based on ethics” - I am sure that ethics exist somewhere at 3M but I don’t consider screwing veterans and other responders out of settlement money by splitting a company into two, where one is profitable (new healthcare company) and the other not so profitable (PostIt notes, Meguiars, Nexcare, and everything else) with the intent to bankrupt the legacy 3M hoping to subvert paying what is rightfully owed. Additionally, I don’t think it was very ethical to invoke a huge reduction in force (which is still on-going) just a day or two after the judge called BS on that plan. After the reduction in force was enacted, and then applying for jobs, I quickly realized that my time at 3M had actually crippled my career because everything was so massively siloed that you didn’t have the ability to grow much less get anything done effectively or in a timely manner; but you stayed because the pay is awesome and benefits were great. You lose a bit of your soul in exchange for benefits, pay, and flexibility; believe me, it isn’t worth it to put the 3M name on your resume. The severance pay was definitely not commensurate with the tenure, effort, contributions, blood, sweat, and tears spent. I am sure this review will be buried by an over-abundance of false “everything is great” and “Mike Roman cares and his employees love him” type propaganda but I hope it helps just one potential candidate. 3M sickens me and I am ashamed that I was proud to work there. In fact, I purposely do not buy their products even if I perceive their product as better.
