Aug 21, 2015
Dow reviews
3.9
72% would recommend to a friend
Jim Fitterling
65% approve of CEO
41% positive business outlook
Dow has an employee rating of 3.9 out of 5 stars, based on 3,429 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Dow employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Manufactura industry (3.5 stars).
Race / Ethnicity
Gender
Sexual orientation
Disability
Parent or family caregiver
Veteran status
Reviews by job title
3K reviews
4.0
Aug 7, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook
Pros
Flexibility, tackling the world's problems one by one. The company is going back to its roots and growing again on our strengths
Cons
Burocracy, lack of appeal on some areas of the company, geographically challenging location. The company faces some strategically challenges, which need to be addressed urgently
4.0
Aug 26, 2014
Excellent Company, Especially for Your Early Career
Anonymous employee
Current employee, more than 10 years
Midland, MI
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook
Pros
Dow has so many absolutely brilliant people from whom to learn. There is deep and wide expertise everywhere - lots of opportunities for gaining knowledge and insight. Pay and benefits are good, especially if you live/work in one of the lower cost of living sites (Midland, Freeport, etc.). I personally love working in Midland. Michigan (the rest of the state outside of Midland and the southeast) is absolutely beautiful and there is a ton to do. Midland is nice enough as a place to live. Great for families. There are opportunities to try different jobs and experience different businesses and markets. Middle management is very, very good by and large. I've had six managers. Two have been good, two have been very good, and two have been outstanding. That seems to be the trend among the first and second level managers. There are outliers, of course, but it's nice to have good immediate bosses.
Cons
Corporate bureaucracy runs amok. There's a process for how to read processes. There's a process for how to use the restroom. It gets absolutely ridiculous, and the overuse and over reliance on processes leads to frustration and lack of creativity and innovation. For such a huge company, I'm blown away by how much career advancement depends upon who you know more than what you do. To get much beyond the first layer of leadership seems to involve significant butt-kissing. Dow values diversity of appearance, not diversity of thought. This results in having people with a wide variety of skin colors and genital configurations who all take the same narrow-minded approach to everything. This combination of drawbacks leads to an environment composed of three types of people: newbies, drones, and sycophants. The noobs are typically talented and ambitious, and Dow is a great place to start a career and learn. Once people get to mid-career, they have to choose to either be a drone (just doing their job and going home, knowing there is little opportunity to make an impact or meaningfully advance one's career) or a sycophant (kissing butt to move up the ladder). To be honest, being a drone at Dow is a pretty good existence. Pay is great, people are good, work can still be interesting, work-life balance is unbeatable... I don't want it to sound like it's awful. It's just that if you really want to make a splash with your career, the life of a Dow drone isn't a great place to be. Likewise, if you're willing to just do whatever it takes to move up, there's opportunity as a sycophant. If you have your own perspective and ideas of how to make the company better, not so much. You're way more likely to lose your job at Dow by being in the wrong place at the wrong time than you are by being incompetent. A very good scientist or account manager will get laid off because Dow chooses to de-emphasize a certain business unit or product line while nitwits in an unaffected department keep their jobs. If you choose to work at Dow, always be cognizant of how your business or function is viewed by the higher-ups. That's the single biggest threat to your job.
Viewing 13 - 15 of 3,429 Reviews
