Pros
Great opportunities and challenges for engineers, never a dull day at the office or plant You’ll get the opportunity for all the responsibility you can take on AND MORE to stretch your experience and comfort zone Fair salary and benefits, but mostly below market in most job markets Fair Retirement plan 401k but did away with a pension plan a few years back cause everyone else was doing it Industry Leader in many products and markets Great opportunities to work directly with Japanese Engineers, you will learn a lot from these guys and their culture if you take time to listen, engage them for more information, and build lasting relationships long after their assignment in the US is done Coming to realization it has to adopt new ways of doing things to stay competitive, the effort is now there but needs to accelerate faster You can make a good career here as long as you understand when u come to work its manufacturing, it’s work, it’s not always clean work, it’s not a social club, but it can be a great experience for an engineer
Cons
Work life balance for engineers is not good, you’re either traveling all the time if corporate, or living in the plant if in manufacturing. for those that have been around the block in MFG this should not be a surprise, but the younger workforce doesn’t always fully understand the concept of rolling up your sleeves and getting it done in manufacturing Upper managements failure in planning ahead or its risk/capital adverse nature to adopt newer technology at a faster rate in many older facilities in lieu of milking old technology legacy equipment well past its design life is catching up with many facilities at a time when many competitors are entering the markets we compete in with newer plants and newer technology at a faster rate than the company can bring the old plants up to competitive speed Not the only reason, but a big driver in this, is Upper Management Is slow to accept competing ideas for improvements beyond their own or inner circle and you can’t exhibit courage and candor with certain upper Mngmnt to challenge/present new ideas or industry accepted practices or else find yourself looking for a new career. Too much management in manufacturing only knows rubber manufacturing and has never seen it done differently New ideas are only valid if they come from the inner circle or someone from the outside. Salary, benefits, and retirement, although fair is still way below market in most locations making it hard to recruit and retain experienced engineers Being an organization that moves at the speed of a tank, it is a Slow process to replace departed engineers and fill open positions making it more stressful on engineers and their managers. Promotional Opportunities The paths are not clear and communicated well evidently unless you know someone. They tried to be more transparently vague with a roll-out last year, but ask for the career experience matrix for the specific jobs you want to develop for, guess what, they haven’t finished that one yet People with experience that gained it externally from a prior job need not apply for a promotion until you repeat it on the inside, they will hire someone from outside with the same or less experience you had elsewhere and not think twice about it. Many internal candidates that gained it externally are often passed over for promotions for someone who either knows someone somewhere or meets a diversity quota. (Don’t get me wrong the focus to be a more diverse company is a good thing, but unfortunately this focus from upper MGMT for managers to have this as a metric they are judged on has left some to hire out of fear of not hitting their metric to pass over more qualified individuals by lesser experienced but diverse candidates). Honestly this is not fair to either party. It’s especially a problem when this leads to the passed over individual leaving the company. It’s a bitter pill when you’re trusted by many to advise and support managers but yet when it comes time for promotions you’re given a multitude of excuses for no but yet someone else gets that position with all the NO reasons or even more than you were given for the same or similar role.