A highly politicized atmosphere driven by upper management in Essen and by the top eschelon of managers in Hopewell.
Top management in Hopewell is largely comprised of ex-Whitco people. The attitude and behaviors may simply be the naturual result of a poorly executed acquision in which the only survivors were those who subordinated everything to their career. Whether yes or no, this is a back-stabbing environment where blame is passed sideways and down. Yes, this sounds simply like sour grapes....
...on a tangible level:
I chose to leave when I learned that my budget was only about 25% of what I had been told prior to accepting the job. A porttion of the money was actually "in" my budget but was being spent in other areas as a way to limit visibility in Germany. I was also asked to play minor accounting tricks by pushing product on customers, knowing that it would be returned. Nothing illegal...but you put it all together and you realize that this might not be a good place to settle down.
As in the other post, there is a definite difference in opportunity between the German expatriates and the "local" employees.
This is a German company and it is driven by the needs of the German operations. For example, efforts are made to maintain as much production in Essen as possible to maintain favorable capacity utilization & cost numbers...even where more cost effective production & capacity is available in the US to serve US customers. Senior German executives are measured in part by their ability to support the Essen operations. In their defense, German employment laws do create high opportunity costs. Unfortunately U.S. performance measurements don't account for these demands. Don't count on the bonus component of compensation
Finally, the statistics: There were 3 market manager positions in my group: these positions were held by 9 people in the 3 years from 2005-2007...only one moved to another position in the company & none were asked to leave. People voted with their feet.
Its an unfortunate story: This is a company with good technology, competitve assets, good global infrastructure, and some very interesting market strategies (if they could be deployed) - it is being torn apart by the after effects of Evonik/Degussa's long string of acquisitions and continuing difficulty in making the evolution from between being a German company to a Multi-national company with headquarters in Germany.
If you already live in Richmond VA and need a job, well, so be it, staying at home is worth a lot. If you don't, I am not sure that this is the right company to justify relocating.
