General Mills reviews

Culture suffered from 2 rounds of major layoffs. Business leaders out of touch with employees and everyday consumers. Don't see them turning it around. Would be a good stint for a couple years, but know more layoffs or sell offs are coming.

1. Too many meetings: People hide in the organization through meetings, use meetings to do work "collectively" so that they don't have to actually do their jobs. Most employees literally have their entire weeks 100% booked with meetings, back-to-back-to-back. Difficult for a "I'm here to get work done" introvert to even function. 2. Bureaucratic: even small tasks involve getting "buy in" from people via dozens of meetings. No one wants to hold individuals accountable, or be held accountable, which is how the culture evolved into "I'll spread the decision making risk around". 3. Lifers and the old boy's club: Too much emphasis on who you know, not on the work you do. Lifers think the "General Mills way" is the best way, even when it demonstrably isn't 4. Political: 40% of what you do at the company is actual work. The other 60% is navigating the morass of General Mills culture and politics, keeping up with org chart changes, etc. Doing crap work but volunteering for the United Way campaign more likely to get you promoted than the other way around. 5. Form over substance: Company has this ritzy campus and propaganda plastered all over the walls (things like "we care about our employees!"), along with politically pushy "LGBT" banners at the employee entrance and bragging about their "climate change initiatives." Yet actual projects are total messes in execution! One guy I worked with said "we make money in spite of ourselves", and that sums it up.