It's just another automotive company that makes cars. Honda tries to distinguish itself through the "Honda philosophy", the "joy of creating/buying/selling", and a one team direction but it's all just propaganda. This is the only information you can see on the TV in the cafeteria. It still feels like a stuffy, stagnant company that fails to innovate quickly. You still deal with people and bureacracy problems. The company still focuses on cost cutting and even seems to put how fast we can ship cars over quality itself.
The company is slow to change and really reactive. There's a lot of firefighting involved and not much proactive work to fix equipment or prevent quality problems. Like any large company, the technology is outdated and a lot of stuff is slow or doesn't work. There's no Lean manufacturing implmentation here. You wonder how people got their job. You work with some really smart people, and then others who can't write coherent sentences in e-mails. Training is few and far in between and turnover is really high, so sometimes you just see people putting parts on the car plain wrong. Honda justifies this through "On The Job" training, which may or may not be guaranteed depending on where in the plant you work.
Work culture differs depending on your department. If you're tied to production, you may find yourself working every weekend (good overtime opportunity). In other departments, your work life balance may be great.
Engineers here spend a lot of time justifying things behind a super complicated powerpoint or some convoluted Excel sheet. The more jumbled it is, usually the better it is. There isn't actual much "engineering" involved here. This really takes a toll on you over the years. The work just doesn’t feel fulfilling. You often wonder what if your gaining valuable skills that you can use elsewhere.
Associate support departments are usually useless. HR does a poor job of giving a clear picture of your benefits. The benefits are becoming scattered across different providers/third parties so it is getting harder to understand where to access what resources. They often don’t respond to a lot of questions or emails or will give you vague answers to reduce liability. IT, the Help Desk, is staffed by a lot of unskilled temps so they don’t often solve computer problems in a timely manner. The computer infrastructure is really old and the internet is only a few mb per second so the company can cut costs. Staffing, depending on who your recruiter is, may not be responsive during the hiring process. I’ve known some new hires who didn’t know what department until the day of orientation, didn’t have a computer for days/weeks, or dropped out and took another offer because it took forever for them to respond to calls or emails.
One thing they don't tell you during the interview is that there are a lot of weird rules. Your start time is usually 6 am if you work in Weld, Paint, Frame, or Stamping. Even as an engineer. You need to physically clock in before that time on the second or risk being penalized. This is something they push because the associates on the factory floor have to do this same as well and this is how the company pushes equality (which is why everyone is called an associate and not employee). You also need to make sure you get 8.5 hours (half hour lunch) a day of work in as the clock monitors your time. Other strange things to get used to are like not having coffee/juice/soda, earphones, or any kind of food allowed anywhere except the cafeteria. You can't wear a personal jacket except to the locker room. You're not really treated professionally but you get used to it.
Honda is trying to hire more temps and less permanent workers on the line. Honda like to brag about how everyone wears the same uniform (a symbol of equality) and does the same work for the same hours, but some are managed by a temp agency. The also do swing shifts (2 weeks on days and 2 weeks on nights forever). The company brags about never laying anyone off because they've never fired full-time associates, but if you're a temp, you never received the same pay and benefits anyway and will be the first to go in an economic downturn. Everyone wears the same uniform, but gets paid differently, has different roles, and still plays favorites so it’s nothing more than a uniform.
There is a cafeteria and the prices are good but the food is pretty mediocre.
