20+ Years, But the World Is Changing Around Them
Pros
Plenty of opportunity to grow my career at Rockwell. Have had the ability to move to new roles often, learning new skills and taking on additional responsibility. Been fortunate to work with great people. Immediate management and leadership has mostly been very positive, with strong support and giving autonomy of decision making for my areas. Culture is a positive, but it's changing. And management acts as if Rockwell is the only company with good culture. Most people I've worked with want to affect change for our customers. Strong emphasis on diversity and inclusiveness, but could still have public actions mesh with words better. Flexibility. I've never had a hard 8-5 in the office role. Able to do my job as I see fit as long as I hit the goals and metrics. Vision for future is generally good. Senior leadership knows the company needs to evolve, but that's painful for long term veterans. Former star business units are now pushed back in priority.
Cons
Compensation is stuck somewhere in the stone ages. Not just the amounts, but the methods. Company bonus plan pays out once/year. Equity compensation is by exception below the Director level, certainly don't count on it. Target compensation levels are a step below the level of talent they want. I'm expecting a 3% raise in a year of 9% inflation. HR is happy to tout "We'll never be the highest paying company" (said to 500+ managers!!) Decision by committee everywhere. We spend more time building consensus than executing the change. Glaciers move faster than change at Rockwell. Getting better, but don't expect to have an idea and then implement in less than 12 months. New products can have 8-10 year roadmaps to achieve parity with existing (if they ever do). Integration of acquisitions and partnerships is an afterthought. They throw people at problems instead of fixing the systems and processes. Then when the market scales up, the problem has become multiples worse. Seriously underfunded critical areas for internal transformation. The level of technical debt and age of some systems is astounding. Why use a well-executed, purpose built solution when you can glue together four disparate legacy tools for more money?
