The management style at Sika has been styled around the concept that all people are the same. Creativity, while appreciated for its $$ bottom line, is discouraged in daily practice and little space is given for truly creative employees who have made huge contributions (even documented by patents that transformed the business capabilities and competitiveness of the company) when they don't match management's expectation that employees match a cookie cutter image.
Getting a letter of acknowledgment and appreciation for a job well done on a particularly troublesome product development and implementation issue from major a customer for performance over a one and one half year period went completely ignored by supervisor, all department v.p.s and division management on their path to have all employees match their idea of the perfect clone worker.
Bottom line, if you can become the mindless robotic drone that matches their expectation of "the norm" of the low level corporate politics that pervade the environment you can make it there at Sika. If you happen to experience a creative spurt that works for the company, don't expect any company appreciation that lasts beyond the presentation of the mounted brass patent plaque. My patent, though it resulted in reducing production costs on one of our largest product lines by around 50%, was never even mentioned on my annual review let alone expect any other form of compensation for a job well done. (Though what was mentioned on my annual review was failing one time in a year to return a customer's phone call in less than 2 hours, he called my boss after leaving me the voice message. And a note, the customer apologized when he realized he was excited over a non-issue.)
I can't believe I spent so many years in that environment.
