Pros
People were nice. I was impressed with the hiring class that I came in with in Decatur, IL. Many were smart, ambitious, and fun to be around. If you like working with your hands and a small town, this may be worth considering.
Cons
I worked in the East Plant as a process engineer. I had thought I would be engineering, but I constantly had to move into supervising for months at a time on the back shifts with less than 1 days notice sometimes. My projects would be moved to others or put on pause. It was extremely frustrating to have to do this roughly about 4 times in the 3 years I was there. Another aspect that I did not like was the environment. It was dirty, hot, and quite miserable with the company constantly being very cheap and giving minimal raises. It is manufacturing so that is to be expected to some degree but there are many opportunities in cleaner and safer manufacturing plants. The pay was also quite terrible. Raises were around 2% every year with no bonuses or stock options available. They ran very bare bones so you often carried many hats but that does give good experience. It just isn't something you would probably want to do for 30 years. In my experience at the East Plant, it was often a rat race to see who could work the hardest and spend the most time in the plant as if that were something to be proud of. You can definitely get a role with decent work/life balance but don't be surprised if the role ends up sucking up all your time.
