DON'T WALK, RUN AWAY FROM AMETEK! My employment at Ametek was like an insane fever dream. For the record, they are a Department of Defense contractor and have plenty money in the bank. The hiring process was proxied through an overbearing, hand-holding recruiter. There were was an unnecessary amount of panel interviews so it was hard to get a feel for superiors on an individual level. Once I was hired and onboarded, my immediate supervisor dropped her mask from interviewing. She would publicly verbally abuse the gentleman I was training under to replace. She literally called him "stupid" and an "idiot" multiple times both to his face and behind his back. Training under these circumstances were stressful to say the least. I knew it would only be a matter of time before she started berating me when I was fully trained. She would also expect me to work 12+ hour days. She'd send me emails at 4 a.m. then when I got to work at 9 a.m. would ask me why it took so long for me to respond. Absolutely neurotic. The facilities management technician and the operations manager (my hiring manager and the guy that would ultimately conduct my performance reviews) would go on long bigoted tirades about black people as well as LGBTQ folks. In one particularly unsavory conversation, they came to the conclusion that all transgender people should be put on a cruise liner sent out to sea and then sunk. They said all this in front of me like it was just an other Tuesday. Additionally, the same ops manager openly mocked one of his superiors who is LGBTQ and would say really unprofessional, nasty remarks about them openly in earshot of other employees of all ranks. All that to say that, as a stealth trans person myself, I did not feel safe to come out in any capacity while working there, though I did share this with the aforementioned, mocked LGBTQ superior on my last day. They also ended up leaving shortly after I did due to the incredibly hostile environment that Ametek fosters toward queer people. The same operations manager would go on long-winded, ultra right-wing tirades out of nowhere and would basically hold me hostage to his MAGA rants because this often happened while we were alone. He expected me to agree with him just because we had the same ethnic background. I have always found it incredibly unprofessional and distasteful to talk about politics at work, regardless of where one falls on the political spectrum. And of course his rants never had anything to do with work. In addition to being constantly on edge from unprofessional superiors, the company is the most unorganized corporation I have ever worked for in my 20+ years career. The company is based out of Germany and everything is done to German standards. Read: SLOW, outdated, and inefficient. The IT help desk is based in Germany so anytime I had a technical issue, which was multiple times per day, I had to wait to hear from the German IT team and correspond via Teams. Also, their software systems are embarrassingly outdated. Like 20-30 years outdated. Because of this, it took me 12 hours to do my job at this multibillion dollar company that I've been able to get done in 4 hours at much smaller companies with significantly fewer resources but invested in modern, functional software. Many of my superiors and lateral employees who had been employed with Ametek for some years told me how they were constantly given progressive responsibilities and titles over the years yet received little or no compensation to show for it. There is absolutely no excuse for the number and the depth of inefficiencies at Ametek. It is because of pure greed. All resources go to management bloat. There are far too many bosses and not nearly enough "boots on the ground" workers to actually get the necessary work done. I'd guess there are 4 managers for every associate/specialist position. All that combined, I went running for hills back to my former employer. I knew I wanted to quit within my first couple weeks there but the money held me there longer than I should have let it. Thankfully I came to my senses. Ametek offered me an additional $40K to stay and I still declined. My mental health is neither negotiable nor for sale.
