Pros
Benefits are pretty good ... But there is a catch 22. See my Cons list for details. My advice to the existing engineers, is to use them to get your experience and get the heck out of dodge. For the potential engineerIf you read my list of cons and still decide here is a great work environment for you ... Then good luck. Lol
Cons
Benefits: The benefits presented to you may seem great, but, there is a catch 22. Firstly, you vacation is PTO (lumped). Secondly, their 401k seems phenomenal, but you must spend 3 years in the position to gain the benefits of the 401k. Medical is ordinary, sub-standard to other companies i have worked for previously. Training: If you expect to be trained here, you are in for a big surprise. As an engineer here, you have to learn everything on the fly. There is also limited room for growth. FMC's Core principles: This is a farce at best. The company claims to have integrity, quality and safety as their driving motivators. I have personally witnessed managements blatant compromise of safety and integrity on their recent frack trailer model. Even though it was highlighted these were against Safety regulations and standards, the product was pushed through the pipeline. If you are a person of integrity, you will have a hard time swallowing this. Management: Management claims to be focussed on the human resource, but in fact, they are only interested in the bottom line. Prepare to be treated as a statistic, not an engineer, if you decide to join this organization. They reward the person who has no work/life balance, while they enjoy their weekend golf tournaments. They cut merit increases to workers but still kept the bonuses in tact (because management get 80-90% of their wages from annual bonus). Individuals who are nominated for spotlight awards have had them discarded when they left the company even though they completed the projects on time and brought them back from failure (this happened to me as well). Assessment- If you are a high performer, you will soon get discouraged after your first assessment. You are graded based on the team, not individually. No matter how brilliantly you perform, be prepared for a "Good" assessment at best. Then to hear, they cannot justify giving someone else a "Needs Improvement" to give you an "Outstanding" ... Though you may 100% deserve it. Lack of Integrity - the company tries to push a line of controls that is extremely problematic (so much so that no one at FMC knows how to fully use the system UCOS) to their customers who already use established systems such as wonderware, Fisher Control Systems, ABB DCS. This is unethical and highly inappropriate and was one of the reasons i could not stomach working there anymore. So be prepared to have this system shoved down at you to push to the customers with no training. Unable to survive recession: FMC is an extremely populated work environment. The most underpopulated departments are the ones that actually bring in the contracts to FMC. So the engineering department is understaffed, while they have hundreds of employees doing HR and procurement work (most who know some managers personally). So be prepared to be overworked and face > 10 hr days. With the recent drop in oil prices, FMC has been reducing staff on a horrendous scale. Believe it or not, the understaffed engineering departments have also incurred cuts ... So that means double work for the remaining engineers in the department. FMC has no plans / strategies to ride the trough of the sine wave. Remember, as i mentioned previously, you are just a statistic to them.
