A lot of the negatives I'll share are not very unique in relation to other reviews, and that is because the negative reviews are mostly true (I cannot emphasize that enough):
*While the benefits are quite good, they are not without strings. In the case of the retirement program, it is not a 401(k) and instead is an internal program. This means that if/when you leave the company, you are not going to have nearly as much retirement money as opposed to if you had your own 401(k). It really only serves as a golden handcuff.
-The age spread at McMaster Carr is all over the place. There are lots of younger/junior employees taking up the lesser roles and people who have been working at McMaster for 25+ years are in any job of import. This means that you will not move anywhere in the company because older employees have no intention of going anywhere and no interest in training younger employees to take on harder tasks.
*The pay is good and the work/life balance is nice, but your tasks and your actual job are equal parts boring and degrading. There are also glaring problems in the office culture that make working at the company unpleasant. I'll explain below:
-McMaster Carr has such an odd culture and business direction that leads to questionable business decisions and treatment of employees. First and foremost, there is a massive aversion to change in the company, which manifests itself in a distrust for the very employees that work for the company. So, the company relies on software systems for tasks that are so ancient that they're unemployable. No other employer on the planet is going to care if you know how to use CICS or whatever other 50 year old system exists out there because companies that are competitive have moved on. That spells trouble for you as an employee and your professional development.
On top of the old systems that the company relies on, your tasks as an employee are profoundly monotonous and repetitive. Many of the non-managerial jobs are set up this way too. You are a cog in a machine and you are expected to do one or two things very well with minimal variation or development included. These tasks also do not require any meaningful skills, which spells trouble if you leave the company because you will have little to show for your time there. The entry-level jobs at McMaster are made up of tasks that would not be fit for an intern. In fact, if my old managers found out I worked here and what I did, they would scoff at the idea that employees out of college are doing such meaningless work.
But like I said above, the worst part of the company is its culture of secrecy and complacency. During the recruiting process, I was flat out lied to about my job. The job description for my position was not representative of the tasks I was expected to do. While they explained that the job was a stepping stone into roles that involved what was in the job description, it was never made clear to me what the actual day-to-day was. Had I known what it would have been during the interview, I would not have accepted the offer and I wouldn't have had to quit after 3 months.
The secrecy does not only affect your job by making your robotic tasks needlessly convoluted, but it also makes office life a living hell. While the people I met were mostly pleasant, it is extremely hard to meet new people in the office and there is no apparatus to help you get to know others outside of an office directory. This means that the cafeteria atmosphere resembles a Middle School dance: nobody really interacts with people outside of their social circles and nobody really tries to make new folks feel welcome. At McMaster Carr, you are expected to do your monotonous task for 8 hours and go home. That's it. Because of that, what should be your solace in a boring job is taken away from you.
Moreover, the repressive culture does not allow employees to get to know the company because as an employee you are not trusted. Before I realized my job was a dead end, I wanted to get to know more about the industry and the career path by trying to reach out to the supply chain functions in the company. When I asked my manager how I could learn more about other parts of the company I was stonewalled. My manager told me I would not be able to learn anything about those functions because of "confidentiality." I found that to be rather insulting.
All of these factors lead to McMaster Carr being an incredibly depressing place to work, and I do not say that lightly. When your tasks are boring and unfulfilling, you cannot gain a social attachment to other employees, and you cannot improve your job or professional prospects because your own company does not trust you enough to even let you export your own data, then you will feel trapped by prison that McMaster Carr conned you into entering. What good is only having to work 8 hours a day if those 8 hours are so horrible that you cannot enjoy yourself when you're off? Working here literally made me depressed, and my outlook did not improve until I left the company.
This company is bad news. The turnover is high, the culture is repressive, and you will have little to show for your tenure because they do not trust you.
