The Disappointment that is McMaster-Carr
Pros
-As many have said, the high pay is unmatched in the market for this level of work and the professional experience that is necessary to get hired. -Going off that note, the amount of ownership and responsibility you are given as a new grad will expose you to a lot of experience in the first couple of years compared to other companies. -the company's recruiting team does a top notch job in hiring bright and diverse people to join. Unlike a lot of other operations oriented companies, your peers will all come from different backgrounds and walks of life. However, the high pay and initial opportunities only work for so long to keep people interested and proud to work at McM. At some point, you realize that many people quit in droves as soon as the yearly bonus is paid out in December, when they vest into the profit sharing account in July, or when they get their MBA program done.
Cons
Where to begin? -McM is an extremely private company that's controlled by a small, risk averse family. Over the years, the company has carved itself a very specific niche in the industrial supply distribution industry, and really doesn't face any competition or serious pressures from the market. On one hand, as you start at the company, this is a great environment to learn the ins and outs of an operation - a bit like riding your first bicycle with training wheels. However, after you get promoted and moved a couple of times, you reach a very hard stop in terms of opportunities for learning and development. Since the company is not really focused on innovation (both internally or externally), the work is very, very, very dry. Iteration and slow process building is the name of the game. On a macro point of view, there really isn't any diversity of thought or strategy at McM. The company focuses on a particular strategy and doesn't really embrace new and original ideas. -Leadership (high level directors and VPs) have fostered and enforced a culture of negativity and impersonal, top-down relationships. Whether you're in management or not, you'll have to go through cold, biased, and sometimes hurtfully personal judgements of your work and your direct reports' work. Many of your managers will lack true leadership and development skills, and the ones that possess them will not be incentivized to use them. At times, you will be pressured to be harsher than is fair on your direct reports in order to establish an artificial curve, or to reinforce the opinion of the VP that sits in a private office without interacting with representatives. -From a company structure perspective, it is extremely frustrating to work in any area that is not part of HQ/Systems. There is close to no regard for the operation's input on product development or company vision. You'll notice this on day 1, when you'll learn to use outdated, slow, and buggy internal software. You'll find yourself working around applications 80% of the time, instead of using helpful tools to do your work. Much of the work that seems to touch on those things is entirely hypothetical and is usually fruitless, if you don't count the pdfs that high-level managers are obsessed with making and sharing regarding their visions. On top of it all, the company has no financial incentive to change (no competition or any sort of transparency/accountability structure). As I said already, the leadership isn't much better. Interestingly, one of the only things that have seemed to make a dent during my time were the abundance of terrible Glassdoor reviews, and excellent applicants that have (unsurprisingly) passed on employment offers from McM because of the terrible things they read here. There are many more things that have been said already in other reviews, and many other things that are so bizarre or dumbfounding in how depressing they make people feel. At the end of the day, McM is the place that it is. If you are looking for a high-paying job that will expose you to the fundamentals of an operation, you're at the right place. However, you have to be fine with the reality that the negative, ugly atmosphere at McM will eventually overshadow even the highest bonus checks you can get.
