Rain Bird reviews

Wish I had found Glassdoor before I accepted a position with The Bird. Even the rants have an element of truth to them and the ones written to provide a rantless warning are spot on. There is something wrong with Rain Bird and I recommend against accepting a position unless you need the money. If you do accept a position because you need the money, consider it a stop gap measure and do not relocate your family. They give you a year to relocate before relocation benefits expire so milk it for a year. I relocated my family and regret it - most miserable I have been in my professional life, including the military. My impression is that people are set up for failure to feed the Corrective Action & cull the bottom ten percent "GE-esque" organizational philosophy. Turnover is high and there are few that have been there more than ten years. In my matrixed group, maybe 15%. My position saw eight people move in and out in ten years - not at all uncommon. EXPANDING ON THE CORRECTIVE ACTION COMMENT ABOVE Managers must rank their reports, I believe A,B,C with C's being those being groomed to be successful elsewhere. Manager's must have "C"'s, even if they are happy with everyone's performance. If they don't, they find themselves ranked as a "C" and are eventually placed on Corrective Action (C.A.) and, soon, without a job and a career in taters. Here's a scenario that I believe is accurate. You have eight direct reports and have come to like and trust four or five of them so you don't want to put them on CA and fire them but you have to have people ranked as "C". So you have to find people that you can eventually rank as "C"'s. You won't likely find them internally, so you hire them fully aware that they won't have a job within 36 months. You have no incentive to help them learn the culture so you let them operate in the dark until they make what The Bird refers to as a Career Limiting Move - yep - that phrase exists and is used. But your reports won't know it because the rules and expectations aren't clear and in fact, change. This poor Manager, who was probably a decent bloke at another company now starts bullet pointing minor infractions and makes a few up that have just enough basis in truth to make the CA form read like a legitimate HR document. But there is no Correction possible, the CA document is just a cover to legitimize the likelihood that the direct reports were never expected to succeed. Expanding a bit, you are a "newish" Manager and have only been on staff a year but must now rank reports you don't know very well. Are you going to highly rank the ones that have been around two or three years and have some product or process knowledge or the newer ones? Whose life are you going to ruin for the sake of a ranking? You won't have much fun making up the reasons for placing those people on Corrective Action and then firing them for failure to correct things that you have no intention of them correcting. And then you have to interview and find their replacements knowing that its either you hire and set them up for failure or not hire anybody and loose your job. Tests one's ethics. If above seems implausible, ask during the interview. "How many direct reports, how many ranked A and B and how many of those have been with the company a number of years? Of all the people that were fired over the past two years, how many were only with the company a few years?. I doubt they'll answer the question and may not know but if they do, the picture will be that the A's and B's stay for a few years and then quit and the ones that were fired were only there a year or two. Assuming above is only 1/2 accurate, you shouldn't subject yourself, your family or your career to such underhandedness. Pay is competitive but you won't become wealthy, a position at Rain Bird won't propel you to the management ranks of a Fortune 500 company and there is no special genius to learn, it's just a JOB. Other than a paycheck, there's not that much to gain from The Bird.