Thinking about working for Big Tony and his crew? Fuggedaboutit!
Pros
They offered me a job when I needed one (they are always hiring). The salary for Arizona standards is good. They pay for relocation and 30 days of temporary housing.
Cons
Pretty much everything else. If you have ever heard the old tale of the scorpion and the frog, where the scorpion stings the frog carrying him across the river and they both drown. Then you will understand everything you need to know about Rain Bird. When the frog asks the scorpion why he stung him, the scorpion replies, "It;s my nature." That in a nutshell is Rain Bird. They are all kind and sweet when they recruit you (we only hire the best and the brightest), however once you are there you begin to see the true nature of the firm and its senior managers. When you wonder why it takes forever to get simple products to market (years instead of months), when you see your director obsessing over punctuation (stage gate process), when your coworkers through you under the bus (monthly team meetings), when you have to use your own personal credit card for everything (you give them a free loan) when you are unable to get a complete bill of material for your product, when your peers are evasive regarding the product line history, when contracts can only be seen by the senior managers, when your buddy ends up on corrective action, etc., etc., etc., just remember, "It's their nature". I remember being assigned a cubicle in Tucson. The previous occupant, a former product manger in another division had left all kinds of personal items in the desk (checkbooks, receipts, credit card statements, etc.). At the time I wondered why they would leave their personal belongs behind? Later I realized they must have either quit or been fired/escorted out of the building in a hurry. That got me thinking and I started tracking turnover based on the list of field sales people. Within 12 months about 40% of the field sales had turned over. It all starts going downhill day one. When I asked to see my predecessors files (the job had been vacant for nine months) it took them a week to find them for me. You would think that something necessary to do your job would have been available at the beginning, but that would make too much sense. I think the Sr. Product Manager new he had to mark someone down and was setting me up for failure from day one. If you choose to work at Rain Bird (which I would really advise you not to), remember not take the abusive nature of the place personally (which you will). They treat everybody like crap, which is why turnover is so high. Their HR system is a joke (the head of HR was an accountant) designed to drive turnover. For me the turning point came while standing in a muddy poop covered field, looking into a filthy cobweb infested controller filled with dead bugs and mouse droppings that I realized, "This is no way to make a living and their are better ways of providing for my family." Rain Bird may tell you that Glassdoor is full of bitter ex-employees, and there is some truth to that. Rain Bird leaves the bitter taste of vomit in your mouth. The place is like a large pus-filled boil that eventually you have to either learn to live with or lance with a sharp needle sanitized in fire in order to get out the bloody core. It can be painful and uncomfortable at the time but in truth it is the only way to deal with the infection and move on with the process of healing. In hindsight knowing what I know now would I do it again? I took the job because I needed the paycheck to feed my family. However, my two best days at Rain Bird? The day I got my first paycheck and the day I resigned and walked out the door.
