Pros
Decent Company with lots of products. Average salary and benefits for Designers, and Engineers too. Shop pay is decent, and unionized (UAW) Some products are very neat to work on, some innovative things going on. Shop environment is clean and pretty efficient. One of the better manufacturing facilities Ive seen for equipment. Summertime they have "summer hours" which means you can take off friday after noon for free, or the whole day for a 1/2 vac day. It's a nice perk. Good camaraderie among people generally.
Cons
Management / VP's = Good Old Boys club. Many people have been there a long time, which can be viewed as good and bad. Near impossible to get promoted or training. Alot of excuses and no specific blame was placed, but some european lawsuit was cited as the reason for cancelling the profit sharing and scaling back 401k matching for employees in the USA. Didn't make a bit of sense at all. Frankly on some products, there is a very amateur level of engineering that goes into the product, which in some industries is perfectly acceptable believe it or not... The name of the game is copy your competitor however you can, and go sell machines. It's boring. Also too much outsourcing of critical NPD engineering activity if and when it does happen. Upper Mid management and VP's are seriously ignorant as to what NPD really means. EHS program at this place is new and off to a slow start (Environmental Health and Safety). It may have improved though. At least they are trying... Wacker is ripe for some change agents to get employed and transform the place.
