Caterpillar Reviews

Pros

Pay and stability and moving in the right direction with new CEO

Cons

not a real meritocracy, very little diversity, very little emphasis on management training

Pros

It is a very good company to work with. I have worked more than 6 yrs.

Cons

at India things can improve

Pros

It is a good company overall. Onsite oppurtunites are available every now and then. Salary is also nice compared to other companies.

Cons

We can learn new things in the intial stages but later on it gets saturated and only way to learn is new job

Advice to Senior Management

Good Leadership by Doug leading Caterpillar out of the recession. The management had clear cut vision going into the recession.

Pros

Job security, you have to be pretty awful to get fired.

Cons

They have poor leadership. They lack their "Values in action" I only know a few people that like working there.

Pros

Pay rate is good from what I can tell. Cat targets to be 7th in the US for compensation and does study what other companies are paying. I'm not sure how accurate their estimates are.
401k matches at 6%, Company stock is consistent and pays a good dividend.
You can say you worked at Caterpillar on your resume when you are looking for a new job.
It's hard to get fired and easy to slack off and collect a pay check

Cons

Leadership seems to be non-existent. The "Ship full of fools" analogy is very fitting. The company/product lines are either blown where the wind takes them, or being yanked in different directions based on what other companies are doing. This is backed by the 5 major reorgs that I've been through in the 3 years I've been here. If the first 4 were wrong, who says they got it right this time?
There is no consistent goal for the company. There is no vision for what the machines need to do, and what we need to design. There is excessive scrambling as production dates are approaching to include features that the competition has with no data backing up a need for the feature or a customer desire to have that feature. "Because Deere does" is not a valid reason for a feature.

Many of the people in middle/upper management are there because they have been at Cat long enough. There are very few people in decision making positions that have any understanding of the decisions they are making. They claim a "hands off" approach to management. "Hands off" means "I have no idea what you are doing or what you are talking about, so I'll just sit in the corner and nod and smile"

Performance reviews are on a curve. There is a distribution that must be met and is handled at the section level. If you are really good at your job, but not quite as good as the other people, you get screwed. Reviews are also based only on the results of the work you've done in a one year time period. Those really good efficiency improvements that you worked on two years ago, that are just making into machines to be validated, those don't count for anything, sorry. Can't count them the year you did them if they haven't been validated, can't count them the year they were validated because you didn't work on it that year.

Cat Corporate and most of the engineering is in Peoria, IL. It's not exactly an enticing city to live in. Downtown is full of crime and murder, and the north side is suburban sprawl with massive houses on top of each other and no yards.

At some point just having the Cat logo on the machines will stop being enough to sell them and the ship will sink.

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to manage. If you don't understand what is happening with your employees projects, you need to learn. If you can't learn, you need to get out of the management seat. I want to see a manager that knows what he want's his team to do and actually leads them towards that goal.

Pros

Great people to work with and good compensation (especially when the company is doing well)

Cons

Job can be very monotonous and growth opportunities can be severely limited depending on which group you are working in. Moreover, Peoria is a very dull city and for young people it can be very boring ...

Advice to Senior Management

Move to a warmer state with less taxes. Implement a mentoring program as the current one is not doing a great job.

Pros

Good work environment, good compensation and chance to explore different fields as you can move around the company to acquire variety of skills, opportunity for international assignment if you are talented!

Cons

Limited growth opportunities, well its a big company and not everyone can become a manager or tech steward. Boring City to be in for young engineers. There is only much you can contribute when it comes to technology. The field its self lags behind compared to automotive. Sometimes it gets tough to convince the management to embrace new technology, expect old school type mentality.

Advice to Senior Management

Need more opportunity to talented engineers to grow and keep the young engineers around. Too many "non-technical" managers in the company, you need more tech stewards and technologists to outgrow the competition.

Pros

Benefits are reasonably good and they match 401K contributions 100% (up to 6%). There are opportunities to grow professionally. Management is generally competent.

Cons

Peoria, where the headquarters are located, isn't the most exciting place. Extremely large company comes with some of 'Dilbert-esqu' characteristics.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve processes, don't keep adding new ones. Watch out for some management that seems to be penny wise and pound foolish. Emphasize teamwork between process partners, there is way too much acrimony between groups that should work together towards common goal.

Pros

Respectable pay, around the industry average
Decent benefits, but have declined in recent years
Many opportunities to work on various projects depending on the job

Cons

Many mediocre mid-level managers who should not be in those positions
Many managers not 'people persons' or people oriented
Higher level degrees not valued by the company
Not having a degree at all is not valued by the company

Advice to Senior Management

Follow the proper protocol for year-end reviews and rate employees appropriately. My ratings were downgraded numerous times by upper management to avoid giving a significant merit increase.

Pros

Pay and benefits (health insurance, vacation time, etc) very good. *Potential* opportunities to move around in the US and internationally.

Cons

Politics and definitely a good ol' boys club. Favoritism for those who tell the leadership what they want to hear instead those who speak the truth. Some individuals were promoted 4 "Salary Grades" in less than 3 years without college degree, yet others without college degrees at entry-level salaried positions are told they can not advance.

Company claims to have values of Integrity, Excellence, Teamwork, and Commitment. Integrity is not the highest, and there is a complete and utter lack of teamwork between functional silos especially between operations and engineering but even within the operations side of the business.

A large percentage of Peoria residents work at Caterpillar, and I know hundreds of them. Unfortunately, I can't think of one person I have met that likes working there.

Advice to Senior Management

Hold people accountable for not living the values that Caterpillar claims to have. Oberhelman actually seems to "get it" but it doesn't seem to have trickled down yet...

Don't rely on the Employee Opinion Survey as the gage for how well people like working there. People have stopped putting down their honest opinions because the action planning for improvement is then put on them since leadership does not take responsibility for making the improvements.