Daimler Trucks North America Reviews

Pros

An innovative, dynamic company where the only person who can hold you back is yourself. The people are dedicated to a great brands, Freightliner and Western Star, and the company enjoys the #1 market share in North America for it's class. Manufacturing is world class and lean administration is cultural not a buzz word. Excellent, smart people who know their product and love their company.

Cons

Foreign Parent is always a challenge!

Advice to Senior Management

Keep communicating at all levels.

Pros

Easy to get time off
Paid week off between Christmas and New Year's

Cons

Promotions given for seniority, not ability
Not much room for growth
No innovation
Old technology

Pros

Benefits, location, recognition, management engagement,

Cons

Promotional opportunities (lots of tapping on shoulders instead of proper review of skills and accomplishments), lack of corporate and departmental communication

Advice to Senior Management

Improve upon communication to employees!!! Horrible on all levels! Centralized location for corporate and departmental metrics....

Pros

Exposure to complexities of global company. Insight and participation in Daimler Trucks global strategy and implementation. Management style is open door. Meritocracy based organization. Located in Portland.

Cons

Difficult to balance work and family. Being part of large company, namely Daimler A.G., sometimes decisions take time and require hi degree of ailgnment with all stakeholders.

Pros

They have some very intelligent people who know all of the ins and outs of SAP. If you want to learn how to use SAP, this is a great place to do so (unless you need to be spoon-fed). Ask questions and work hard and you'll be able to obtain a more in-depth knowledge of the system than can be found most places.

Unusually flexible work hours makes them a good option for working mothers.

For a downtown Portland office, the commute is fairly easy and free street parking is readily available.

Cons

Management insisted on too many major changes at once and the resulting chaos created a nightmare mess for lower-level employees to clean up. Almost 2 years later and doubling their staff, they're still struggling (and still hiring).

Mandatory overtime

NO information sharing - conversations with coworkers (even work-related) are strongly discouraged. Management fails to provide necessary information, and peers aren't permitted to share information amongst themselves, so each individual comes up with their own way of performing their job functions. So, even when 20 people are performing the same job functions, they'll each have a different way of going about it.

Not much better than a sweatshop. Keep your head down, work until your body aches, go home and cry yourself to sleep, repeat. I had coworkers admit to me that this is the life they were living, and I experienced it myself.

Pathetic training - Heard more than once "Around here it's sink or swim, and we give you concrete boots."

Pay for your own coffee - nothing is free at Daimler.

Hunt through empty desks to find basic office supplies because office supplies were being rationed.

Advice to Senior Management

Teamwork, cooperation, and brainstorming aren't evil terms. Let your people get together to solve problems, share ideas, and learn to see each other as more than just the competition for jobs. Stop being so controlling, create an environment that people enjoy, and then let them use their talents to do amazing things. You're holding them back.

Pros

Generally friendly coworkers, long lunches, time off, convenient location if at Montgomery Park but Swan Island is horrible, if you're self-directed you can pretty much do your own thing.

Cons

TOTALLY oblivious upper management--oblivious or angry. Completely out of touch with their subordinates, who seemed stressed, frightened, and insecure as various cuts to the workforce were being made (with little to no communication). You'd have to have your head buried in the sand (or somewhere else) to not understand the level of frustration employees were dealing with on a daily basis. Work was really dumbed down and the workforce isn't trained at ALL to do their jobs well--left to do their jobs in the dark with lots of head-scratching. In fact, the overall work force was pretty uneducated. Very antiquated environment, no perks (what they had they kept cutting) unless you're a certain level. Everyone seemed consistently stressed out.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop trying to hide things, TRAIN YOUR WORKFORCE, and treat them like decent human beings! Communicate and stop being such a clique!

Pros

good benefits and good products.

Cons

no leadership and communication. Them against us.

Advice to Senior Management

communicate

Pros

This is a good place to build up your catia experience and then move to Boeing after 4 or 5 years for some better pay. But we have a lot of vactaion, holidays, and sick days. A new 401K plan. Good work life balance. Extremely low stress. 2 health care provider choices Kaiser and Blue Cross. F.S.A. and H.S.A available. A new annual 2% merit program.

Cons

Compensation has taken another turn for the worse here. The hourly resident contractors are still working with a 10% paycut even though salaried engineers got their 10% back plus several bonuses at the beginning of the year. So now we are seeing hourly resident contractors leaving. Starting Jan 2011 the compensation package was completely redone. It was a complicated mix of salary, retirement, and health care benefit changes. It was rolled out in a classic shell game method with so many changes we didnt realize how much we lost until we went back to our desks and ran the numbers. The biggest loss was the pension. If you get hired here you will probably sit next to someone who will get 3000/mo when they retire and you wont get squat. Health care premiums went up to 360/mo from 160/mo. Co pays and deductables went up. Coverages decreased. The 1 thing I really dislike about this place is that they are constantly making changes to your compensation which makes it difficult for taking care of your family and planning for retirement.

Advice to Senior Management

We know nothing about retirement planning yet you expect us to do it all now. How would you like me to manage your retirement plan?Ididn't think so. But you expect me to manage my own? You got some nerve. That new Schwab 401K is very poor as far as 401K plans go. You took our pension and hung us out to dry!

Pros

Decent pay
After many years, good vacation benefits

Cons

Difficult to advance
No career mentoring unless you're a "chosen" one
Management does not show leadership - most micro-manage instead of seeing the bigger picture Lack of support from management when really needed
Communication from top is very minimal -- management believes they share "as needed" but no credit is given to employees to need the information

Advice to Senior Management

COMMUNICATE

Pros

If you're looking for a company with low stress and pay, them Daimler is the place.

Cons

No opportunity for advancement. Engineering practices are not well structured and tentative.

Advice to Senior Management

None