Sun Chemical Employee Review

I worked at Sun Chemical

Pros – There were some great and helpful people I worked with at Sun Chemical, mostly those that were at a similar level to me. The hours were very reasonable (37.5 hour work week) and I very rarely took any work home with me.

Cons – Sun is mainly an ink manufacturer (for industrial printers, not the HP you have at home) and since print is dying so is ink manufacturing. Most of the work going on was not a technical challenge or innovation but rather "cost-out" measures, trying to make products cheaper. They did try to get into printed electronics while I was there as an emerging field, but nobody there had the requisite experience to succeed in that field and I don't think that division has sold a single product yet. While most of the people there were very nice and quite helpful, there were some bad apples that spoiled the barrel. We had one guy who purposely mislabeled common-use materials so nobody else would know what they really were so he could have his own personal stash. This violates so many regulations I don't even know where to begin, but it also sabotages your planned experiments when inventory shows you have 10 kg of a raw material but someone has hidden it. When the plot was found out, there were no consequences for the actions.

Advice to Senior Management – when someone is doing something that is hurting the company and is potentially dangerous, there needs to be some actual consequences. Meanwhile, they make a big show about safety in other regards where no real danger is present. The pay is too low for the discipline and the area in order to attract and retain talented people, so those that remain at this company will always be mediocre employees talent-wise. If you want to start an initiative into a new area you need to hire a critical mass of people with expertise in the field (especially at a management level) in order to succeed.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend