McMaster-Carr Reviews in Chicago, IL Area

Pros

The pay is very good and there is a good work like balance for this company. Great location in chicago

Cons

There is little room for improvement in your own.

Advice to Senior Management

They need to respect people more

Pros

Benefit package and hourly compensation
Fellow employees were good people (even though fear drove them to be dishonest)

Cons

Can be hard to endure physically if you consider yourself a hard worker
No opportunity for advancement
No job security (be prepared to be moved to another area)
You will be hazed and put to the test, and they can care less whether or not you like it
Benefits and compensation will be used as an excuse to justify why inhumane standards are enforced
I worked with people who had degrees in areas completely unrelated, however, they took the job for compensation purposes, However, it is not worth your labor and unethical standard.
Be prepared to brown nose, and if you don't, then you can prepare yourself for failure
If your disliked, you will not last (for whatever reason)

Advice to Senior Management

I was told after I resigned that I was a very hard worker. Upper management should pay more attention and that comes through genuine leadership who know and relay how you perform in an honest manner. You cant expect ivy league supervisors and managers to come in understanding how to lead. Leadership takes experience not a piece of paper. Hold managers to ethical standards in how they conduct business. Never judge a book by it's cover but take time to know who your working with.

Pros

Salaries and benefits are like none other for the type of work done here. Lots of smart people with interesting and diverse backgrounds.

Cons

McMaster has a very conservative/stalwart approach to doing business that has helped them survive for over 100 years. While this would be fine alone, they also recruit highly ambitious/forward thinking candidates for all aspects of the company, but most notably for their management path. As a result, there is often a clash between candidates who believe that their ideas can help the company grow and the company's resistance to change. Most get frustrated and leave, resulting in a fairly high turnover rate.

Advice to Senior Management

For the most part, I think the company knows what it is doing. Although I am one of the many who left because we were not a match, I get the business model. I do, however, think that the company is too easily seduced by labels (e.g. top tier institutions). Perhaps they may find employees who will stick around for the long haul by looking at the top talent at second tier institutions, for many of these students could have easily gone to an ivy, but chose not to because of, among other things, finances or family obligations, not unlike the very things that keep many their current employees there.

Pros

* Unprecedented benefits.
* The vast majority of workers care about what they do, they do it in a professional manner and are always willing to help.
* If they see potential in you they will develop you.
* They move people around (again if you have the education and the potential) frequently.

Cons

* Management's treatment of employees has declined in recent years and is hurting morale and employee loyalty.
* If you are not on the I.T. side of things or you don't have an ivy league education it's not the greatest place to work, even with the benefits.
* If you are at all a slacker, forget about it. We work hard at McM.

Advice to Senior Management

Upper management should keep a closer eye on how middle management treats its employees. No one can argue that managers that produce results are good but there needs to be a "people skills" minimum requirement. Results at the expense of employees who were once willing to go the extra mile for McMaster and now collectively resent the way they're treated and look out for themselves before the company and its customers.

Pros

Great pay, awesome benefits, good feedback

Cons

Long hours, upper management may need to listen more to its employees

Advice to Senior Management

None

Pros

Superior compensation and work/life balance. This private company has been around for decades and has oodles of profits to attract and retain employees. Profit sharing for all employees (i.e. including the lowest levels) helps gain goal alignment within a department.

Cons

There is a specific way management wants every process to run (e.g. Write in the active voice, a comma should go here, apply this label here) which makes change management difficult for someone new. You do not have control over your career path and, as a supervisor, you feel like a talking head--that is, passing down the decisions made by the precious few in power at the organization. Even though the company attracts bright talent, it comes across as treating them like naive children. It's a disconnect to hire bright, creative minds and then confine them to a few approaches with limited influence/ownership. In the end, people stay around due to committment to the compensation.

Advice to Senior Management

Consider focusing more on the end goal of an operation rather than the process alone. Give employees an opportunity to participate in their career advancement by allowing them to post for job positions.

Pros

The benefits are tremendous as many have described. The people are generally good to work with. You are rewarded for good solid work (either monetarily and/or by getting to move around the company). If you are not in management (and even for management to a lesser degree), the work life balance can't be beat.

Cons

Although the management development position has worked for the company, it still creates resentment among a good number of regular employees. You have to find the excitement in the job because it's not inherently fun or exciting.

Advice to Senior Management

I think you should expand into selling consumer electronics so that we can all take advantage of good employee deals.

Pros

100% Tuition Reimbursement, very good medical benefits, fair pay, you don't take your work home with you. They helped me with the down payment on my house as well as gave me a monetary gift when I got married. The culture of the company is that they do care about taking care of employees and if you do your job and don't screw around it is a fine to place to work. I think some departments are better than I others my department was small and not run by an "MD" so it is a good place to work.

Cons

"MD" stands for management development. Management development hires are young people hired right out of select colleges around the country at really high starting salaries for the purposes of becoming the company's management. In my time here I'm aware of a only 1 or 2 people who weren't hired as an MD being promoted into a supervisor position. Obviously everybody is different and I was never directly managed by an MD but I didn't like how this worked and I was not impressed by the most of MDs that I dealt with. They are smart and motivated people but what caliber of person goes to an Ivy league school and then takes a job at McMaster-Carr? Don't you want to do something more with your degree? I've earned a masters degree while at the company and have received positive reviews every year I've worked here and have not even heard mention of a promotion. I found this to be really demotivating.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep doing what you are doing, the company has been profitable and filling a niche for over 100 years. Their policy on promoting must work for somebody just not for me.

Pros

Benefits. There are/were a few good supervisors & managers there. For about the first year, I loved my job. The assembly manager who went to the office shortly after I joined the department was incredible. He valued his employees and went out of his way to help them out because he knew we would do the same for him. I'm guessing this is why he was moved from the department. This is definitely not a quality the company values in management.

Cons

I could write a novel. The majority of supervisors and managers at McMaster are out for number one only. It seems like the worse they can make their employees look, the better they do. They mess things up that were working fine before only to create a new project to draw attention to themselves and what they can do in the company. They have different standards for different people, showing favoritism to those who neglect their duties in order to chat with them at the management desk.

The morale in the warehouse is terrible. Everyone walks on egg shells fearing the words "error," "review," or "hey <your name here> let's take a walk..." People who work hard and keep their head down are punished for making mistakes and "not showing interest in their job." Of course someone who is working hard all day and completing more than their fair share of work is going to make more mistakes than the guy who's walking around singing loudly & joking around with his supervisor buddies and people in other departments (not to mention distracting the people who are actually trying to work). But hey, that's what works around there. If you have no problem being viewed as lazy and taking advantage of your co-workers, then I'd highly suggest becoming drinking buddies with your supervisor. You'll be on the fast track to advancement.

As I said in the Pros... there are some good managers and supervisors, but they are few and far between. And chances are, if you like them, they won't be in your department for long. There are many who are legitimately nice people but are so afraid for their job, they have no backbone. Beware of these ones too, they don't have your back.

Like I said, I could write a novel but I'd hope this is enough to send anyone running. To put it simply, I was making great money while I was there but I'd rather live modestly than be miserable.

Advice to Senior Management

Take a close look at your "superstar employees," you know the ones hanging out by your desk each day? Then look at the person who's quietly busting their butt from the time their shift begins to the time that they leave. They haven't stopped working long enough to shoot the breeze with you today, but which one is really contributing to your company?

Pros

Pay, benefits, profit sharing. Tuition reimbursement.

Cons

Lack of respect shown to employees by management. They treat people like children. They tend to fire people for no apparent reason, this keeps the rest of us subdued and paranoid. Don't get me wrong, most people who get fired are underperforming. However, it seems like some people get fired randomly for no reason. They pay well and the benefits are great, but that's about it. Hard work means nothing to them. You can work your butt off all year and get a horrible review because your supervisor is a 21 year-old kid with no work experience who wants to practice giving someone a bad review. It happens here. All in all, it pays the bills and the benefits and hours are good. You just have to practice biting your tongue and forget about self-respect once you walk through those doors.

Advice to Senior Management

Whats the point? As long as they pay well and have good benefits, people will be willing to be their crash test dummies so they don't have to change anything.