Monsanto Company Reviews

Pros

Flat organization and ability to voice concerns with management.
Diverse workforce and ability to learn from others.
Most employees are very loyal to the company.
Good team-based environment where networking is highly encouraged.

Cons

Mid-senior level leaders are constantly rotating and it's hard to keep up with.
Compensation practices are completely outdated and there's too much inequity.
Heavily matrixed and alot of time is wasted gathering unnecessary buy-in. This stalls important decisions and can block progress.

Advice to Senior Management

Spend less time on the failing employees and more time promoting successful ones.
Straighten out matrix and streamline reporting relationships.
Give re-orgs more time to prove success/failure before moving on to the next thing so that mistakes aren't repeated and successes can be fully explored.

Pros

-Nice co-workers
-Interesting work
-Interesting industry
-Work that makes a difference

Cons

-Horrible career pathing
-Complete lack of diversity in the workforce, management
-Promotions only within certain closed circle networks, preference always given to Washington University grads.
=Promotion seldom if ever based on talent, almost always on networking and "knowing someone"
-Most management jobs not even posted

Advice to Senior Management

Human Resources needs to be strengthened and overhauled. Much greater emphasis on diversity training (Monsanto let go their diversity officer). More of an open system for promotions, based on merit, not on which university you graduated from or who you golf with.

Pros

It provides a good comfortable life style for me and my family in todays economic situation.

Cons

no issues that i see that need attention.

Advice to Senior Management

none

Pros

Monsanto challenges you to be the best scientist you can be while tackling the words most challenging problems. If you have a good idea, you can be given the opportunity to test it! A bottom up mentality when deciding what projects will be tackled. A very intellectually rewarding work environment!

Cons

The work hours can be long. With a company as big as Monsanto, sometimes communication can be lacking between functional groups. However, you will be rewarded as an employee for being to penetrate this and forces you to grow not only as a scientist but as a project and team leader.

Advice to Senior Management

Understand that big science doesn't happen overnight. There is always a feeling that everything should have been yesterday when you only found out about it today!

Pros

Good benifits
Global networking
Multi business divisions
Vegetable Division is good to be in, if your in HR.
Cross Training
Good to get in if your a new college grad looking for a good CV builder.

Cons

Compensation is below industry standards.
Lack of yearly salary increases, you get about 2% , if your lucky.
Politics , too many slogans that management doesn't follow, just take down all the propaganda posters.
Too many re-org's and not retaining the good hard workers.
Most of the executives in my division are from other division of Monsanto and have a hard time understanding the business, since is is very complex and not Da Row crops.
The DPR yearly review system is really about if your boss likes you or not!

Advice to Senior Management

Spend more time knowing about the business before taking on more side projects and consuming the time of others focused on driving the business. Try and nail down the org structure for the Veg business and stop making changing every other week....its been 5 years and we still cant get it right!

Pros

Cutting edge science. Work/life balance. Opportunity to achieve high potential.

Cons

Some areas have a reluctance to report bad news up through the hierarchy. When layoffs happen, the cuts are drastic and often fall disproportionately on older, more highly paid workers. Those who remain are saddled with too much work. People are not held accountable for absenteeism. Sometimes quality takes a back seat to cost savings measures. People are not held accountable for strategic mistakes that cost customers.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't allow cost saving to dominate at the expense of quality. Provide more support for ideas that come from individual contributors rather than from management down. Fire the decision-makers that raised prices on Roundup and seeds so much in 2008-2009.

Pros

good restaurant, nice people. low salary

Cons

low salary, okay environment, low wage

Pros

Flex Time is a plus

Cons

division of contracted employees and the Monsanto Hired employees

Pros

Good benefits, some down time in the off season.

Cons

Poor communication, a lot of scape-goating, office politics are distracting.

Pros

Benefits are good. Culture/work environment is friendly and even during stressful times, fun and easy to work in.

Cons

Within a single department, there is lack of consistency between how the various teams are run.
Processes are barely existent. Too many items slip through cracks and holes due to lack of accountability for some teams and blame is put on other teams.