PepsiCo Reviews

Pros

- Great place for new college grads to gain management experience
- In depth training program for campus recruits
- If performance is satisfactory, campus recruits will get promoted fairly easily
- Learn a great deal about how to run a business. TSM's not only need to make sure they are performing on the sales side, but must make sure delivery, warehouse and MEM are staying accountable
- Interaction with customers is great

Cons

- Everything falls on the TSM. If a delivery is late, out of stock, cooler is broken, it all falls on the TSM. The UM seems to hold TSM's to a higher level then the other managers, even though the pay is the same
- 60 hour work weeks, on call 7 days a week. Do not be surprised if you wake up every Saturday morning at 5am to a merchandiser calling in sick, store manager calling to ask a question, or a driver calling for directions.
- If a merchandiser or sales rep calls in sick, the TSM is most likely the one running the route.
- This is a what have you done for me NOW place to work. Forget the 5 pallet run of 12pks you sold in to all of your Wal Marts. If one store is missing Pepsi Max on one display, prepared to get degraded by your boss
- Stuff always falls down hill and usually stops at the TSM level. Due to many sales reps being union, you are at the unions mercy

- Again, PepsiCo looks great on a resume, and you surely do learn a lot. My advice would be work hard and put in your 5 years and than look at what else is out there. There is a lot of money and less stressful jobs out there to be filled.

Advice to Senior Management

You are trying to squeeze every last bit out of your managers. Treat them like managers. I've never seen so many sales reps and front line employees who did not want to become managers because it was just not worth it to them. You do a good job with front line appreciation, but that is at the expense of the managers. Who's going out to run a route with the driver? The manager. Who's filling in so the employee can have the day off? The manager. Possibly think about compensating the managers more financially. Also, you talk about flexible productivity where you can bring your work home with you instead of working in the office. At first, this sounded like a great idea, however it turned to the manager being on call 24/7 at the mercy of his own employees and boss.

Bottom line, appreciate your managers or they will start looking elsewhere.

Pros

Top CGP that looks good on the resume.
Many volunteer events to give back.
After 5 years of employment, you receive and extra week of vacation.
Get a chance to work with new systems like SAP and WebEx.
Sr. Management "cooks" breakfast for employees once a year. (Kinda neat.)
Co-workers have a generally pleasant demeanor.
Summer and winter hours are a plus. (Who can't use extra time off?)
Many Employee Groups to join for networking or support.
Tuition reimbursement.
You can wear jeans to work everyday.

Cons

No work life balance depending on your department.
Serious silo effect. If you hire into one department be prepared to stay.
Departments are very click-ish. Most don't know what departments are on other floors.
Talent that is brought in, is under valued and not used to their potential. Current employees that have obtained MBAs or MAs are still overlooked for promotions even with proven results.
You must be good at brown-nosing to get ahead in this place.
Annual raises are very small (barely cover cost of living) or not at all unless you are sales or management.
If you come up with an idea for process improvement, be ready to go through months of red tape before it might be approved for a test.
Many supervisors and managers pass projects from sr. management to their employees to complete. Then take the credit with no thanks to those who actually did the work.

Advice to Senior Management

If the company promotes work life balance, then you should stand by that statement. Utilize the talent you have before you lose them. (That doesn't mean give them more of the same work.)
All managers should take refreshers on how to be effective, supportive and how to use appropriate communication skills.

Pros

i liked being able to travel and not have to stay in one area

Cons

everything else sucked...management and team members

Advice to Senior Management

train so you know how to train your employees

Pros

Depending on your role fairly flexible hours
Fairly decent pay although I haven't had a raise in several years because I have reached the "max".

Cons

Rather than deal with incompetent employees they are either moved to other departments or if you are in a leadership role and worthless you are "promoted" to another facility.
Way understaffed or work is unfairly distributed
Since the conversion to SAP it takes 2-3 people to do the same thing that one was able to do before.
SOX is out of control
Management needs to manage. Constantly telling us we need to come up with cost savings but employees sit in the cafeteria for hours and then get paid OT to do their jobs. Tired of hearing that we are working with adults and they know what they are suppose to be doing. They aren't doing it so someone needs to make them. Why can't management figure that out??
Way too much to do for salaried folks but their "reward" is a mandatory offsite meeting for half a day to have fun. Kind of hard to have fun when you then have to be there for 12 -14 hours the next day to make up for it

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees. There are some really good ones who have great ideas and they get it. You want to save money don't pay hourlys OT until after 40 hours have been worked. I'd take 2 days off at straight pay during the week to get paid time and a half or double time on the weekend too if I could. You talk about cutting OT and then allow things like this. Walk the talk! It gets so exhausting listening to everything you are going to do and you do nothing.

Pros

Ability to work from home depending on responsibilities. Employees prior to 2011 eligible for pension. Location is easily accessible via major highways. Close to retail and restaurants.

Cons

Forced to work with onshore/offshore model. Takes 10-12 onshore/offshore to do same volume of work as one top American. Quality of work is far lower than it once was and cost is greatly increased because of coordination overhead. Organization has gone overboard on internal processes which has rapidly increased overall cost of projects. Organization is top heavy with too many thinkers and not enough quality doers.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire trustworthy, quality Americans and drastically cut processes/oversight so that projects can be delivered to business units with higher quality & lower cost. This would also prevent subject matter knowledge loss that is currently happening making subsequent projects more costly in the research area.

Pros

stable and good growth possibilities

Cons

unscheduled overtime and high stress

Advice to Senior Management

make career planning opportunities avaialble to all levels of workforce and make allowaqnces for extra overtime that is required on short notice

Pros

benefits are generally better that what you can get at other corporations unless you are a new hire; current employees have better benefits (e.g., pension benefits) than recent and future hires

Cons

-Politics
-Inconsistent policies that contradict general corporate policies (i.e., performance review due dates and deliverables, consistent interpretation of corporate expectations - 50/50 weighting of business and people results)
-Silo mentality by marketing, IT (BIS), shared services (accounts payable and receivables)
-There is a shift of recruiting younger employees and moving more mature employees laterally rather than developing and promoting them

Advice to Senior Management

-Stop protecting the dinosaur managers who rule by fear and are not progressive; they know how to game the organization health survey results; look to promote from within else you will keep losing people; don't be proud that Pepsi is an academy company which implies that people DO NOT WANT TO STAY and see greener pastures elsewhere.
-It may be a cost saving measure to hire the unemployed to fill open positions and pay them a lot less than market rate; this unfortunately will cause more dissatisfaction internally and therefore an exodus of people who could have been groomed for the open position.
-Also get more organized and focused on the marketing front - social media may be for the new generation but the core brands do not fit well with them
-This is where Coke was a decade ago - DISORGANIZED

Pros

Strong Company driven intranet that is very progressive.
Stong presence for food innovation.

Cons

Inconsistencies with corporate and site alignment drivers.
Upper management eschelon in constant transition.
Limited support for life / work balance amongst salaried and hourly personnel.

Pros

-Decent pay for starting out of college.
-"Weekends off" for some positions.
-Company car
-Good name recognition as a resume builder

Cons

-Never enough staffing to complete daily tasks
-Stores always complaining about lack of service
-Cell phone constantly rings even when your off your phone must be on and rings all hours of the day and night.
-Max raise 3% a year so you may start at a decent salary but then your stuck.
-Want perfect stores/cut hours no balance.
-No work life balance whatsoever!

Advice to Senior Management

Have a customer service center to handle customer calls then dispatch as needed. We are often times the middle men for stupid questions.
Work-Life balance!

Pros

Flexible work schedule
Company helps develop employees

Cons

Promotions and internal positions are filled based on who you know and not who is the best qualified.