Rain Bird Reviews

Pros

Great Benefits
Excellent Compensation
People
Location
Good middle managers

Cons

Company is outsourcing good jobs
Closed communication from upper management

Advice to Senior Management

Open communication
Listen to lower levels
You are losing the famiy friendly culture which existed for decades

Pros

Exceptional people for the most part. Leading manufacturer of irrigation equipment so the opportunities to learn are fantastic.

Cons

Work environment is the worst I have ever experienced. The sad part is it does not have to be. Most employees are exceptional in what they do and left alone could be extremely productive. Management sees things differently however and seems to believe they must force productivity through intimidation.

Advice to Senior Management

Back off. You presumably hire high quality people for a reason. Respect their opinions, give them the opportunity to try things - even if they fail occasionally.

Stop being so secretive. When high-level decisions are made about the direction the company is going, communicate it to the employees to get their buy-in. Things will run more smoothly if everyone is working together.

Abandon the incentive-type bonus structure and replace it with a profit-sharing plan. The organization is not structured properly to create sensible year-long incentive plans so that sort of bonus simply frustrates employees and results in unnecessary interdepartmental conflict. A profit-sharing plan will encourage everyone to work toward the common goal of increasing profit.

Pros

The only pro is that they pay better than the competition. They have the best products on the market and the best people at the sales and product management level

Cons

They have to pay better, because it is such a poor working environment.
Benefits are terrible
upper management is focused on wrong things.
no feeling of support for employees
High turnover of product managers, Engineers and sales people.

Advice to Senior Management

Update your management style to the new century. If you continue to do what you have always done the 60% turnover rate is never going to change.

Pros

Good salary, still some people and working technics, pleasant location to live, what else???? Hard to find more resaons now!

Cons

I confirmed most of the other reviews: old dictatorial owner with yes man senior staff, the family and team spirit has disappeared. This company was the leader in irrigation, now it is a looser company trying to follow the competition with no long term strategy, only the short termstrategy: profitability to show good P&L to prepare next step.......

Advice to Senior Management

Don't believe the work environment feed back! Most of employees fear to tell the truth as they are sure it is not anonymous. Glassdoor gives you the actual feedback!

Pros

Location
Pay and benefits
Great people
Good work/life balance

Cons

Senior Management
Blaming environment
Lack of execution from top down
Turnover

Advice to Senior Management

It is unfortunate that most of the comments regarding Senior Management are true. With the excpetion of some directors, most of them have been with the company all their careers and lack external perspective of how well the company could perform if they invested in systems and stopped worrying about the small things. TIme management for senior staff is laughable - many cannot multitask and spend hours on worthless reports, emails, meetings, etc. These are habits from the 1960s and 1970s, and are simply useless in today's environment. It is true that most of senior management is very poor and would not be successful in obtaining senior level jobs with other companies. But there are some bright spots in the management, so look for those people when you consider hiring into Rain Bird.

Pros

Tucson, az area employer, tucson is a nice place to live and raise a family.

Salary above average

Working for Rain Bird turns this nice city into a CAUSTIC situation.

Cons

NO respect for the individual
Obusive personnel practices
Hiring practices and promises very unehtical
Overall working environment creates a leve of distrust at all levels.

Advice to Senior Management

Change before it is too late

Pros

Good products. Good associates at RB. You will develop a "We are all in this together" approach with your peers; conversations will be about moving on and how the job search is progressing. You will develop a great network of friends as Rain Bird hires and fires randomly. Many move on to more fulfilling jobs. Your contacts and friends from your time at Rain Bird will prove invaluable in the future.

Cons

Listless company with no vision/message from ownership. Management struggles to deal with owner as they try to implement strategy. Culture is a disaster, management by fear carries the day. Office is depressing with everyone fearful of a pink slip.

The market looks at Rain Bird as a company that can't seem to get it's act together with sales people, product managers, and engineers coming and going each year. Independent distribution is tired of the endless parade of new sales people who last less than two years in the position, and have no industry experience, while the competition has a sales force that has a staff of reps that on average have been with them for more than a decade.

The Rain Bird strategy over the last few years has been to lower pricing of key product catagories in an effort to drive the competiton out of the business. The result has been shrinking margins for the distributors and less profitabilty for every one.

Corrective action review process at Rain Bird is a total disaster with indescriminate choosing of people who do not "measure up". Once chosen by the directors to be placed on "corrective action" , middle managers will create issues with their reports which have very little to do with reality or the contributions the individual makes to advance sales. As a result, it leaves you with little respect for them. They are a weak lot generally, selling out their direct reports on the direction of incompetent directors. They are biding their time, padding their resumes hoping to leave soon. The good managers/leaders who really care about their employees leave quickly as they will not be a part of the disfunctional negative system and culture. If they stay and try to support their targeted employees, they too find themselves on corrective action.

Company alienates independent distribution network, always promoting their strategy to "go direct to end user" while competitors reap the benefits of partnering with distributors and getting the most out of them to advance their sales. As a result the competition has an incredible advantage in the marketplace. Distribution recommending competitive products over Rain Bird goods is common throughout the domestic market at most distributor branch locations .

As others have written before me, do your research, contact past and present employees. Contact distribution and you will find that it is a troubled organization confirming the consistant negative reviews this company receives on Glass Door.

Advice to Senior Management

I do not have any advice for management as they are a hopeless bunch at Rain Bird. Many are looking for other opportunities outside of the organization, and are merely trying to navigate through the disfunctional system until they find other employment. To those core employees at the director and management level who manage to thrive and survive, they know how bad the culture is and are just going along for the ride.

Pros

location
pay is good
peers are nice people to work with. Some are very intelligent and some are riding the coat tails of others.

Cons

Directors are clueless ( seriously wonder how they got there!)
High employee turn over ( think about that for a moment!)
the company is outsourcing as much as is possible. Many positions are now in the hands of the Mexicans and Chinese.
product quality is now going to suffer.
Sales will plummet.

Advice to Senior Management

STOP outsourcing and thus selling low quality products. Huge OEMS are now seeing the light and pulling out of foreign manufacturing markets. You may save a dollar now but you will suffer in the end.

Pros

Good colleagues, some very talented people (excluding senior management)
Good product, Strong brand (for now)

Cons

Where should I start? Worst company I have ever worked for. I made the mistake of ignoring glassdoor.com reviews before I accepted the position. That was a huge mistake......

It is a culture of paranoia and criticism. It is referred to as "coaching", to put it mildly. But rest assured it is criticism. If I hear "let me offer you some coaching" I think I will lose it.

Most are "managing" their careers vs. managing the business. With this being said you will get stabbed in the back in a heart beat for bringing fresh, innovative ideas to move the company forward. If you do not fall in line you become a victim of the "forced ranking" that no one wants to fall victim to but all will eventually. Average turnover is 2 years, literally.

Senior Management are absolute morons. They are hypocrites in regards to their "feedback" as they will often make the same mistakes and have no clearly defined strategy or ounce of leadership ability. I have been part of meetings and asked myself "did I just hear that?" They break ever fundamental principal of sound business.

Rain Bird claims to value its customers but frankly it is all lip service. They place no value on their "distributor partners" and will create as much chaos for them as possible. Contractors are defecting very quickly as RB now is competing not only against the distributor but now the contractor with an online store (selling it less than what they can sell to a homeowner).

Trust me, most of the posts here are legit and frankly, well written. I get a chuckle at the feedback referencing the metal detectors. It is true, why I am not sure. I mean everything is mostly made from plastic. No one smiles in the corp. office. Feels like a morgue. Toxic...

Stay away if you value your dignity.

Advice to Senior Management

Grow a set and demonstrate an ounce of leadership and you would be amazed at the results you would get

Pros

Good Pay
Opportunities to develop projects
Very smart people working there

Cons

Ranking system for evaluations
Double talk. Their values say something and their actions do the opposite

Advice to Senior Management

Be congruent