Rockwell Automation Reviews

Pros

-Great pay
-Good / up to date technologies to work with

Cons

They fire / lay-off people way too often. There is way too much turn-over in management and staff. Un-properly trained management. People are promoted to managers with no management training and subsequently make basic management mistakes that drastically effect their employees.

Advice to Senior Management

HR needs to get a backbone and stop being pawns. IT Management is allowed to fire at will without any HR intervention.

Pros

Benefits are OK. Facility is nice. It has a full gym and a workout room and other on-site goodies. Too bad the overworked employees don't have time for that.

Cons

No work/home life balance. Management wants to squeeze every once out of your personal life, to the point you eventually don't have one.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the people who do the REAL work, and get them the tools and time they need to do a job they can be proud of.

Pros

Peers and colleagues generally polite and helpful

Cons

1. Work/Life Balance (nonexistent)
2. Very HQ-centric
3. Lack of recognition from management
4. For every 100 things you do right, focus is on the 1 thing you did wrong
5. Lack of career advancement opportunities (unless you are in HQ)

Advice to Senior Management

1. LISTEN, THINK, then SOLVE employee concerns
2. Get out of your own way and HELP

Pros

-Management works effectively with employees
-Clear sense of reward for success
-Friendly, efficient work environment
-Plenty of opportunities for advancement

Cons

-Very few managers with comprehensive knowledge of the product. They are usually extremely good within their field, but knowledge is very specialized.

Advice to Senior Management

Work to understand the complete customer care process. This was a continuing process while I worked there and may have improved since I left.

Pros

-Work on cool projects (sometimes) Automation is important for the future. Can make an impact on the world.
-Somewhat flexible work, never had a problem getting time off when I need or want it.
-Most of the people I work with are nice people.
-Pays well
-Management is nice, environment relatively stress free
-401k match
-Company is dedicated to our safety

Cons

-Aging workforce not allowing young workers to advance.
-If you get in the LDP program the company opens up for you, if you don't then you're more or less stuck.
-If you manager sucks, then guess what...you can't get anywhere.
-Route to management position is through technical paths. Assumed that all technical leaders will make good managers. My manager is proof that this is not true.
-Company organized in verticals, lacking tools for cross polination of ideas and personal networking.
-Above hinders innovation, slows down prod dev and paints a weak future.
-Old school.
-Crappy, crappy computer expected to run process control software and IO servers. Lags to hell. Slow internet means downloading tech manuals is an overnight game.

Advice to Senior Management

You got feedback that the career advancement is bad, and people don't know how to navigate it. Your reaction has been to do a series about career stuff, however, the message is you're passing the buck back to the employees to make their own way.

For example I have 6 years experience, BSME and MEng Engineering Management degrees and capable of so much more than taking a redline drawing from a senior guy with 30 years industry experience and translating it into AutoCAD format. I don't even get to put my initials on the rev...

-Establish an internal social network so that people can help others across the verticals.
-Elevate and empower the product manager position so you can remove excessive gates from the approval process, thus speeding up time to market of new features and products.
-(Local to my office) remove barrier between management and engineering staff so people can grow into new positions. Remove "single point of contact" mentality from internal structures so engineers doing the work understand why.
-Value the old farts equally as much as the youngsters.
-Stretch employees that are willing to be stretched and allow them to fail once in a while. Its an important part of the learning process.
-Require continuous training for middle management. An essential skill of a manager is to be able to listen. Why does my manager dominate the next 30 minutes following a simple question of mine? Open door policy but manager is always on the phone...Manager once told me he didn't hire me so he doesn't know what my career aspirations and current skillset is.
-Improve morale through events, more direct and in person communication to employees from management.
-Consider agile development as an enabler for creating a new business model in engineering services.

Pros

Intelligent peers, culture in the office, learned a lot. Intense learning curve.

Cons

very stressful. poor IT support, no feedback unless you screw up, managers way overworked, and it appears the information they get changes daily. Identical contract positions listed at different prices within a short period of time. Hiring contractors for three months is not a long enough duration to get past steep learning curve.

Pros

- summer hours
- some great people

Cons

top management not supportive
no career management

Advice to Senior Management

value your employees more
remove your C performers

Pros

I like the culture of the company. They allow you to think outside the box.

Cons

At times things are approached conservatively.

Advice to Senior Management

Great job listening to the employees.

Pros

Good compensation, great co-workers, good work-life balance

Cons

Matrixed organization could lead to bureacracy

Pros

Normal, healthy working hours with equal treatment for all employees. Stable job culture. Cooperative environment with managers mostly adopting open door policies.

Cons

Communication from managers to people at bottom can be better. Career progression should be discussed more frequently and with more clarity.

Advice to Senior Management

More concrete actions should be taken for various initiatives rolled out, if anything, sets the right direction for people to follow