Ryerson Reviews

Pros

Challenging work environment with many opportunities for advancement

Cons

Large organization with very sluggish response time to market issues.

Advice to Senior Management

The structure of your organization should reflect a pyramid with fewer at the top. Your current organization is more of an hour glass with significant overhead.

Pros

The mid to senior level long-time employees had a sense of personal and professional balance and took pride in the company's heritage.

Cons

The new ownership by Platinum Equity promoted a culture of suspicion and dissension associated with poor planning and knee-jerk overcompensation for market conditions.

Advice to Senior Management

Sell the company to someone who knows the industry and can leverage vendor and customer relationships to build lasting value.

Pros

Competitive pay. Middle managers are very fair. If you do your job, no one is breathing down your neck. Yeah.

Cons

Platinum Equity is ruining a once proud company. They are making decisions that are in the best interest of their exit strategy, rather than in the best interests in the future of the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Sell the company to someone who knows the steel business. You are in lala land if you think that your directives will actually work in practice.

Pros

Oldest employer in Chicago, where there was once a feeling of camaraderie and unified mission. Their size had offered opportunities for advancement, as they had a policy of promoting from within.

Cons

Recent ownership by Platinum Equity, (3 years) has resulted in poor executive management decisions with regard to strategic planning and execution. Internal confusion has interrupted customer service, resulting in lost actual and potential revenues. Poor communication has created an environment of employee suspicion and mistrust, The ongoing and pending divestment will ultimately reduce market share and jeopardize remaining employment opportunities. Things may improve once Ryerson has new ownership.

Advice to Senior Management

Renew focus on vendor contracts, inventory management, (SAP is well-underutilized) and salvaging market reputation.

Pros

Product Variety, Customer Variety, exposed to fabrication in addition to raw materials, national in scope, plenty of opportunity for advancement, especially if willing to move.

Cons

Strategy is always changing....never been associated with a company where it's so guardrail to guardrail, and changes so abruptly. Is not a culture that values employees, but one that is always looking to prop up the next quarterly statement...few decisions being made for the long term good of the organization.

Advice to Senior Management

Even though employee communication has improved via telecons, employees are still confused on the tactical ways they can support the overall corporate strategy.

Pros

There are a lot of very talented people at Ryerson. The compensation and benefits are very good and there are definitely opportunities to advance or try something different. Most everyone company-wide is very pleasant and as helpful as possible.

Cons

There is a total lack of efficiency in everything Ryerson does. Many things also lack logic or ease. There is constant confusion about who is supposed to do what and how they are supposed to do it. Getting even simple tasks done is insanely time consuming. There is also a rampant culture of over-work and no work life balance. Working 70 hours a week is the only way to be noticed (and the only way to get anything accomplished). Additionally they make huge sweeping changes every few years which tend to be executed extremely poorly and end up further alienating their shrinking customer base.

Advice to Senior Management

Understand humans should work to live, not live to work. Think before you act in a drastic way. Work hard to provide efficiency and make sure everyone knows what their job actually is.

Pros

A large enough compnay to offer great benefits, overall decent wages and opportunities to advance based upon the number of people employed and the many locations all throughout North America.

Cons

Advancement & large salary increases have been very subjective in the last 4-5 years. Basically it boils down to being in really tight with the top boss. Also the parent company, Platinum Equities, has lofty expections for financial returns and will force cut back after cut back even when the company is still running very much in the black. Making a decent profit is not enough. Getting the grandest return for their investors very much supercedes rewarding Ryerson employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Corporate level execs need to pay attention to the concerns made by many employees, even when they are of an upper level manager. Not doing so and sweeping ethics issues under the carpet will have a long term negative impact on the business. The metal service center industry is small, so "dirty laundry" type news will get around quickly once it is uncovered.

Pros

unfortunately, there are many more reasons not to work at Ryerson but I can give one positive in my experience it was they paid me a very competitive salary.

Cons

I enjoy being a positive person but working for Ryerson just really brought me down. I guess my best example of this is when I started feeling like my name and my integrity was being tarnished while representing the company. There is right way and a wrong way to do business. Ryerson would be the example of what not to do.

Advice to Senior Management

I think your business model is flawed because your focus is providing a revenue stream for platinum equity instead of servicing your customer base.

Pros

Slowly getting better and having an easier time with financial issues. Great People there.

Cons

Hard times in the industry have really impacted the business model.

Pros

- I had great relationships with my customers.

Cons

Ryerson is a private-equity owned company (Platinum Equity). I prefer working for a private company. The workplace culture is poor, incentive plans are inconsistent, and mgmt struggles to "push back" to the top-down senior management. Several bright and talented/gifted individuals were let go during the economic downturn, to the detriment of those that remain.

In sales, you will have no say in your territory, it is assigned to you. You have little input in your forecast, it is given to you, often with little substance to justify the blue-sky sales target.

The direction of this company is unclear. It's sad to see. Ryerson has routinely lost money and market share. Platinum has not been successful in turning things around since taking over in 2007.

The once respected company is facing tough market competition.

To improve: Hopefully Ryerson regains respect in the market after being sold or returning as a stand-alone public company.

Advice to Senior Management

Without the ability to get "buy-in" from your people that do the work everyday, it will be difficult to fix the culture. Constant conference calls and closed doors make this cultural repair difficult.