Scania Reviews

Pros

global activities
strong brand name
flexibility workinghours

Cons

workload
company mentality
salary
wage
mentality towards new employees

Pros

It's led by engineers, giving a very good and stable environment for those who like to do their job and work with really serious people. Work/life balance is excellent. Very good respect for people, at least outside of production. Benefits (except for the usual Swedish ones) are good, especially if you do sports, cultural stuff or car fixing. Good senior management, many enthusiastic and good people dedicated to their job.

Job security second to none.

Cons

Younger first line management sometimes more concerned with using buzzwords correctly and limiting their risks while sweet-talking than being realistic and work with what they got to produce the best. Their ability to walk the talk is low.

Little product/customer knowledge in many parts of the development. Also, especially, at younger management. This may be a long term way to just mediocre products while ramping up.

If you're kidless, not interested in the company sports/culture/etc events, and don't care too much about the organisational stuff, well, you can certainly find much better paid jobs elsewhere. And advance faster.

Job security sometimes too good... Rotten apples remain and spoil the other good ones.

Advice to Senior Management

One of Scanias' most important foundations is "respect for the individual". So far, so good. But Scania's on many levels incapable of seeing the individual and their varying needs. All employees are mostly treated like the imagined average employee. But, for me at R&D, how motivating is for example a bonus that has no connection to what non-production people do? Also, I'm not too interested in job security or arranged trips to the opera. I want proper feedback, and a salary that shows how good each employee is. The difference to other employers is soon too large.

Also, watch out for the buzzwording younger wannabe managers. They got to learn to walk the talk, see the individual and take the responsibility, to want their job because they desire a good product, not just because they want power and speak well.

Pros

The company understands the value of all employees. The possibilities to switch to new challenging positions are impressive, at least if you think that stepping sideways can be as rewarding as advancing up in the hierarchy.

Cons

Although underrated, Södertälje is not the most interesting of cities. Salaries could indeed be better and in some places you will find a reluctance to change.

Advice to Senior Management

It will be interesting to see what will happen with the ownership in the future.

Pros

You get really interesting and diverse tasks. Management shows great confidence in their employees and it is pretty much upp to the employee to take as much responsibility as you see fit. There is an ambience of success and self confidence at Scania. It is easy to be proud of the products that we develop. It is easy to communicate across the organisation. Management is supportive of personal development. A lot of resources are put into employee development, there is a whole separate organisation for education and Scania pays for truck driving licenses. Scania has a pretty good facility for sport activities, free for employees and next to free for next of kin.

Cons

Location, location, location! Södertälje is one of the most dull places I have been to. Commute to Stockholm is slow and time consuming considering that the distance is fairly small. Allthough it may be good for Scania as a company that research and development is concentrated to Södertälje it also means that the posibilities for postings outside of Sweden are slim at best. The salaries can hardly be described as the highest in the field.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the good work. Make sure that we get a lot of cooperative research projects with the rest of the Volkswagen group.

Pros

Scania is a great place to work when it comes to collegues and people. Everyone is supportive and work is usually done as a team. The organisation is very flat and usually all the managers are very experienced and very down to earth. You will find very few careerist managers as they usually dont last long. Since the organisation is so flat and in comparison smaller than simmilar companies in OEM Automotive, great responsibility is given from the start. No time spent doing "intelectual slave labour" for the first years. Instead you are thrown into the thick of it immediately, you will learn more here in one year than two in another company.

Cons

Flat organization means that you get large responsibilities from day one bu it also equals low chances of formal carrer advancement. Also wages are below industry standard as it is a deliberate strategy in order NOT to attact the most ambitious people, because these people are also the ones most likely to change job again when a better offer comes along. If salary is a bit issue for you, this will be a problem.

Advice to Senior Management

The company needs to better capture the global talent pool that exists in its offshore locations especially Brazil. Currently its a bit to HQ-centric and not really a global company in a true sence.