Southco Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Southco as an intern for less than a year

Pros – - a variety of industrial engineering projects
- excellent mentors
- supportive team

Cons – - captive fasteners, screws and latches are not the most interesting of products for an engineer

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Southco full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Hours are flexible. Updated CAD and business management in the past 5 years to stay with the times. The company is growing, but who knows when the rest of the economy takes off. The campus is beautiful. The love my fellow engineers, manufacturing, and toolroom workers. They are great people next to and learn from. I can't say that for 90% of management.

Cons – If your in the Good Ole Boy Club, you have a shot at getting promoted. Upper management is spending money to take the company in directions I do not like. They just became a Smokeless campus and were told that it help cut our health insurance costs. I do not smoke and my rates for health care doubled because they said the current cost were not sustainable. Then they give out extra money per share for yearly dividends, which cost more then what they saved on hiking the cost of health care up on the employee's. I constantly feel that I am untrained for my job, because there are band-aids on the redundant management websites and things change, but we are made aware of it. The company has become management top heavy.

Advice to Senior Management – Focus on your employees more, they are going to be around when the economy recovers and there are jobs else. The brave/smart one will leave first, then the followers. Then you'll have to pay the ones that are left behind more to stay and train those you need to hire. There are redundant websites and management tools in place left over from the good days of Southco. The office spaces are depressing and people only talk within their circles unless they are needed else where, fix that. More on-site job training.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Southco full-time for less than a year

Pros – From the corporate team in PA, to the newest Assembly temp, I am working with the best mix of people I have every worked with. I enjoy being treated as a professional. I am given tasks by my manager and he doesn't micromanage me or my day. It's nice being a Process Owner and having the respect from him to accomplish tasks how I see fit.

Cons – I haven't encountered any at this point. It is nice being part of a team.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep doing what we're doing. This is a great company and can get even better.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Southco full-time for less than a year

Pros – Everything, I'd say! I've been here just a few months but felt like I've known everyone forever since Day 1. Good pay, great benefits, great atmosphere.

Cons – Not a bad word to say about Southco. Still in my "honeymoon" phase, but most people there have been there 20 years+, that says a lot about a company.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep on keeping on. You are doing things right!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Southco full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Tuition assistance, great training, good benefits . Overall it is a great company to get started at

Cons – The pay isn't the best out there. The raises are a joke. The supervisor structure in the factory needs to be adjusted

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Southco

Pros – Decent pay & benefits. Employees were hard working souls.

Cons – Treated engineers like dogs. Local senior managers were lame. Although, I've heard that HQ has taken care of the problem.

Advice to Senior Management – Treat your engineering staff well and they'll stay on to make everyone lots of money.

Former Employee – worked at Southco

Pros – At the time, good people worked at Southco. More opportunity than a small company since it is a global company.

Cons – Management has removed many of the great people that worked at Southco and making things very difficult for the few people that remain.

Advice to Senior Management – I would advice management to value the employees they still have and to not abuse them. If things do not change, they will lose good people very quickly.

Former Employee – worked at Southco

Pros – Atmosphere and high caliber people.
One thing that Southco did well was screen people to the highest standards. When you went to work there, you knew you were working with some of the best engineers available. Brian M. worked to correct past internal hiring errors when he came on in 2000. This was hard to do in a culture where the engineer could do any job just because they were an engineer.
Instilling accountability using an internal scorecard let everyone know where they stood. Very open and honest communication when it was prudent.
The culture was in line with the mission statement

Cons – When I first landed there they had an excellent family oriented culture. Over the years as the senior management became more confident in the boards backing they became more ambitious, they tried to maintain that culture but undercut most of the programs that made it that way.

Being a privately held company that for years invested in a very incestuous hiring practices, they had the ultimate environmental in breeding. People were promoted that had no experience in the positions they were given. Often promoted well above their skill and education level, they tended to treat some people more "fair" than others. As a consequence they weren't seen as rewarding employees for exceptional work.

Advice to Senior Management – Tone down the growth ambition, I feel there was to much risk in too short of time.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Southco

Pros – Great benefits, most people were like family

Cons – Promotions based on who you were friends with and not how hard you worked.

Advice to Senior Management – Take it back to the way it used to be.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Southco

Pros – Good benefits and some opportunities to travel to some decent locations, if that's for you.
The culture still has some family feel to it, and the CEO is one of the best I've encountered for strategic planning and communication.

Cons – Good place to work if you don't mind plodding along at the same performance level with no encouragement or positive feedback. You get "dinged" for shortcomings at review time despite meeting other goals throughout the year.

Advice to Senior Management – Take a page from Brian M.'s book, and spend time learning what your employees do before agreeing it's okay to lay them off. It's very expensive to rebuild lost talent.