I would stay away for a while - Sr Product design engineer Oregon Tool Employee Review

2.0
Sep 8, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Hybrid schedule and easy access to the awesome labs. Benefits are decent for the area, although there is no HSA plans available.

Cons

OT was purchased by a private equity firm that lost a bunch of money in the purchase. They are openly only interested in cost savings projects to squeeze every last dollar of value before selling the company to the next suckers. There is no real investment or interest in innovation or really anything with a payback of more than a year since they (the owners) are not planning to be around for long. They had a few rounds of layoffs since 2021, with maybe 3 rounds in 2022 alone. All the good engineers were let go or left on their own. The senior leadership team is mostly people with manufacturing and operations backgrounds: great for cost savings and efficiency, but there is no one leader with experience creating new products. They are almost comically oblivious to innovation and design. It has been 2-3 years of big talk of innovation and upcoming new product projects but nothing ever happens beyond meetings and power point slides. OT used to be a good company for creative engineers. Right now is a good gig if what you want is a cozy 9-5 where you can lay low and collect a paycheck while the higher ups do their presentations about projects that will never materialize. But if have the drive to create and do great engineering (and want to have some projects to talk about in your resume for your time at OT), I would stay away at least until after Platinum Equity is gone and whoever the new owners are have had a few months to replace the leadership team. Note: below it asks to review the CEO Paul Tonnesen but Paul was removed by the owners “to care for family” a couple months ago, and replaced by some dude Elliot that the owners brought. Paul had put a lot of innovation on hold to comply with the owners: Elliot was brought in to double down on the cost savings stuff. If you are an engineer, I would stay away for as long as Elliot is around.

Explore other reviews about Oregon Tool

5.0
Jan 27, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Flexible, transparent and room to grow.

Cons

Would be nice to get a quarterly bonus or yearly.

3.0
Sep 30, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good pay Good work life balance depending on position

Cons

Management doesn’t have a lot of time to train

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