Volkswagen Group of America Reviews

Pros

One week off straight every month

Cons

swing shift, rotating 12 hour schedule

Pros

A lot of good people to work with.

Cons

The work/life balance is hard sometimes

Pros

The pay was great, mainly because of the way Tennessee structures its paycheck taxes.

Cons

The management team on the blue-collar side of that factory is nothing but do-nothing bullies who harass and threaten their folks to make them do what they want. I was interviewed, hired on, and discussed working 4 days a week, 10 hour shifts a day. Night shift. Whatever, more than manageable. Fast forward to my first actual day there, turns out everything I was told in orientation, training, and the interview was a flat out, bald-faced lie. 4 10s a week? Try 6 12s. Only day off was Sunday, and you better bet your sweet butt I had nothing left in my tank after pulling a 72 hour week working the docks in that place. The difference in work load expectation is utter garbage too. I'd get home at 8 am, sleep til 5 or 6 in the afternoon and wake up to try and cram as much housework and grocery buying in as I could. Then it'd be try to have some time for myself before going to bed again at 7 or 8 to wake up in time to drive right back to that place for another 72 hour work week in a boiling hot factory with nothing in the way of meaningful breaks. 12 hour shifts of that crap for a measly 12 bucks in 2018. Your supers just sit around at the office playing games with the office girls and get irritated when you ask for direction on a new task.

Pros

cool perks, lease cars, access to enterprise nature park, work can be really interesting sometimes, great location, cost of living, slightly better than area comp, moving in the right direction with electric cars

Cons

-most of your work will be in german -no negotiations on salary or vacation -experience highly dependent on your group and manager -lots of basic tools to do your job are often missing -lots of proprietary systems from the 90’s, all in german, with no training available -takes forever to get things changed, slow moving and archaic -very siloed because performance objectives force internal business units to do what’s in their own best interest, not the company’s -all real engineering and development work either goes on in mexico or germany -must be fluent in german to advance past a certain point -HR system designed to suppress employee salaries and promotions regardless of performance -you will rarely ever get more than a cost of living raise -poor reputation for unreliability and overly complex designs -people stay because they’re tied to the area and can’t find anything better -German managers have to do foreign service assignments to get promoted to the next level, they come here and make terrible long term choices that look good in the short term, then once they leave the locals are left to clean the messes up -most likely will have a new manager every 12-18 months -systems are setup in a way that discourages innovation -lots of talk about customer focus but every decision is really driven by $$$, regardless of impact to the customer

Pros

Big company, cars, a lot of exposure

Cons

slow with technology and maintains narrow processes individualized by teams rather than a solid group process

Pros

The pay is good. Lease car options are a plus. Good 401k and insurance.

Cons

The hours are horrible. If you are single and have no life then this is the ideal place to work and save up. 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. And don't you dare make a single mistake no matter how exhausted you are. A thing as simple as forgetting to include clips that are already supposed to be installed on the sunvisor or picking a evi4 instead of a dvi4 sunvisor can get you terminated. It does not matter that the line does not stop and you can fix it by walking 6 steps and giving the correct part. The line will claim downtime to cover for downtime caused by the line's own mistakes. If you are a family person, give up all hope of seeing your spouse and/or kids for more than 7 hours per week. Because after 12 hours, you are so exhausted that you just want to eat a quick bite and sleep. They want robotic precision using human resources. And they rule by fear. You will constantly have your job threatened over some of the smallest issue.

Pros

Interesting industry and exciting changes coming to adapt from an automotive company to a software company. Smart co-workers that want to make difference.

Cons

If you are a woman that wants to advance in your career, this isn't the right place. It is mostly men in leadership and management roles, and some are just figureheads that don't contribute to team success. Unqualified men and clock watchers are frequently promoted, and leadership says they have special (ambiguous) talents so they don't have to work as hard. In the meantime hardworking women that work evenings and weekends are overlooked for promotion. They will hold a carrot out for you to apply for the limited number of advancement opportunities, but you have to compete with everyone else internally that has been waiting a long time for their promotion. It takes a very long time for internal hiring decisions to to be made (6 months +), while in the meantime you are expected to do the job of three people (without bringing attention to the unfairness of the situation). Women are frequently punished for taking time off to use sick time benefits that are made available to employees, and for speaking up to expressing themselves. Any hint of tone and inflection to make your point is seen as being aggressive. Frequent unrealistic timelines with limited resources to effectively work is common place.