Pros
Once you get in the right group or with a competent manager, and if you have enough patience, Air Liquide is a reasonably good place to work. Most managers are pretty good about letting employees take vacations /doc appointments when they need to (I've only worked for 1 manager that controlled that tightly). There are several really good leaders and managers in the company. Networking is very important to go to places you really want. Most people, including those outside of your department are willing to take the extra step to help you if you're nice. If you're not a confrontational person, you'll be fine. Diversity at corporate is good. Most people try. There are a lot of career options for you if you're willing to move around, within the US or out. Houston always has job openings. Company is pretty stable and layoffs aren't that severe compared to some of our customers. If you're in good with your manager and your work is good, the company can usually find you a job (even if its in another city) during heavy layoffs. They want to promote within and keep their people. People stay a long time.
Cons
If you end up with a bad manager (e.g. micro-managers, unresponsive, or unexperienced etc.) then it can really make your job and life miserable. Confrontational people or "challengers" have not been seen to last in this company either. The company runs with the leanest teams and runs with bare minimum, at good times and bad. Air Liquide has generally good policies, but enforcement is not strong in most procedures written, so short-cuts to by-pass perceived unimportant processes are common. It can also be a training issues where newer employees are not taught (or imporperly taught) some processes and had to learn everything on the job. "Training" is now signing off on your 100+ documents on time, of which 40% of them may not even apply to your job. Human resource additions are slow. Idea-to-result projects and approvals move slow in general, unless you are willing to babysit each step to complete any task. Bureaucracy has been getting worse by the year (possibly due to the perception that people aren't following policies, so more policies are written to try to cover the loopholes). There are some people that don't get recognized for their efforts and therefore become disgruntled, especially those that try to make do because others have by-passed policies. Management has tried to make programs to enforce recognition by peer compliments but it has been seen as superficial because some people aren't working that hard and still get on the recognition page, maybe due to politics. Too many teams are resistent to reform and work smarter instead of harder. Passivity is rampant. These extremes make the ultimate dynamics between teams need a lot of patience and post-change results are mediocre at best.
