3.0
4% would recommend to a friend
Jim Fitterling
37% approve of CEO
2% positive business outlook
Pros
Good lateral movement opportunities if you want one! Given your leader and positions both are open! Not many pros of working in this company
Cons
Worst employee culture Hr do not disclose all the policies Very unstable- every now and then acquisitions or mergers happening which is naturally distracting Safety is just in words and not in action!
Pros
- Great work/life balance: generally can come and leave at very predictable hours. Only on rare occasions had to work longer than 10 hours a day. - Very good HR policy: no cap on sick days, flexible work hours (some people start their day at 5 to beat the traffic, others start at 9), good number of personal vacation days that grow to 18 on the 4th or 5th year. - Good year end bonus and stock purchase plan. - Decent health insurance and 401k matching at 4% (if you put in 6%). - Good pay compared to the rest of the industry. - Good job security: usually people only lose jobs if they happen to be from the company Dow acquires, but for Dow employees it's quite unlikely to get fired. All the people who retired early got offered excellent packages.
Cons
- Very slow pace: good for people ready for retirement, or with lots of kids or family commitments but not good if you want to make things happen. - Bureaucracy: as found in all big corporations. - Slow career advancement: Take 3-5 years to be promoted to the next level, and there are just so many levels. If you are unlucky, you can be trapped in a middle levels for a loooooooong time. - Slow pay progression: since pay is pegged to job level, slow promotion = slow pay increase. - Bonus scheme does not reward people who do well: outstanding performers (rated 4 or 5 on the 5-point scale) don't get much higher bonus than poor performers (rated 1 or 2).
Pros
You will get to meet very interesting people that are genuinely very nice as well. There is a lot of very nice co-workers and pay is good if you are FS/FL level (not good if you are Tech/Tech level).
Cons
I will try be as objective as possible. First and foremost, your experience will really depend on who your boss is. My manager was a young amateur who's been given a responsibility to lead a team of 15 people in one-go and lead them to their living hell (i.e. either being extremely disgruntled or in some cases like myself, leaving the company). In my case there were people that were doing close to nothingness, and they were ranked same as I was ranked at the end of the performance review (Performance review at Dow is utterly useless by the way). So you should expect to see some people that actually "do nothing" and people that are extremely hard-workers rewarded similarly (unfair treatment? I Call it the Dow treatment) The other problem is that management has no clue what they are doing and nobody is overseeing those monkeys and the way they operate. They operate as if they are the best, and they will tell you that they are the best. Not only that, they will even come at you where you don't expect it and shove it right in your face. Nonetheless, you see right in front of your eyes the competitors poaching your customers left and right. The reason your management MUST convince you that they are the best is because of their hypocrisy and fear of upper-leadership, they will SAY ANYTHING just to get the "big boss" off their back, so that they can continue to operate like monkeys. Development, like a lot of people already said, is non-existent. You will learn a few things here and there once you start and then if your manager is like mine, you will be asked to do 250% of what a human being is actually capable of (social/work balance?) and then your boss expects you to be an obedient slave and just DO things that you are asked like they are holy orders. Where is your development? Well, let me know when you get 5 minutes to even think about development. If you dare and speak to anyone in Dow about development, they will revert you back to your "1st level supervisor" as they call it. Then your supervisor will act extremely surprised that you aren't getting development because he/she thinks that development only comes as part of your day-to-day tasks. Then he/she will ask you to write a "EDP" Employee-Development-Plan which is a very lengthy document that will remain in your drawer for years after you've drafted it and nobody will even act upon it. So in the end, you won't get the development you need. Here is an employee ladder at Dow with job position titles: Level 138 - Engineer Level 158 - Lead Engineer Level 181 - Senior Engineer Level 208 - Associate Engineering Manager (HR of Dow says that most employees will retire at this level) ... ... ... ... Level 500+ (These are director and executive levels) But there are so many positions left, so why stay in a company where you retire after jumping into 3 positions? and it takes 3-4 years for each promotion which is completely unrelated to how hardworking you are. Last but not least, is the GEOAS (Global Employee...Survey). This one is a real joke. Dow collects feedback every year from its employees about how the company is doing in terms of stress/recognition/management/safety/accountability....etc and EVERY year the feedback repeats again and again and again. They just use this GEOAS as a venting machine for employees like me (who give honest and very critical opinion). There are tons of cons but honestly I am just too tired of writing....
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