Do you want to work in the most cliché corporate American company? Then this is the place for you.
Pizza parties and holiday luncheons are the extent of management’s creativity when it comes to creating company culture. After years of employee surveys pointing out the substantially lower than market pay, any event has a $20/person budget, and any “appreciation” gift is the cheapest possible thing (like this year’s plastic ramen bowl and ramen packets). That is the level of tone-deaf that management is when it comes to listening to their employees.
In addition to tone-deaf gestures, management will happily resort to gas-lighting employees about the low pay, by saying they conducted “independent market analysis” that shows you are being paid fairly. When asked for details about this report, they will decline further details. The corporate equivalent of “just trust me bro”.
Let’s not forget job security, because there is none. You could be well liked and critical to your team; you could be a subject matter expert; you could win multiple awards; you could get promotion after promotion; at a moments notice you can be pulled into a meeting with your manager and HR and be eliminated right then and there, and the only information you will get is that “your position has become redundant.”
It's hard to understate how lost leadership is[was]. (Perhaps the new CEO will fix this, TBD). In the past four years leadership has been selling a vision but providing no tangible updates or accomplishments along the way. Protolabs purchased Hubs for $300M 5 years ago, and to this day does not know how to utilize this resource or integrate it into their offering.
Meanwhile their closest competitor has eclipsed them in market cap by almost 3x.
This is not a place to progress your career. Chances are you will learn very little. Climbing the ladder is likely a futile endeavor, there is little financial gain with promotions, and the scope of work at the next level is essentially the same. There is no empowerment to make changes or departmental developments. Your team most likely won’t be a priority this year, but “next year it will be”.
