Pros
The people were often fantastic to work with. Upper management seemed to genuinely care about its employees. Production employees were often very fun to partner with and willing to provide feedback. There was a great selection of classes for continuous learning.
Cons
Middle management was often a nightmare to work with. Many times I would host a meeting and no one would show up, including the people that asked me to put together the meeting. There was a lot of unnecessary gripe about environmental regulation among engineering leadership. Systems in place were half-baked or undocumented. There was a heavy reliance in tribal knowledge, although there was a concerted effort to improve documentation driven by quality assurance. For example, assemblers would often ignore assembly instructions and perform the task "as they've always done it." This would cause serious quality issues. When I started at Vermeer there was a requirement for 2 years experience to be considered for a promotion to Design Engineer, but at some point it was changed to 3 years. HR was incredibly reluctant to promote in place. I was already doing all of the work as a DE but without the compensation or title of one. Benefits were not great and the employment of chaplains seemed odd. I don't know what they actually did besides walk around and talk to people. They were nice, though.
