Unprofessional. One of the worst companies I've ever worked for
Pros
I would say a paycheck but they cut my hourly pay by "making me pay back my insurance" because I required surgery and never re-adjusted my hourly rate back to normal!! They promise yearly bonuses but it's at "management's discretion" which means if they don't like you or have any sort of mild issue with you, they make sure you get written up as justification to not pay you the bonus. They refused to give a woman who makes items for SPACE-X her bonus!!! You know, the company Elon Musk owns that's constantly launching new satellites into orbit and trying to push for high speed satellite internet service? She's one of the very, very few people who are talented enough to do that spec of work and they refused her her bonus.
Cons
None. Management is incompetent, they wanted me to build products that I had no drawings or samples to go off of so I had to guess my way through it which led to talks with management (them pointing the fingers of course instead of recognizing the problem), QC doesn't actually inspect the products being built which lead to, again, management pointing the finger at me, they promised bonuses and when I asked where my bonus was I kept being brushed off by management. I went out for surgery and came back to them having a replacement for me, then was pulled aside and told they "weren't going to get rid of me bc they hired the new guy blah blah blah" and from that moment onward every little thing I did was under a microscope. Those aren't even my words, those are the words of the new guy!! My coworkers noticed it before I did! All of my work passed by QC, but management would "have an issue" with my work. The new guy said "it's like we're trying to play baseball but you're giving us the rules for hockey" this guy said that to my boss! The new guy was super frustrated with how the shop was being run, and we were becoming frustrated as well. Everyone is, honestly. How, and why, would management be looking at my work AFTER QC passed my work? I kept pointing that out to them and when they didn't acknowledge what I was saying it became clear to me that it was personal and I stopped playing their childish games. At one point I sat down with my manager over a power cable, we hammered out EXACTLY what they wanted from me, I made them, submitted them to my boss personally, and then saw my co-worker making them about a half an hour later. My boss didn't even have the balls to talk to me about them!! ONTOP of that, my co-worker didn't make them the way management and I had discussed AND QC PASSED THEM!!!! The SAME BOSS who kept brushing me aside when I asked for my bonus. It was clearly personal, why, I have no idea. Probably because he knows he's stuck there and won't ever do any better than some local dumpy shop and I've already done better in my life and immediately went on to do better leaving Markertek. They have monthly meetings rubbing it in your face how much the company is making on the premise that it's an ESOP and they're being "transparent". No one has any sort of ownership of the company, it's an idea they sell possible employees on but once you're clocked in it's no different than working at McDonalds, you own nothing. So everyone is sitting in those meetings being shown they could be making a livable wage and resentment grows with each and every meeting. They take pictures of every employee and whenever someone leaves they post their face under the punch clock with a note that says "we no longer have a working relationship with this person" and it was like every other week that a new face would be on the punch clock. Engineering designed two new products that we built and shipped out to the customer only to find out they were designed wrong. Another time they were supposed to check 50 larger PCBs to make sure they worked and they clearly didn't because when it came time to build them, every single one of them failed and it was only until someone else in R&D checked them that they realized the boards were bad. This one is a minor gripe, but they actually checked references. I've been working full time for 22 years now and never once has a company actually checked my references, because everyone knows it's an outdated idea, everyone is going to have the very, very best things to say. Who would tell a company "yeah my friend of X years? yeah don't hire him he's terrible". No one would do that. I provided 3 references and they said they wanted more, they wanted "professional references" which is what I provided. 3 is enough, I wasn't giving them more, and then they lowball me on hourly pay. I took the job because I needed it, and I said you know what I'm going to give this the solid effort, told them I would also learn QC. They hired me for QC as well... and NEVER ONCE trained me on it. I was running around at first doing both my job AND running a UV printer and after about a month or so they stopped using the printer because the prints weren't coming out very good. They had others try the printer and had the same issue.. but of course they pointed the finger at me for that one too. No one could get that printer to work properly, it was defective. It is SHOCKING how much of a joke Markertek is. I work at a much, much better company now making double what I was making at Markertek.
