Pros
- I am blessed and grateful to have a job to support myself and family, with at least some level of job security and financial sturdiness (financially stronger than a startup or small company per se) - Some of the best software technology in the world for engineering and manufacturing digital twin/digital transformation/industry 4.0 - When resources are pulled in correctly, teams can do amazing work transforming businesses and the world - The customers who are competent and trained run smoothly and are amazing to work with on projects - See behind the curtains of some very cool companies, their engineering, processes, etc. - Meet new people every day - Nice colleagues, in most cases - Many colleagues really want to help and are amazing people who go above and beyond the support each other - Sometimes you get work life balance, but it’s becoming more rare - Low expense ratio index fund options in 401k, good benefits for medical, dental, vision - “unlimited vacation” (although this is debatable) - Learn every day (to the point your brain hurts) - Never a boring moment
Cons
- As M&A occurs, the smart people leave and the dumb ones stay, creating knowledge worker loss and resulting negative ramifications on business results - With portfolio complexity, no one in the company seems to understand how to sell to customers anymore - some push products, some brag about Siemens visions, but few start by understanding, listening, aligning to what the customer needs as a starting point to then provide clear and tangible solutions - Generally there is a divide between people who do and do not know how to sell at the C level, and many other people who sell to lower level or end users and cannot have elevated and simplified conversations - 10-20% of workforce is competent and drives 80%-90% of results (this may be normal, Pareto principle) - Internal processes are way too convoluted, complicated, redundant, and impossible to keep track of everything going on, everyone is confused, and management pretends to understand what is going on but has no idea, and can’t help fix problems (because they don’t know how or couldn’t if they tried, or don’t care) - There is some kind of strange culture where everyone expects everyone to know everything about everything, and if not, you are labeled dumb and ineffective - when in reality no one knows what’s going on outside of their own job role or domain of knowledge and sharing knowledge would improve the organization greatly - Aging workforce is a threat because it takes 20 years to figure out how the technology works and then be able to demonstrate and sell it to customers effectively - most workers here are riding the last few years until retirement and have no real work ethic left - Some managers seem to have gotten lucky promotions into their role and have very outdated knowledge and outdated management methods and skills - With work from home, no work life boundaries or balance anymore, working all the time around the clock - Need better management who truly cares about people and culture, not just quarterly earnings guidance and quarterly revenue results, which is destroying culture and morale - need to take a longer term view - Need managers who fight for and defend their employees, not just put them on performance plans but really try to diagnose and assist the employees and listen to them, work with them - Some bad eggs make work feel terrible some days, some mean people, probably because they are overworked or frustrated with complications - Siemens is trying to reduce cost of sales by underpaying the both technical people and the sales people, relative to the workloads and market averages - Sales support is extremely weak with inadequate resources pulled into multiple directions making it impossible to meet customer schedules and operate smoothly - Management attention is flighty, they are unable to focus and concentrate, not able to improve any internal business processes or really help their employees succeed, get trained and set up for success - The second you are comfortable and in the groove with your job, plans will change or your assignment will shift, creating rework constantly - Lots of hidden internal politics and agency costs exist when you get to know the social dynamics - incentives among people do not align properly and cause conflicts of interest in multiple directions - Constantly changing internal procedures and processes, as well as assignments, makes it virtually impossible to know what is going on throughout the company at any point in time - Customers are bombarded by several different people from across the company at once, rather than having organized and streamlined communications - but there is really no good way to fix this due to how the company is structured
