Pros
Caterpillar is a huge company, as such there are alot of opportunities. There is potential to make a good amount of money working here, and alot of good people to work with. Many of the people who work here are very talented. Because of this we make alot of really neat things that help alot of people. A big positive is the fact that we have organized labor in the shop.
Cons
Management has a very elitist approach toward their shop employees, and they could care less if you have a life outside of work. You cannot get the truth out of a CAT manager. Some of these managers are so incompetent at times it is downright amazing. Competence really is pretty irrelevant in the management positions I have seen. It seems more like a group of friends giving each other jobs than an actual leader choosing the best suited people for his key positions. Here is a good example of the type of incompetence I am speaking of. We borrowed money and promised our investors we will hit 100 million dollars in sales by 2020. We want to hit this target so badly that we actually sell products at a loss. Knowing that we take a loss on the product, management then forces labor in for overtime to run this product. Labor now gets paid double what we normally do, and are resentful because they are being forced in to work 60 hour weeks. Management does not care that this is bad for labor relations. There are currently one thousand or more guys are on a list of people ready to work, in the midst of a recession, and they don't call them back to help because they would rather maximally exploit their current employees. Although they acknowledge it is dumb to sell products at a loss, nobody will shut the line down until someone raises the price to an acceptable level. I have yet to see a CAT manager with any balls. If you have balls, the groupies will try to scare you into not saying anything. They will team up on you and find some dumb reason to write you up, with hopes that by threatening you with loss of job, you will not speak out again. We are too big of a bureaucracy to do anything about it. Nobody knows who makes what decision. Getting things done is harder than an act of congress.