Cornerstone continues to be one of the worst companies to work for in the US due to these reasons:
1) It continues to be owned by an equity firm, in this case CD&R. This equity firm bought struggling companies PlyGem and NCI, then orchestrated the merger of them. Equity firms have only one objective, buy struggling companies, gut them of workers until they can sell it for a profit, followed by that company almost always going bankrupt afterwards. There is no positive end game with working with companies owned by equity firms. And the current Trump administration has allowed them even more abuse over struggling companies with zero regulation now. Stay out or get out now!
2) Because of item #1, workloads across the board are and continue to be, more ridiculous to the point some vulnerable roles suffer from depression, anxiety, even suicidal thoughts. I personally know people that are on antidepressants to cope with this. This creates growing infighting and tension among different teams, departments, etc. Those with lower work loads refuse to help those struggling to the brim with work after their support gets cut. The equity firm wants this infighting, so they ignore whose really causing this issue behind the scenes, which is the firm. If you have a high workload/backlog, the question is not, do we need more people? Its, how can we blame this on YOU?
3) Executives come first, their perks/toys 2nd, employees dead last. If you do any cost savings or improve profit, whatever is left that does not go into the equity firms pocket, or for stock buybacks or executive bonuses simply goes into hiring more managers and executives to escalate on you instead help with the actual WORK!
4) Favoritism is REAL and SEVERE here. And its unfortunately based on whether you are a contractor vs full-time, whether you are the dominant race in your department, and also based on gender. Women in particular are often conditioned to be put on pedestals by executives and allowed to talk to male co-workers however they want without consequence. If you complain to your manager or theirs they will not care.
5) Its a company in the business of domestic manufacturing exterior construction products. This is a dying industry. You simply cannot compete against foreign factories that can do the labor cheaper.
6) They refuse to pay the plant workers good/fair wages. Which is the REAL reason they have a plant worker shortage. The executives do not want to admit this as it would upset their equity firm overlords, so instead they keep imbalance workloads and try to automate if they can. Problem is, automation is also a severely expensive. If they just fix the wages, problem fixed. Because of these worker shortages, almost EVERY Cornerstone plant has SEVERELY low Google reviews due to excessive wait times to pickup loads.
7) They continue to be obsessed with using contractors. And with no corporate wide conversion process that allows a consistent and fair opportunity to turn fulltime like most other companies do. Contractors are by far more expensive to be left in that state long term, as opposed to simply hiring full time workers. In addition, full time workers generally produce better work because the employer cares about their development, preventing work burn out from basic vacation/holidays, etc.
8) ZERO training. You better be a mind reader to know what the heck you are supposed to do because you will not just get thrown into the pool, you will get thrown into the middle of an ocean with zero life preserver to figure things out while avoiding sharks all around you, in this case your own co-workers.
