Decent People, Awful Work Environment. - Mechanical Engineer Hernon Manufacturing Employee Review

NOTE: I never had any personal conflict with anyone and was generally well-liked, and people were mostly nice to me. However, this place is so crazy and stressful, that it deserves an honest assessment. At the time of my departure, many others were equally frustrated and wanting to get out. I found a better opportunity and resigned. Shockingly disorganized planning. Poor coordination with the sales team. Projects routinely fall behind schedule, then management lies to customers over the phone to make them believe things are moving along nicely. Engineers are ordered to work extra hours with short notice to meet deadlines, but extra hours are spent twiddling thumbs due to lack of clear directions/requirements from management. The final weeks of a project is almost always a mad scramble. It’s a vicious cycle that is extremely frustrating. Short Staffed. Existing staff is disgruntled because they don’t feel valued. Management doesn’t hire people until they’re in dire need of it. Will overwork existing employees until workload boils over, then make you work some more. HR attempts to hire new employees, but they barely last a month due to high expectations, and because nobody has time to train them. Micromanagement. Picky Supervisors. Very difficult to make decisions without input from them. If you’re feeling confident and try to make a judgement call on your own, it gets changed. When supervisors are out of town (fairly often), nothing moves forward. Poor pay, below average. As another review here has stated, they’re willing to lose great people before giving raises. No regular performance reviews. Nepotism. There’s preferential treatment of certain individuals, who can get away with nearly whatever they want. Some people are in positions they have no business being in. Rules only seem to apply to employees on the bottom of the hierarchy, or those who have not been there long. Purchasing and workflow is a mess. New rules/procedures are created every other week for ordering parts and releasing drawings, but not communicated to employees. Then employees get chewed out for not following the procedure they’re unaware of. Engineers are rarely asked for their input. The entire engineering workflow is altered to satisfy SAP business software, but the people in charge of properly implementing SAP do not understand engineering. Engineers end up spending hours in order to appease the system instead of designing machines, and workflow grinds to a halt. Owner of the company rules with an iron fist. Periodically comes storming down the hallway threatening to fire people when there is confusion. Will chew people out for not following procedure, but circumvents the process when he needs something done for him.