Great People, Scary Culture - Manager McMaster-Carr Employee Review

3.0
31 Mar 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The pay, benefits and people are awesome. Every person I met at the company was very smart and talented and most were fun to work with. You will likely move around to different roles quickly, so you are constantly learning. There are high expectations and lots of cool opportunities to make a lot of change.

Cons

There is not much training, but the operation is easy enough to catch on. The culture is kind of strange. There is a lot of secrecy and you never know if you are doing well or not, or when you will be moved to another role. Like in any job, your experience really depends upon your manager. Some are very supportive and care about developing their employees, MTs and supervisors, but most don't feel like they should spend time developing others. There is also a lot of value put on where you went to school. There is also a culture of throwing other people under the bus when mistakes are made. They also claim to have work life balance but most folks work 10-12 hour days, and I usually see a handful of managers and supervisors catching up on project work over the weekend.

Explore other reviews about McMaster-Carr

4.0
16 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Pay/benefits are incredibly generous - People are generally easy/nice to work with - Note that the Systems department seems to be fairly isolated from the negative issues discussed in other reviews (e.g. tension between warehouse workers and management) - I haven't experienced any of those issues within the systems department. In my opinion, Systems is a great place to work and develop as an engineer. - Hybrid work style (3 days in office). Personally, I like hybrid more than both fully in-office and fully remote styles. - Great cafeteria with good food and cheap prices. - Good work/life balance (outside of being on call, I can leave work at work).

Cons

- Work is not super interesting to me. I come from a highly technical, but very different (not ecommerce/industrial supplies), background where I was doing work I was much more interested in. No doubt there are folks in Systems who love the domain though. - While I'm not on call a ton (1-2 weeks every few months), I really hate being on call. I like to leave work at work. Note that joining at least one reliability team is expected within your first year or so.

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