Pros
If all you care about is a steady job, decent paycheck, and job security at the expense of morale, company culture and your health then you’ll do well here. 1) Strong Business Performance & Retirement/Education Benefits PACCAR provides a 401k match and, if you can last 5 years, a pension. They offer 50% tuition reimbursement after 1 year for a bachelor or graduate degree. The company is profitable and stable. Job security is fairly high, but you will be paid under market value, work in antiquated environments with outdated systems and watch very good people leave for better companies. PTO is minimal and you will be lowballed on your salary offer. Unless you’re a manager you won’t get a bonus or more than 12 paid vacation days a year. PTO cannot be combined with sick leave. PACCAR thinks that “Core Office Hours” (come into the office as late as 9 am and leave as early as 4 pm as long as you work 9 hours) is competitive with other business offering hybrid work schedules or fully remote positions. Senior leadership treats remote work as a sign of weakness, even during a global pandemic. Mark Pigott (Chairman) and Preston Feight (CEO) like to say that PACCAR is “a work from work company” as if that’s something to be proud of, especially while other manufacturing and Fortune 500 companies embrace remote and hybrid schedules as the norm (Boeing has offered remote work options for the last 30 years.) 2) Good Colleagues, Mixed Bag of Managers Most of my colleagues are great people. Managers are a mixed bag that are forced to maintain the status quo at all costs. PACCAR has no people focus. It only cares about its products which, admittedly, are excellent. It would be a better place to work if they genuinely listened to employees. What we get is lip service thanking us for another profitable quarter but our requests and suggestions for change are ignored or bitterly fought. An employee survey is sent out every two years that is largely ignored. But hey, management installed an ice cream vending machine in the cafeteria a few years ago! Thanks! What have you done to address our high levels of turnover, burnout, and low morale? 3) Excellent Products PACCAR's trucks truly are the best in the world, but senior leadership doesn't care about creating a culture that promotes the people behind the products. They drone on about financial results and mention team members as an afterthought. We’re all happy about good business performance, but for most of us that’s not inspiring or motivating – it’s people that motivate and inspire one another. PACCAR doesn’t get it.
Cons
1) Horrible Pandemic Response So much for practicing “the highest degree of integrity and ethics.” PACCAR was slow to acknowledge the pandemic and only acted when they were legally required to, months after the initial outbreak. PACCAR has exploited every possible loophole to ignore or discourage WFH support and continues ignoring state guidelines to allow telecommuting for all eligible employees even while the Delta variant spreads. Senior leadership has created an unsafe, hostile, and paranoid environment because they’d rather block any precedent for WFH instead of acknowledging that employees are burned out, fatigued, and fed up. I guess they like feeling tough at our expense. Senior management eliminated support for WFH support by requiring signatures from the top 10 people in the company, then flat-out telling department heads that nobody qualifies for remote work even though we busted our butts and outperformed expectations during the lockdown. Prior to his, we are required to come into the office on severe weather days when icy roads and snow banks made driving dangerous, all because most executives live close to the office. High-performing colleagues with pre-existing conditions or compromised immune systems were told no when they requested WFH support. PACCAR made them acquire doctors notes every few weeks, further burdening an already suffering hospital system. When they were told to report back to the office full-time in September, they promptly left for other companies. PACCAR pretends like everything has returned to normal. Vaccinated employees don't have to wear a mask if we wear a special little pin, which does nothing to curb transmission when we're all packed into the office with no spacing between workstations. PACCAR is making parents risk infecting their kids at a time when children are being ventilated in hospitals. People are leaving because they’re fed up with being told that “The health and safety of our employees is our number one priority” (actual wording from HR emails.) Positions aren’t being filled because job seekers don’t feel safe coming into an office full-time and the rest of us are picking up the slack. 2) No D&I Support from Senior Management The company talks about how it established D&I councils at each of its divisions. At Corporate this amounts to little more than sending out brief "Awareness" emails with no real effect, except to alienate people the one year they completely forgot about Black History Month. There is no community outreach, no focus on improving work culture for POC and very little impact on employees. While there are very good, hard-working people trying to change the culture, upper management isn’t involved or engaged beyond the occasional speech at an event. It feels like they don’t care beyond making a superficial effort. During the BLM protests, many of us were shocked to hear Preston Feight (CEO) say that he had spoken with many other CEOs, including black CEOs, and that he felt it was time to "practice listening" to one another. He made it about him and what he was doing with his extended network, but failed to take any stance of solidarity with POC employees at his company. He alienated many people in doing so and, to this day, PACCAR has failed to address any of the societal issues that continue affecting us. It is incredibly disappointing to hear colleagues talk about how let down they feel. 3) Zero Employee Focus There is zero focus on morale or on the people. PACCAR focus exclusively on financial performance, which is fine, but doesn’t understand that people are motivated by other people. PACCAR acknowledges service anniversaries and annual company awards but morale, employee well-being and other factors are non-existent. It would be a much better place if they practiced a more holistic approach to their workforce beyond health benefits.