Horrible Experience, Glad to no Longer Work There - Anonymous employee McMaster-Carr Employee Review

1.0
8 Nov 2012
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Pay, health benefits, profit sharing, tuition reimbursement

Cons

Work Schedule, No room for advancement, lack of communication by management, poor performance management, lack of challenging work, difficult time placing experience on your resume If you are looking to advance your career, this is NOT the place to do it. They place people with a wealth of knowledge and experience in staff positions, while they hire people with little to no experience managing a workfore in supervisory "management" positions. This leads to poor outcomes, especially on the "sales desk or phone contact center." Not sure why they are looking for college graduates (they even hire people with Master's degrees) to do most of the jobs. They could easilly train high school or tech school grads and have better employees. They attempt to mask unchallenging jobs with fancy titles. They do not place you in a department where your experience could best be utilized. Instead they feed you a line about "learning about this area of the business," and place you a position you have no desire to work. You have no control over what department in work in and how long you will stay there. They do not post any job openings internally. There is a culture of no one listening to "staff" employees. There is no goal setting and expectations are never clearly laid out. When they change, most likely it's never given to you in writing. Supervisors have a tendancy to not directly answer questions and there are very few written policies passed out to employees. You tend to get vague answers reagading certain areas (sick time, berevement leave, error rate, rating of calls, etc). I have never worked in a place where so many of the employees are unhappy.

Explore other reviews about McMaster-Carr

5.0
14 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

At least in the Systems department, it’s a helpful and collaborative environment.

Cons

3 days in office and potentially long commute from the city

4.0
16 Jun 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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