3M reviews

Slow moving, bureaucratic, and nearly entirely driven by internal political games. The majority of management within 3M is made up of "lifers" who have been here for upwards of 30 years, most riding out a pension, who are unwilling to let go of outdated and ineffective methods of operating. It is next to impossible to get up to speed quickly as a new employee at 3M due to the sheer size and the disorganized complexity that is the organizational structure. Unless you get lucky enough to know someone who knows someone, you'll never be able to get what you need to do your role successfuly day to day. Transparency is entirely absent, critical decisions are consistently made behind closed doors leaving out any opportunity for feedback from vested parties who will end up being affected. Lack of communication is rampant and results in constant project delays, scope misalignment, and a persistent lack of trust between employees and their chain of management. Effective prioritization and project managment is nowhere to be found. Prioritization does not seem to be taken seriously and is completely devoid of reason, priorities are changing so often and so inconsistely nothing can ever be fully accomplished. Every shift happens at break neck speed and is always something reactionary to achieve short term goals, and never proactively looking at what long term consequences they will have to the business. To say 3M is practing Agile in any meaning of the word is comical. Top talent is being hemorrhaged left and right and it's only getting worse as time goes on. This is creating a snowball effect that is causing remaining employees toughing it out to be overburdened without any type of acknowledgment or assistance in terms of compensation or additional resources. Burn out can be seen at every turn and I fear what that will mean long term for the health of the business.

I have never seen a company spend so much time, effort, and money on all the stuff they physically mail. All of the content was simply, “look how awesome everything is at 3M; you are valued” and had zero value other than to the people who were picked to pose in the articles. God help you if you want to make positive change. It is like the mob - they will whack you, your family, and your pets. You are good if you are okay with the “this is the way we’ve always done it” mentality. By far the most political environment in which I have ever worked. Everything is a favor and not “just do your job”. 3M is way too big for an individual contributor to matter. Everyone starts out shiny, hopeful, and wanting to help out your fellow 3M’rs but after a few months that all changes to frustration, anger, and despair. You are, quite literally, an employee number, an expense, and a line item on a spreadsheet. If you think you matter, I promise you that you do not. If you think you are part of a larger purpose or mission, I promise you that you are not. If you think your contributions have made a difference, I promise you that someone else took the credit for it instead of you (but you will never know). Management would let people go and you wouldn’t find out until you attempted to reach out to them and never got a response. When you finally get fed up with the lack of response and reach out to their manager, you are finally told that they are no longer with the company. When asked who their replacement is for XYZ function you are told that there is no one and there will be no backfill because there is a constant hiring freeze. Huh? I had absolutely zero 3M-funded training during employment. Whenever management was asked about funds for XYZ training, employees were given the runaround and eventually would stop asking altogether. For the first time in my IT career, I paid for my own training, event fees, and certification costs. This is a standard benefit afforded to almost any IT professional by a company (unless you work at 3M). I saved this for last. If you feel that this is inaccurate, please read some news articles before considering employment. Google “13-million-3m-earplug-verdict” to get a nicely summarized summary. Shady business practices and tactics. 3M touted itself as a company “based on ethics” - I am sure that ethics exist somewhere at 3M but I don’t consider screwing veterans and other responders out of settlement money by splitting a company into two, where one is profitable (new healthcare company) and the other not so profitable (PostIt notes, Meguiars, Nexcare, and everything else) with the intent to bankrupt the legacy 3M hoping to subvert paying what is rightfully owed. Additionally, I don’t think it was very ethical to invoke a huge reduction in force (which is still on-going) just a day or two after the judge called BS on that plan. After the reduction in force was enacted, and then applying for jobs, I quickly realized that my time at 3M had actually crippled my career because everything was so massively siloed that you didn’t have the ability to grow much less get anything done effectively or in a timely manner; but you stayed because the pay is awesome and benefits were great. You lose a bit of your soul in exchange for benefits, pay, and flexibility; believe me, it isn’t worth it to put the 3M name on your resume. The severance pay was definitely not commensurate with the tenure, effort, contributions, blood, sweat, and tears spent. I am sure this review will be buried by an over-abundance of false “everything is great” and “Mike Roman cares and his employees love him” type propaganda but I hope it helps just one potential candidate. 3M sickens me and I am ashamed that I was proud to work there. In fact, I purposely do not buy their products even if I perceive their product as better.