Pros
Let me start by saying I'm a current employee. I don't have an axe to grind. I'm not about to be fired. I'm writing this because I wish I had a better understanding of the company culture from a non-management perspective before I started. Also because you can never REALLY tell if people who say something negative after they leave an organization are being a little biased. The benefits are by far the biggest "pro" of working at McMaster-Carr: - The company pays for your medical and dental insurance - The company also offers a great bonus structure that treats everyone pretty fairly - At all employment levels, the company really does focus on work-life balance - The retirement benefits are pretty great, but only if you're able to hang in there for at least 2 years - After you've worked there 3 months, they'll help you pay for school Management Trainees are people that usually join after graduating from college or graduate school. They typically work in an area for 6 months to a year before being transferred to another part of the organization. This review if for people who aren't management, since there are already a ton of reviews about being a manager at McMaster-Carr. Like any company, there are people who are favorites and people who aren't. If you're one of the favorites, you'll be able to move between departments, which can be an interesting learning experience. However, plan on being in your role for at least a couple of years before being allowed to move anywhere. The company really does focus on making sure employees have a good work-life balance, primarily by being pretty rigid about scheduling for people who aren't management. They expect you to be at work a few minutes before your start time so that you can start right on time. They require you to take two15 minute breaks a day and one 45 minute lunch. They also require you to leave right on time at the end of your shift. This means that you will rarely ever be asked to work overtime. This company is very focused on customer service. This is true for all levels of the organization. It means that there are very high standards for work and not a lot of tolerance for mistakes, especially in an area like the warehouse. Your co-workers will probably be some of the nicest people you'll ever meet. The company is very open and welcoming to gays/lesbians, people with kids, people of all races, and people with tattoos. There's a lot of body art at McMaster-Carr. This company is great if you're at a point in your life where you don't care what you do, as long as you get paid a decent salary, have good benefits to care for you and your family and you have enough work-life balance to spend time doing what you want to do outside of the office.
Cons
The company is very old fashioned in a lot of ways. It means they are very focused on customer service (good), but there's very little mixing between management and non-management. At a lot of companies, if you start on the bottom rung and work really hard, you could eventually get promoted up the corporate ladder. At McMaster-Carr, you if you start on the bottom rung and work really hard, you could eventually get moved to a rung a little to the side, or a rung on another ladder or a rung a little bit above yours. But if you aren't hired into the company as a manager, you will never be management. That's their policy, not just my opinion. Most of the management trainees, your bosses, are just out of college. It's pretty common for McMaster-Carr to be the first real job for some management trainee who just finished their Ivy League degree. It's their first job, and they're trying to "manage" an employee who's been in the workforce over 15 years. McMaster-Carr doesn't invest in training non-management employees. When a non-management employee starts in a new role, they shadow someone in that role for about a week, and that's it. Even if the new role is in a completely different area of the organization, you get about a week to get up to speed, and then you need to hit the ground running. In some areas, because there's such a lot of turnover, this is really a problem. McMaster-Carr is also a pretty lean organization. That means that the longer you're there, the more work you get. But since you can't work overtime, you're trying to fit more and more work into the same number of hours. The people who are management, because they've never actually done your job for longer than a couple of weeks, and because they rotate every 6 months to a year, don't really understand what you do or how long it takes you to do it. The actual day to day work that you do is very mind-numbing. Again, this review applies to people who aren't management. If you're in the warehouse, you're filling orders or packing boxes or shipping material and you're not allowed to make mistakes. If you're in the office, you spend your time doing small, repetitive, mindless tasks. Management places a lot of importance on tiny details. It's in the name of good customer service, but it means that they (and you) end up wasting a lot of company time micro-managing. As a whole, the company is very reactive and not very proactive. If you aren't management, you can point out a problem and offer a simple solution until you're blue in the face, but they won't listen to your suggestion until the branch manager notices something is wrong. Then they'll have hours of meetings and come up with some cock-eyed answer that creates more work for everyone. It's frustrating that so many managers are incredibly book smart, but don't seem to have a lot of common sense. If you're at a point in your life where you're ambitious and you want to advance your career, if you don't care how much money you make, or the amount of time you spend in the office, as long as you can do work that's interesting and meaningful to you, McMaster-Carr is probably not the place for you.