Smart people, $$$, but a little toxic & inflexible - User Experience Designer McMaster-Carr Employee Review

3.0
Feb 1, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great compensation, pretty good benefits. Company has never had layoffs. The people are very intellectually gifted and that leads to pretty interesting conversations and ideas. Depending on the project, you can have a pretty substantial impact on the site/app. Customers are pretty nice and it's not very hard to get access to them + data. If you join in your 20s, there are a lot of like-minded people to make friends with. If you're lucky, management will consider your interests when assigning you to projects. Siloes exist but are not unsurpassable due to the company not being huge.

Cons

No design leader had any amount of outside design experience, so you don't really learn best practices. Sometimes mgmt will reject doing basic research because they're clinging to institutional knowledge. Inflexibility on remote work options despite hemorrhaging employees (including many managers and very high performers) for 1 year straight. Building a culture out of only recent college grads means: 1) Employees are easier to manipulate and treat poorly 2) People tend to be persuaded that the way they were taught to do things is the only way because they lack outside experience 3) mgmt does not understand how to manage people with outside XP. Stressful culture. Managers can be severe, especially to PMs. People can be transferred to different roles or parts of the company without their knowledge or even against their wishes. Very cis-het white-culture vibes. Golden handcuffs are common - people are unhappy but can't make more money elsewhere (without sacrificing work-life balance) so they just unhappily stay.

Explore other reviews about McMaster-Carr

5.0
Jul 15, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Excellent people, great opportunities internally and externally to learn. Met some of my best friends there.

Cons

Can be stressful, long hours, and of course at times competitive.

4.0
Jun 16, 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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