Great Benefits & Coworkers, little growth otherwise - Anonymous employee McMaster-Carr Employee Review

3.0
Feb 23, 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You will be well compensated, well above the industry average for the work you do. CPS and DPS along with other benefits like tuition reimbursement can be life changing. You will also work with genuinely interesting people who will know how to keep the long drawn out days of often monotonous work engaging.

Cons

Metrics and goal posts move often and little support is given if you are struggling by middle management because they themselves are given too many tasks to manage outside of their direct reports. It's easy to go on autopilot and not really know or understand the work you are doing. Depts are realigned often and they run into the same hurdles over and over again, despite have rich retrospectives available to read and help anticipate and resolve potential issues. Success metrics feel arbitrary on what percentage is considered "successful." The constant move up towards near perfection means workers who comfortably met or even exceeded expectations year over year could suddenly wind up "at risk" and fighting to meet expectations.

Explore other reviews about McMaster-Carr

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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