employer cover photo
employer logo
employer logo

Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories

Is this your company?

Avoid Manufacturing! - Production Assembler Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories Employee Review

1.0
Jul 17, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good pay/benefits Free food on Friday

Cons

I have 12+ years of tenure at SEL in the manufacturing sector and the management is the worst I have ever seen in my time at the company. Supervisors do not supervise anymore but instead delegate the vast majority of their responsibilities onto Assemblers in the name of "World Class Manufacturing." Assemblers are overworked and cannot focus on production with all the side tasks they are given to do. My team now does half the output they used to do 4 years ago. Incompetency pervades all departments. Most of our support groups have hired incompetent people who cannot program or perform maintenance on a machine correctly. Management's answer to a short-staffed area is to simply throw brand new people who have never done the job before into it. This causes the veterans to become distracted by having to babysit new trainees (most of whom don't want to work) and production volume slows down even more. Leadership absolutely does not listen no matter how many times you tell them how to lead the area. Our turnover is sky high and most departments are short handed and overworked. Morale is the lowest I've ever seen. We got rid of our strict hiring practices during the pandemic due to a need for people so HR does not properly vet poor candidates. The result is we are left with a surplus of riff-raff and rejects from other companies who do nothing but play on their phones all day while pretending to work. Do NOT come to manufacturing if you want to keep your sanity at this company! It has turned into the most immature working environment I have ever experienced.

Explore other reviews about Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories

5.0
Jul 8, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Plenty of friendly faces to work with.

Cons

Reluctant to hire certain places sometimes.

4.0
Apr 8, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Right job for some people. If you buy into the koolaid and are passionate about the power industry this can be an incredible job for you. The benefits are pretty great. I really enjoyed my coworkers, all of them feel human and are earnest. You can live quite cheaply in Pullman. There is an incredible amount of job security. SEL boasts they've never done a layoff. Additionally their ESOP distribution is generous - though it takes 6 years to fully vest. There is a lot of things I really admire about the company and the culture.

Cons

Comp is lower side. A lot of people are hired out of college and have only ever worked at SEL so sometimes I feel like there is a bit of an echo chamber. Small town. I really struggled with the initial allocation of 12 days PTO. 17 after 2 years is much easier. As a SWE, the company feels very catered to their power engineers. Company is very traditional in its values, people wear suits to work. Seems like the timeline for promotion is quite slow for SWE compared to other companies. I see a lot of friction when lower level engineers trying to advocate for changes; though I do think that the conversations with leadership happen in good faith.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All