Fastenal reviews

3.4

62% would recommend to a friend

(5,821 total reviews)

Daniel Florness

76% approve of CEO

58% positive business outlook

Fastenal has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 5,821 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Fastenal employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Transportation & Logistics industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

6K reviews
2.0
Jul 23, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

After a year at the company, they’ll pay for SANS training which is great. If you’re new to security, put your year in, get your cert, then run. The current manager of Security knows his stuff. The current senior manager of Networking/systems knows his stuff. Not a terrible place to work in IT if you like slow environments with red tape. Stock is pretty consistent, but you’ll never get any unless you’re a manager or choose to invest your 401k in it.

Cons

Fastenal, across all lanes of IT, pays in like the 20th percentile at BEST. Somehow they keep getting away with criminally underpaying everyone and it is truly amazing. Asking for raises will typically end up in gaslighting. Sloooow to progress. Way behind market trends. Time off? Ha you wish. Worst benefits ever. Old school management has zero clue how to manage remote workers. Zero diversity in senior leadership last I saw. It shows.

1.0
Mar 10, 2022

Think 'Madmen' but in 2022

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The company is growing and has a great reputation in the market.

Cons

Benefits are terrible. Pay is significantly below the median in this field. They do not offer any living wage increases and after 6 years I ended up worse off financially than when I started. The mentality is the worst part: they do not support promotion to new roles and will make a point to hold people back from new opportunities in order to avoid backfilling. Management are very old school and do not value diversity or inclusion. They refuse to allow people to work from home. Women rarely get promoted and are paid significantly less than their male counterparts. The leadership are middle aged white mysogynistic men. Anti-progression.

2.0
Nov 29, 2015

Better than unemployment

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Large company with some structure, tries to communicate with decentralized workforce. Company invests in equipment such as new trucks, manufacturing equipment, distribution centers. Huge industrial base.

Cons

Top management is living in the good old Bob Kielin days. Out of touch with competitors and sometimes customers. Benefits- Benefits are below industry standard for a company this size. Fastenal has a homegrown workforce and doesn't know or afraid to ask what others are doing to retain employees. Life insurance is barebones with no option to increase. Travel- Travel expenses such as food are not paid for by the company. You are expected to stay in a cheap hotel even if it may be unsafe. You must bunk with a roommate as well to save a few bucks. Nice touch for a 3 billion $ company. Pay- no raises. The only way to get an increase is to change jobs within the company. This results in incompetence throughout the organization not to mention that customers are not happy with the revolving sales people. Bonus- you will be promised a bonus but Mgt is constantly trying to figure how to not pay if you hit the goal as you will be perceived as making too much money. The Christmas bonus is a box of junk food and is a joke within the workforce. Have they ever heard of a gift certificate at a grocery store to actually buy something useful or healthy? To top it off, they send an annual employee report to all employees telling them how great Fastenal is including employee testimonials. Seriously if it was such a great company why would they spend money creating this, sending it out? Retain the current workforce through actions vs lip service and propaganda. Attire- you are responsible to buy your own Fastenal Blue shirts, jackets, etc. They will tell you it's not required to wear Fastenal Blue but good luck with that. They will change direction frequently -3rd CEO in a year. They avoid layoffs-a common tactic is to demote or cut pay to get you to quit.

Viewing 4 - 6 of 5,821 Reviews

Glassdoor has 6,167 Fastenal reviews submitted anonymously by Fastenal employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Fastenal is right for you.