SIFS - Smart Industrial Fatigue Syndrome
Pros
Reduced pay and benefits for lower level salary employees in recent years. Perpetual "doom and gloom" narrative from leadership despite record-breaking profits almost every quarter. "Corporate Greed" becoming a more common theme with new CEO who only seems to care about shareholders. Hundreds of employees "too expensive to keep on the books" recently forced into retirement, demoted, or laid off without being replaced. Remaining employees spread extremely thin and expected to "do more with less". Increased stress, decreased morale, and lack of leadership becoming massive issues. Due to lack of other opportunities in JD cities such as Dubuque, Ottumwa, Waterloo, etc most have only stayed with the company to avoid relocating their families.
Cons
The politics and processes at Deere make completing even the smallest tasks more difficult - be prepared to spend literal years of your life sitting in meetings and feeling like you've accomplished nothing. Most engineers are used as workflow-pushers, penny-pinchers, and project managers - product design is seen as "busy-work" and is usually outsourced to 3rd party contractors or lower cost employees in India. Career advancement is somewhat of a joke - leadership will decide whether or not you are a "chosen one" very early on in your career. The "chosen ones" are then moved from job to job as fast as possible in order to build a resume that makes them APPEAR qualified for leadership. Meanwhile the grade 6, 7, and 8 deplorables at the bottom of the totem pole know that these people never actually stayed in one place long enough to learn the job or be held accountable for results. See "lack of leadership" mentioned in the paragraph above.
