McMaster-Carr reviews

The culture is fear-based and at times demoralizing, though that's not immediately evident (at least it wasn't to me). Upper-level management is able to establish this in a pleasant-ish, passive aggressive way. Every move you make is micromanaged. For many months I was constantly afraid of getting fired. The work is highly repetitive and mechanized but still stressful because you're expected to have close to 100% accuracy (that's not an exaggeration). The management team is mostly made up of recent ivy-league spawns. Most were perfectly nice, many were arrogant and difficult to be around. Because they're so young and the "workhorses" are closer to middle age, it made for a really bizarre and at times hostile social dynamic. I worked there for fewer than two years in my mid-twenties, so I was never on the receiving end of the toxic ageism, but it was too palpable not to notice. All that said, I *would* still recommend this to anyone who is looking for a year or two to save some money, further their education, add to their retirement pot, maybe prepare for graduate school. That's what I did and it set me up really nicely. I got out of credit card debt, I had my nice apartment on the beach, I took some classes at UCLA and got ready for graduate school. Perfect for transition. That being said, I would be deeply depressed if it were my full-time career. I felt like I was losing brain cells and replacing them with completely useless skills.

• Your job will probably be extremely boring, repetitive, and automated out of existence within 10 years. • If you work in the office: you don't really get opportunities to get to know anyone in the cubicles around you (if you're an introvert, this may be a Pro). • Career advancement decisions are made far removed from your own management team, and you don't really have any input. You may be spontaneously moved (horizontal "promotion") to a different department with 2 days notice. • You may have skills that the company needs, but they'd rather promote one of their management trainees (1st class McM citizens) into the role, rather than waste a good job on an office drone (2nd class McM citizens), or a warehouse worker (3rd class McM citizens). • The class structure mentioned in the above bulletpoint exists.