Mar 29, 2021
McMaster-Carr reviews
2.8
29% would recommend to a friend
Jay Delaney
30% approve of CEO
45% positive business outlook
McMaster-Carr has an employee rating of 2.8 out of 5 stars, based on 1,369 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The McMaster-Carr employee rating is 24% below average for employers within the Construction, Repair & Maintenance Services industry (3.7 stars).
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1K reviews
5.0
Jan 25, 2021
Joining McMaster-Carr: Best Professional Decision of My Life
Former employee, more than 10 years
Robbinsville, NJ
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook
Pros
I joined McMaster-Carr's management team in 2008, and spent the past 13 years in roles of progressive responsibility in nearly every area of the business. McMaster-Carr and the range of leaders I worked for and with developed me from an undergraduate into an experienced industry professional now serving in an executive leadership role in another area of the distribution industry. Without equivocation, McMaster-Carr is the premier place to learn how to manage projects, people, and operations in an environment that is appropriately demanding and where excellence is rewarded. Throughout my career, I had the opportunity to work with and for talented people who constantly challenged me to think on my feet and examine problems and opportunities from a variety of perspectives. The diversity of talent and thought leadership within McMaster-Carr's workforce is the company's core strength; I always felt that I was working for a smart, capable, and dedicated leaders who came to work every day with an intolerance for the status quo and a desire to drive progress. After a few years with the company, I began investing more energy into personal growth outside of McMaster-Carr, and the company could not have been more supportive. McMaster-Carr and my branch leadership team encouraged my graduate education twice during my career, gave me the skill set and confidence to become a non-profit and elected leader in my community, and provided the work-life balance that allowed me to succeed at work while pursuing my passion for service outside of work. I am incredibly grateful for the constant support and encouragement McMaster-Carr provided me during every stage of my personal and professional growth. If you are considering McMaster-Carr as the next stage of your professional journey, I'd encourage you to give this company a shot. You will work hard, and there will be periods of fatigue and frustration; but over time you will develop a foundation of industry knowledge and a set of skills that will make you a valuable contributor to any organization you choose to join. You will also have team of people who have your back during and after your employment. The best choice I've made in my professional career was picking up that recruiting call in the Summer of 2008.
Cons
McMaster-Carr is a company that requires hard work, demands excellence, measures performance objectively, and has an intolerance for resting on laurels and settling for the status quo. The employees who work at McMaster-Carr are driven, detail-oriented professionals, focused on exceeding expectations. This is not the environment for everyone; if these elements appeal to you, then you will thrive at McMaster-Carr.
2.0
Oct 12, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook
Pros
-High salary for the level of work you’re doing -Excellent of profit sharing benefits -Free healthcare - 100% tuition reimbursement with zero commitment to the company. This is by far the best benefit at the company, and I’m always amazed when people don’t take advantage of it. I’ve seen reviews implying McMaster is discriminatory. Perhaps it was local to my branch, but I actually saw the opposite - there were multiple unqualified people who were in key positions for totally demographic, non-talent related reasons. I wouldn’t say the firm practices reverse discrimination by any means, but it is unfair to say that being a minority at McMaster is a disadvantage.
Cons
Its hard to tell someone not to work at McMaster given the incentives, but you need to think about how a place with such generous benefits and good work/life balance has so many consistently bad reviews from staff and management alike. The key issue at the firm is the lack of talent development for management. Not all members of management are bad, and I definitely had a lot of talented and driven peers. But I also had some awful peers and managers who were unjustifiably confident, lacked perspective, or were objectively incompetent. Most (but not all) managers are straight from college, and they take cues from senior leadership, who generally entered the firm the same way, causing a loop that allows impressionable supervisors to inherit bad behaviors. I believe managers with previous experience are generally viewed with skepticism by senior management, who have little to no experience at other firms and are uncomfortable when challenged with new perspectives or ideas. Management at McMaster is largely style over substance and performance at the firm is a poor predictor of how you’ll do elsewhere. This inability to recognize and leverage talent is why you see people who leave the firm end up succeeding at Big 4 firms and Fortune 500 companies, regardless if they were fired or if they made a concerted effort to leave. For management specifically, the work you're doing at McMaster isn't interesting or scalable to other companies or industries. You will feel at a disadvantage or underexposed when dealing with peers in other industries, regardless of your compensation or academic background. Being a private company, McMaster develops everything internally, and this impacts exit opportunities. Even supply chain and logistics companies will expect you to have technical or process-based skills McMaster won't provide. Senior managers at the firm aren't connected anywhere else and very few people you work with end up being good resources down the road. If you are not in management, you won’t gain any marketable skills and you’ll be treated like a child. Promotion is unbelievably rare and few people make a career here. You really need to ask yourself if an extra $10-15k a year is worth the opportunity cost of spending years with zero professional growth with a highly significant chance of being fired. In my opinion, you’re better off trying to get into a functional organization that may pay less initially, but has upward mobility, name recognition, and lets you develop an actual skill set.
Viewing 256 - 258 of 1,369 Reviews
