What is the hiring process like at Protolabs?

I've met some incredible people at this job. That's about it.

-management truly doesn't lose any sleep by treating their hard working employees like animals. For example, employee appreciation day consisted of our office receiving a Costco box of top ramen and cheap Protolabs branded bowls. - I was asked to contribute towards a "secret project that I would be perfect for" but I had to sign an NDA. After I signed the NDA, I found out they cut my team and wanted me to set up a new team in a different state. Management was not apologetic or compassionate with this decision. -the headquarters in Minnesota is practically all white men. As a white man, I enjoy working in a diverse and welcoming environment and I even felt uncomfortable at their Minnesota offices.

Good and knowledgeable people in the lower ranks.

Don't manage performance appropriately. Executive level personnel that aren't successful are kept on because management doesn't do a good job of managing poor performers out. Some in leadership positions are judgmental and stubborn. Reward for performance process is non-existent.

• Remote work options based in a few select states • Company swag (shirts, hoodies) are higher quality than most • Micromanagement does not seem to be a common problem • Decent gig if you're management • Some DEI initiatives (see below) • Great coworkers (excluding HR/management)

• Management can be petty, vengeful, and ineffective. • Turnover is high, which is telling in the current market • In my 10 years of professional experience this company has the most sociopathic over-policing and out of touch HR group I've ever witnessed. At any company I have low expectations for HR, but this group still fell short. • Decisions impacting employees are often made without sufficient understanding or effort to learn. • Abysmal communication from leadership, but it doesn't matter since they will not take your feedback anyway. • Some sales managers seem to be completely unaware of anything, don't know how to help with any of my problems and are not willing to try. • Low salaries across the organization and sales commission structure that works against sales people. Some coworkers have received promotions yet earn less after promotion. • Questionable practice of adjusting sales targets on a whim, directly affecting comission payouts since sellers must meet a threshold to be eligible. • While DEI is promoted, support for neurodivergent staff is absent, upper leadership and HR shows little understanding in this area • Engineering teams have appalling salaries for the work they do. New hires are trying but lack acumen gained from on the job experience -> lost sales -> missing targets -> lost comission. • The company does not value you, they will never counteroffer or respond to a request for a raise. They'll let you walk instead and will backfill your spot with a lowballed college grad. • Many key knowledgeable staff were laid off or no attempt was made to retain staff that quit, creating operational struggles for those remaining • Protolabs crushes every company they buy. They do not take time to understand why companies they purchase have excellent growth (compared to their approximately 0% growth). They learn nothing from acquisitions. • Raises are fractions of a percent higher than COLA, but Protolabs does not have COLA. • The plan to combat poor culture and morale created by management and HR is pizza parties, pancake parties, and ramen packets. • I'm not kidding, this is a large multinational publicly traded company that gives ramen and pizza parties to try and fix their problems. • From the bottom of my heart I would not recommend Protolabs unless you have a dire need to put food on the table. I do not know employees outside HR or management who are satisfied with their jobs. I am ashamed of this company that I tried to like.

Protolabs is an easy job with simple tasks—do the work, clock out. You can slack and still earn most of the pay and recognition. Benefits are average. If you want minimal effort for expected outcomes, it's an ordinary job. They show some concern for diversity, which is noteworthy in manufacturing.

I have a lot to say but I'll give a short take first for people considering working here. Frankly, if you are the kind of person that reads Glassdoor reviews to figure out if you should work somewhere, you care too much about your job to work here happily and successfully. This company is not for people who want to be rewarded for good work, who desire self-actualization or who want an even vaguely competitive salary. Working at this company is only survivable long term if you are the kind of person who will never, ever care about your job beyond what you need to do to clock in and out. Disengagement is a survival skill. Any further engagement beyond that is not only an active risk to your career, it will quickly burn you out and leave you miserable. Pay is terrible and handled poorly. Protolabs benchmarks salaries nationwide but aims *below* the market. Job posting salaries are dishonest; it's corporate policy that employees can *never* earn more than halfway up the posted salary band. Hitting that cap halts raises beyond cost of living unless job titles change. In sales, the commission system is a scam. Despite record-breaking targets, no seller I have spoken to about this (dozens) has hit more than 85% of quota. The threshold for receiving any amount of commission is 80%. If you actually stay on pace with your target, your quotas will increase mid-year without explanation. If you are assigned a departing colleague’s customers, your quota also increases, potentially undoing months of hard work. Staffing and business organization decisions are erratic, unstable, and never thought through, resulting in a constant flow of disruptive changes made without any regard for the functioning of the business, the support of employees, or even the company’s own bottom line. Let me be perfectly clear here - I am not saying they are making calculated business decisions that happen to hurt people. I am saying they are making decisions that both hurt people as well as their own business in both the short and the long term. Taking this job means you have to watch management destroy their own business in front of you, over and over again. Going above and beyond or taking ownership is an active career risk. Promoted and/or critical employees are often cut during pointless reorganizations, with management seeming to lack any understanding of the harm such a decision does. The company actively pushes out vital talent - likely by design. Management keeps organizational decisions secret. Major changes happen suddenly without explanation, despite the clear benefit of transparency and feedback. Upper management, disconnected from daily operations, imposes sweeping changes entirely blindly. More than once, management announced a key role was eliminated, the role being in charge of implementing a strategic program - only to be surprised that now there are no employees left to run said program. Upper management and HR communicate with arrogance and condescension. They see no need to explain disruptive, costly decisions, leaving rank-and-file employees to pick up the pieces without support. Their tone and attitude is genuinely the worst I’ve seen in my professional life - condescending, dismissive, and disrespectful - masked beneath a thin veneer of "Minnesota Nice." You can see this attitude on Glassdoor, where HR’s public responses to negative reviews are often dismissive and incorrect. And they talk like this in a public venue, where they are trying to impress potential new hires! Their tone here foreshadows internal interactions, where they feel no obligation to be respectful or transparent. This superiority complex isn’t just communication - it infects the whole company. Employees and lower managers are blocked from advancing beyond certain levels. The company leaves roles vacant for years rather than promoting qualified internal candidates. Managers and directors frequently misuse HR and disciplinary processes for retaliation and harassment of employees that challenge decisions or push back in any way.

Great work life balance in general

New US directors are complitely destroying what was Hubs(Protolabs Network now) and not just that... The big move is to move work resources to other low salaries countries like India. A lot of people are leaving with no replacement. They're just waiting to set up the new office in India and hire the new "resources" at cheaper price there.