Pros
- Benefits are solid. Maternity and paternity leave is the most generous I've seen yet in my career. Standard health coverage, and 6% 401k match. - CEO Jeff Harmening is an excellent leader - the first time in my career I've seen and experienced such strong leadership, he does what he says he's going to do. And the decisions he makes - clearly move the giant ship of General Mills in the right direction. -Work-life balance - nobody is cranking out work day in and day out, if you're.- as far as I can tell this is one of the easiest gigs out there. Need a job while focusing on your family? - this is a great work life balance.
Cons
- Pay: be prepared to be well underpaid and undervalued, without hope for significant raises (e.g. 2-3% across the org in our record highest profit year 2021). They will also be cagey and shady about how routine this is EVERY YEAR during the interview. They also offered "work with heart" as a significant part of your raise, but you only received that benefit if you are in a role with the capability to work remotely (not a scientist) or if your manager was on board with the policy. You did not get to see the benefit (a quote "significant part of your raise") 'work with heart' if your role does not support it or if your manager disagreed with it. They kept all of the marketers they were trying to retain while forcing the rest of their workforce back into the office. AKA some got raises and some did not. Shady AF. - Promotions: expect promotions to take twice as long as at other companies. 3.5 years to get a senior title - try 7 or 8 at General Mills. Accordingly, the titles are deflated. -Politics: I learned at General Mills that "I work here because of the people" equates to political nightmare. There are a lot of cliques and gossip. I have experienced such a pernicious Social standing is more important than the work being done and completed. -Sexism: Expect there to be a lot of unaware, emotionally unintelligent business bros to speak over women and say the same thing and to take credit. It's hard to watch. There are a lot of women in leadership - but a lot of the traits they take have to take on are of the business bros in order to get to that point. - Young = no influence: expect to have to work very hard to influence people who have been in the org for 10, 20, 30 years. Maybe this is expected, but they are struggling to shift their thinking and adapt for the future. - 90% of your job will be managing fragile Gen Xers holding on to vestiges of "how things used to be", because they think they've earned the ability to call the shots and diminish the others behind them like I'm sure was done to them. It's sad and honestly rampant in the org.