Good company but toxic culture - Supervisor McMaster-Carr Employee Review

2.0
May 25, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good benefits and excellent learning and training opportunities. Many reasonably smart individuals who made impractical choices in college (e.g. gender studies majors at Ivy U). Lots of opportunities to explore specialized skills in operations management (customer research, communications management, corporate finance). Do not take this job expecting that it leads to "any future opportunities" -- this is not a liberal arts college. It is a career builder for operations management and an opportunity to further your education with tuition reimbursement.

Cons

Management gets in the way of itself by promoting an "overmanaged" culture. Every single action or activity is structured to provide a basis for "performance assessment." As a member of management, your job is more about building cases to fire employees than business development. The business more or less manages itself, and opportunities to improve mostly stem from gaps in knowledge because of all of the turnover (>40% / year).

Explore other reviews about McMaster-Carr

4.0
Jun 16, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Pay/benefits are incredibly generous - People are generally easy/nice to work with - Note that the Systems department seems to be fairly isolated from the negative issues discussed in other reviews (e.g. tension between warehouse workers and management) - I haven't experienced any of those issues within the systems department. In my opinion, Systems is a great place to work and develop as an engineer. - Hybrid work style (3 days in office). Personally, I like hybrid more than both fully in-office and fully remote styles. - Great cafeteria with good food and cheap prices. - Good work/life balance (outside of being on call, I can leave work at work).

Cons

- Work is not super interesting to me. I come from a highly technical, but very different (not ecommerce/industrial supplies), background where I was doing work I was much more interested in. No doubt there are folks in Systems who love the domain though. - While I'm not on call a ton (1-2 weeks every few months), I really hate being on call. I like to leave work at work. Note that joining at least one reliability team is expected within your first year or so.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All