Pros
-You'll learn a lot, but it won't necessarily be from good strong senior leadership teaching you themselves, half of those people have long since quit. It will be from getting thrown in to the deep end over and over again, nonstop sink-or-swim situations where employees are needlessly overburdened. -There 8,000,000,000 convulted company policies, and among the corporate bloat is at least a lot of good industry standards and practices, I found it easy to take Avixa certifications that I myself paid for. -The company penny pinches to such an extreme that I never feared for my job, they did employ many people through Covid with minimal furloughing where they could. There's no shortage of work to do since they constantly get more work than they have employees since people quit so often. -They're willing to hire entry level people, they do it all the time! In fact that's basically all they do since most people with experience in the industry know better and stay away. They hire low experience people quite often, usually the proverbial revolving door keeps swinging as people come in and out, I'm not sure I saw it stop very often. -For some reason making deep friends through trauma bonding over the ridiculous situations is a common occurrence, I met a lot of good people. -if you like travel, it's inevitable. It's pretty cool that half the time, they'll book you into avant-garde hotels with scenic art exhibits like holes in walls, a corner with mildew, and a strong smell of cigarettes. A truly unique experience I otherwise would've missed out on. So glad I got to do a lot of my long drives off the clock per company policy, so I got to enjoy my company-planned 10-12 hour work days out of town even more! Conveniently located oddly far from the jobsite so the company could save some pocket change over the hotel next to the site. -if you like working for free while being salaried for constant overtime abuse, that might be fun for someone. -the company and it's leadership have many great examples of what not to be and how not to treat people, I learned a lot! -I had so much nostalgia everyday being treated like I was back in middle school. It really brought me back having nebulous, goofy, meaningless, petty rules constantly nagging me, along with people above me waggling their fingers at me. I felt like a spry, youthful 5th grader all over again, where none of the adults trusted me and instead babied me like a child who doesn't know better. So Cool! -Experience the heart pounding rush and excitement of driving a dingy, beat up work van with 300,000 miles on it literally ready to disintegrate on the highway at any minute. Ensure maximum thrill with breaks that barely qualify as breaks. But don't you go having too much excitement now, they still want you safe, so you can enjoy the state of the art baby monitor standard in every Ford AV van. That way your every driving maneuver due to your imaginary breaks can be brought up at your performance reviews so management has an excuse to withhold pennies on your pay raise. -Ford is so kind and cares about their employees so much, that they throw parties with a catered entree, but they don't want you to feel left out! You also get to be guilted into bringing the rest of the party yourself so you don't have to feel left out spending money, since all Ford parties have requests for people to bring the rest of the food themselves. A free meal for the company to show its appreciation for you is so overrated anyways. What's that? You can't bring any food, but you still don't want to feel left out being gutted of something? No worries my friend, all Ford events like this are entirely off the clock! Just donate your PTO instead! -Speaking of PTO, who needs it anyways. Ford will happily take it off your hands to ease your burden of spending it on those pesky vacations. You finished an installation half way through the day, and all your company assigned work is done for the day? Oh no, you're not allowed to spend the remainder of the day on training we're requiring you do, instead we'll make it super easy and convenient for you PTO to be as low as possible. After all, you did save the company money by finishing your on site work early with less hours, it's the least that they could do. Grandma passed away? Please, spend all the PTO you need. Company training really should be off company time, Ford was very helpful reminding me of that often. Have no fear, that PTO will be at 0 hours in no time when a tiny snow storm passes by! -Ford really helped keep me from being lonely.... seeing as they repeatedly reminded everyone ad nauseam that there is no work from home policy, except random instances all over the place where apparently they do. They're even skilled at talking out of both sides of their mouth, quite a handy trick! What's that, your an engineer, working on your laptop daily, but you finished early on a jobsite? Well sorry, you can't finish your work remotely for the day, please drive 2+ hours back to the office instead so you can work in office for the last 30 minutes of the day, we can't possible let you use that time remotely without an overbearing, invasive, ludicrous policy. -if you're old an tenured, no need to be good at your job, they'll gladly let you perform badly and give you a remote position so you can just do whatever the heck you want. Talk about convenient!
Cons
-Death by policy. The company is unbelievably and extremely top down and controlling. They have a handbook that has policies down to when and how you're supposed to take a lunch break. You're supposed to ask for permission for literally every little thing like you're in elementary school. Middle management are managers in title only; they are rule peddlers. They get NO freedom to actually manage. -Behind the times. it feels like it's run like a sweatshop at times. You will constantly be put in situations where you have more work to do than time, which is by design. No one takes ownership of things, the few that do are smart enough not to stay for their career. There is otherwise an air of doing the bare minimum and not wanting to be bothered beyond that. Tons of finger pointing at all times. There is no team mentality, there is no culture. -There's no real give and take, only take. The company at large will gladly burn all personal bridges with any employees over literal pennies on the dollar. They place NO value on relationships, bigger picture details, etc. They will only ever prioritize the "hard dollars" that are tangible and measurable, even if there is a very clear indirect cost to the decision. I've heard them argue for this mentality and behavior explicitly... disgusting. -There is a strong stench of arrogance with management. Ford doesn't want to hear it, they don't want to change, they are beyond stubbornly set in their ways "we are the premium experts". Quite ironic for a company that works in the rapidly evolving tech field being unwilling to change and adapt. -HR and senior management will literally monitor and spy on internal communications like email and teams. -Active antagonism towards employee performance reviews and raises. It's clear it's by design to be as arduous and annoying as possible. They'll gladly waste a ton of time for request-only performance reviews, and they'll give raises with zero back pay for all the time they wasted. So disrespectful, do you think we're dumb? (probably). -No employee tool or clothing funds, no subsidy for required job materials. The few tools the company has on hand for specialized things are also super old and falling apart, just like everything else in the office. The few clothes they give you are literally used sitting in a back closet, riddled with holes, reeking of sweat and, if you're lucky, weed or cigarettes. Can't have any comfortable or professional looking employees now, too costly. -Fixed assets are stupid time wasters that just annoy employees and give the company an excuse to back charge them excessive money when able. -Profit sharing is laughable. there are exactly zero true merit-based incentive structures, the few incentives that exist are 100% luck driven with what you're assigned and how it was sold, bonuses are practically non existent. I got a better 6-month bonus at my new company than I did COLLECTIVELY over the several years I worked at Ford. Pathetic. -Strong workplace politics. Management overtly plays favorites. -Something as simple as a pizza party for a crew requires a bunch of dialogue, forms, meetings, etc.... why aren't managers just allowed to make this call themselves here and there and be done with it. Why are there not predefined misc. budgets for middle management to just do middle management things like that. For a company that wants to pinch every penny they sure don't pay much mind to the cost of meetings and forms...