Pros
High compensation. Great benefits, including 100% tuition reimbursement and excellent medical. The people who work here are generally very bright, creative, and fun to be around outside of work. Skills you build here can be very useful in the industry, with the caveat that McMaster tends not to use big-name software except basics like excel. Generalists are non-exempt hourly employees so they have to pay you for overtime, so you won't work outside of your normal 40 hours unless you sign up for it. In this way, work-life balance is pretty good.
Cons
Tracking: metrics are everything at McMaster-Carr and employee tracking is big-brother-esque. Absolutely everything about your job is tracked, measured, and picked apart. There is really no wiggle room for error. I was even spoken to about my bathroom breaks. This aspect can really breed anxiety and contribute to burn out. Lack of Control: All McMaster positions are rotational/based on "company need." This means you have next to no control over what job you do. It is accepted as common that you can be pulled into a meeting on a Friday that you'll be starting a new role on Monday and you really have no way to say no without quitting. You can also very easily get stuck in a department you hate for a very long time. Culture: Because of the above, basically everyone at this company is stressed out. In my experience, managers are incentivized and rewarded for throwing people under the bus when things aren't going well. This is a shame because I think many of the people who work here are bright, honorable, and genuinely interesting and lovely people, but the structure of the company can really make them act in cruel ways. Additionally, on an individual contributor level the people who are passionate tend to burn out and leave quickly or become jaded and stay for the money but resent their jobs. People who stay at McMaster for a long time have a tendency to say "just keep your head down" when things get tough (which is at least half the time). There is a general malaise that you shouldn't risk anything to try and change things because it's likely to be punished. Communication and silo-ing: For individual contributors, departments are extremely silo-ed and it can be extremely hard to know what's going on in different parts of the company, even when you make an active effort to do so. It seems to be part of the corporate strategy for this to be true with the excuse it allows you to "focus on your responsibilities". For this and other reasons, the work can be very isolating if you don't go out of your way to make connections with others! Opportunity: If you are a manager there's significant growth opportunity at McMaster but if you're a generalist or analyst it's very very rare to be promoted into management, so don't anticipate that being a realistic option if you take a job here. There is no internal application system. Diversity and Inclusion: This is an area where the compensation vs. culture aspect of McMaster is most stark. McMaster tends to have inclusive compensation policies, including being a very early adopter of extending medical benefits to same-sex partners before gay marriage was legal. They've made significant efforts to include gender affirming care in their medical coverage above and beyond the standard. However, the culture is extremely homogenous and not particularly accepting of anything other than the company line. I can't speak to the experience of people coming from non-US cultures, but I know my friends of color have struggled with microaggressions there consistently and their ERGs are little more than a recruiting tool rather than a substantive mentorship and organizing space. They could definitely do better in this area.