Unrealistic Project Schedules Results in Fire-Fight Culture - Design Engineer II Milwaukee Tool Employee Review

2.0
21 Nov 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Projects can be very interesting as they are tools that you will likely use at home.

Cons

Milwaukee tool does a poor job of properly scheduling, planning, and executing on projects. Nearly all projects end up as a fire fight for the last 3-4 months. Management will then pull additional people to fight the current fire but then the projects those pulled resources were responsible will suffer as well with another fire fight on later on those projects. This results in a continuous never-ending cycle and culture of fire fighting without any plan to improve the situation. Management is happy enough with the status quo because they have bonus structures in place to incentivize pushing lower level engineers to work extremely long hours to maintain schedules. Management does not care about employee burnout and turnover is starting to become a large problem with increasing amounts of engineers leaving the company due to the excessive work hours and below average pay given the amount of hours management requires.

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Milwaukee Tool Response
6y
Thank you for posting this feedback. Of the hundreds of projects our cross functional teams deliver every year, and as much due diligence the team members do put forth early and throughout a project to identify potential risks, unfortunately we do experience unanticipated challenges during some projects. When those challenges do occur, our agile and empowered team members respond with a great sense of urgency to overcome the challenge brought forth with an incredible sense of ownership to meet our User and Distribution Partner needs. We never settle on how we approach the business and project management is no exception. Hence, we will continue to improve the many pieces of our business including project management. Again, thank you for your feedback.

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5.0
29 Jun 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

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Cons

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5.0
24 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

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Cons

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