A hostile work place, worst experience in my career. PLEASE read reviews before accepting an offer. - Controls Engineer TAMKO Employee Review

Initial experience: After the phone interview I was invited to the corporate office in Joplin for the first on-site interview. Here I was told that certain set of system migration projects were "top on the list" issues I need to work on at the plant. Since I had the the required experience to perform such migration I was told they really like my profile and think was a good fit. Later I had an interview at the plant where the engineering manager seemed friendly and walked me through the plant and explained what they did and I was asked the same set of questions on system migration and technical skills they thought THEY NEEDED. Since the skills they told me they need are in line with my previous experience I accepted the offer. First couple of months at the plant there was no correlation between the job duties I was interviewed for, to the actual day to day projects which were assigned to me. The projects which I was told were “high priority” at corporate during my interview were laughed upon during my first couple of days at the plant. TOTAL disconnect between corporate and plant on the vision for process improvement. The Engineering department: The worst part about this place is the utter lack of knowledge on engineering best practices and people survived all these years by one phrase “We always did things this way”. There are no clear definitions on roles and responsibilities for any of these "engineers" I worked with. These folks would constantly step on each other’s toes and execute projects contradicting each other’s process improvement efforts. Imagine if an IT person with an unrelated background could design, program and install electrical and automation equipment, how blurred the lines for roles in the company are. Everyone loves to call themselves “engineers” at the plant, even if you cannot understand most basic of the engineering best practices, such as electrical drawings. The surprising part is that most don’t realize that their way of doing things was outdated. They continue to live in the mess they created and whine about it every single day! TOTAL CHAOS. It’s also surprising that people at the plant follow outside contractors blindly and do not care about what their own experienced employees have to say (who they would interview very keenly). Company Values: Highly bureaucratic work culture and employees survive in “packs”. If you have to survive here you better be a part of a “group”. People get their ideas implemented through this bully mentality with constant intimidation with the reason that their side of argument is somehow “data driven”. Even between departments they hated each other, you can feel the enmity in the air. They would not hesitate for one second to throw you under the bus if they got a chance. This changed quite a lot since the new management took over and I applaud their efforts greatly. But for most part engineers of all departments still act like they belong to a mafia. If they don’t like you they will harass, attack you personally and intimidate you every chance they get. After couple of such personal attacks from my own team, I realized that they would throw everything they have at me to protect their outdated paradigm of doing things and I was at the wrong place. Benefits and Time off: Horrible 401K and health care options, although some would disagree regarding the healthcare options. Take note that the Paid Time Off would begin ONLY after 1 year of successful employment with the company.