Siemens

I've been with this company since I graduated college. There are a lot of great things about this company.

All new hires get:

• 3 weeks vacation when they start
• Dollar for dollar matching of 401k contributions up to 7% (I think)

The culture is much different than other companies; it is much more relaxed and laid back (this can be good and bad). There are lots of opportunities internally that allow for movement between organizations.

Management fosters a culture of "siloed" groups and organizations. The fragmentation between Germany and the US is very apparent.

Often times, there is little cooperation to no cooperation between groups; it seems they only look out for themselves, which is a shame. Management doesn't set the tone to change this. For the 10 years that I have been with the company, it has always been this way.

They recently changed their compensation structure within the past few years. In order to get promoted from within your group, the promotion money comes out of the overall merit pot for the group, which means that if you are promoted, all others in the group will have a lower merit increase for the year. This, and the fact that the merit "pot" for the past few years has only been around 3%, is beginning to cause folks to believe that there is a "have" vs "have-not" attitude towards the company. This is especially true when we, as employees, see emails from the division CEO telling us that we've met or beat our financial targets every year for the past 5 years.

Vertical movement is a challenge. There are a large group of individuals that came over from Pratt & Whitney a while back. You'll notice that quite a few of these individuals are the ones in management positions. It almost feels (and you hear this quite a bit from a lot of people) that if you did not come from Pratt and are not part of the "good ol' boy's club," that you have virtually no chance for vertical movement in some groups / organizations.

Since the company is a German company, there are a lot of challenges when working with anyone from Germany. Beware of this: Germans have a much different work ethic than we do here in the US.

Senior management must change the merit and salary structure. The recent EOS demonstrates that the employees are not happy with their compensation. Money for promotions must come from outside the merit pot.

Employees that get promotions must be given a fair raise – this is especially true now that the salary bands have increased 15%!

Getting a promotion for 10% will, in most cases, NOT put you in the target market range for that salary level. This makes it virtually impossible to ever be fairly compensated based on the market rates! Shame on the company for doing this.