It feels like anyone can get hired at 3M now. Half my day is spent teaching new people the absolute basics, all the stuff they should already know! It’s absolutely bonkers. And with that, I can barely finish my own work. Is this where we're at? Just taking anyone who applies, no matter their skills or experience?
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With conditions such as the one described below, how on earth will top technical talent join 3M :
A major flaw is * velocity of promotion* in management ranks, as compared to * velocity of promotion* for the technical folks , i.e. the working class in 3M.
In the former category , promotion pretty much occurs every 3 years till the level of Lab Director or T6 equivalent. It is just like clockwork. Then it depends (in many cases) on how good a sycophant they are to get to a VP level or higher.
Hence in 10 years every Tom, Di-k and Susan gets to a Technical Manager or T5 equivalent, provided they are able to" toe the line" and do the horsework for upper management.
Meanwhile for the worker bees , every promotion till T5 takes 4 to 5 or even more time, and T5 almost always takes some kind of commercialization effort to get to that level. Otherwise career track stops at a T4A level, till an inevitable layoff awaits after the age of 50 or 55.
Thus 10 years for promotion to Technical Manager in management track while 14 to 20 years for reaching T5 in technical track for a select few. After that, probably 3 to 5 % ever make it to T6 or T7.
Is anybody surprised why new folks are running to be a manager. There is simply very low probability of making any meaningful career progress in the technical track ! Ironical considering that 3M is a technology based materials science company.
Also no surprise that middle management is filled with folks who were utter failures at the bench and hence choose management track to get the next promotion! So many examples at 3M.
Awww, do u want a medal for being a martyr…
I've never worked at a place that management encourages bad behavior more than this company. Any normal company bad behavior is dealt with accordingly and accountable employer's gain respect from employees. Good behavior builds morale, and increases productivity but I'm a firm believer the top wants failure to trim and only trim. Plants are becoming blood thirsty, save yourself, and throw others under the bus to save your own job. Unethical sheep in management positions. I feel bad for anyone who can live with themselves for ruining financial lives of many. Why does this company keep cutting at the bottom? Any normal company cuts from the top. Why are none of these management positions taking reduced pay to offset their failures? Greed.
Your lucky that people are getting trained at your plant our management doesn't care if you are trained or not to operate machinery as long as they get production
What did you expect would happen when 3M laid off all the people with experience that knew what was going on and then replaced them with cheaper, younger new college graduates? It’s not rocket science.
Bar is about to get lower since everyone that moved has essentially had their career ended by work our way. Anyone whi can fog a mirror in st paul is getting promoted
HR at all levels have done irreparable damage to 3M culture, performance, and reputation. A company is defined by its people, and 3M continues to deteriorate as a result of HR blindly supporting questionable policies and leaders. When people aren’t cared for, talent takes notice and departs.
Hate to break it to you, but the bar to get hired at 3M was never that high.
They fire smart employees, keep the mo--ns because they sheep, and the mo--ns hire their relatives and drinking buddies. You get a bunch of peters. This was the ultimate destruction of 3m. Seems simple but facts.
Just to share some observations on BSC. Originally they are supposed to provide strategic end to end SC guidance to plants, and people would expect them to be more experienced since they are positioned at higher JG. But alas. In many division, relatively new engineers are hired into BSC roles and instead of guiding the plants, what these BSC does are just coordinating spreadsheets or escalation items to bring back to division directors/VPs That's the state of the ESC now. It's no surprise there are no growth. Best of all, these BSC operates from the comfort of their homes.
It seems that way within ESC. Most plant leadership roles seem to go to very mediocre external hires who like to chest point about “I’m used to processes with over 90% OEE!” Meanwhile they have no grasp of what even makes up OEE nor that different process types (eg continuous chemical process versus highly automated converting line) and number of SKUs/changeover have a huge bearing on what your entitlement OEE is.
Just take a look on external 3M Careers website. So many plant manager/director, ops manager, engineering manager positions as well as a plethora of engineer roles (many at factories where a significant amount of engineers were job eliminated in March 2023). 3M used to have a strong pipeline of talent in its factories and that seems to be entirely depleted. Additionally there’s a lot of BSC/St. Paul corporate manufacturing jobs posted. These are roles that in the past were often filled by your early career hires, many times engineers that joined 3M via the O2 program and worked in a factory for 2-5 years. But it seems the well is nearly entirely dry.
Maybe if they hire enough external people they can show us how to get 90% OEE on a process with 5 changeovers a day. Grifters gonna grift.