I’ve also worked for a mid size. ICHOR. My experience was great at CAT, right out of BYU and went through a three year manufacturing leadership program. Best experience to start a career. Moved to three different locations. I felt challenged and I grew. Our CEO was launching a continuous improvement effort and told the shareholders it was going to cost money but great things were going to happen. I stayed for over 6 years and then the call of moving back west grew and I left. Still bleed yellow and have stock that I invested in.

I then went to GE. That was an eye opener. I knew about quarterly expectations at CAT but GE took it to another level. I ran a project that they asked me to reduce a possible safety problem that could cost the company at least 7 figures if it happened. I reduced the probably based on my projections by 96% but the true green dollar savings would have an ROI of 2.5 years. They wouldn’t do the project because they wanted an ROI of 1 year or less.

I then moved to a different division and was asked to have my team install a piece of equipment in 5 days that normally takes three weeks to install. I gave them a game plan of all I needed to make it happened and didn’t get any of it. I told them it wasn’t going to happen. They kept pushing and we made sure we were safe. At the end of the 5 days, someone submitted a sign off with my engineers name on it that the install was complete. It was far from complete and my engineer didn’t sign it off. All of this was because they had committed this install to the quarterly numbers. It was crazy.

I’ve been paid fairly well. My healthcare at CAT was phenomenal at the time. Truly a Cadillac plan. Glad I had all my kids while with them.

But it comes down to how the culture of the company is. The midSize one wasn’t bad but I didn’t last long because the commute was horrible.

I’m in a company now this is an Employee owned company. We all get stock in it. It’s good. They treat me well and. It to crazy on the bs of the quarter. We are a for profit enterprise so we looking at the money but it doesn’t seem like the value of a leadership person is how hard they push their team to deliver results before they crack.