Don't be a wasted talent... - werkgeversreview R&D Engineer bij Dow

I will try be as objective as possible. First and foremost, your experience will really depend on who your boss is. My manager was a young amateur who's been given a responsibility to lead a team of 15 people in one-go and lead them to their living hell (i.e. either being extremely disgruntled or in some cases like myself, leaving the company). In my case there were people that were doing close to nothingness, and they were ranked same as I was ranked at the end of the performance review (Performance review at Dow is utterly useless by the way). So you should expect to see some people that actually "do nothing" and people that are extremely hard-workers rewarded similarly (unfair treatment? I Call it the Dow treatment) The other problem is that management has no clue what they are doing and nobody is overseeing those monkeys and the way they operate. They operate as if they are the best, and they will tell you that they are the best. Not only that, they will even come at you where you don't expect it and shove it right in your face. Nonetheless, you see right in front of your eyes the competitors poaching your customers left and right. The reason your management MUST convince you that they are the best is because of their hypocrisy and fear of upper-leadership, they will SAY ANYTHING just to get the "big boss" off their back, so that they can continue to operate like monkeys. Development, like a lot of people already said, is non-existent. You will learn a few things here and there once you start and then if your manager is like mine, you will be asked to do 250% of what a human being is actually capable of (social/work balance?) and then your boss expects you to be an obedient slave and just DO things that you are asked like they are holy orders. Where is your development? Well, let me know when you get 5 minutes to even think about development. If you dare and speak to anyone in Dow about development, they will revert you back to your "1st level supervisor" as they call it. Then your supervisor will act extremely surprised that you aren't getting development because he/she thinks that development only comes as part of your day-to-day tasks. Then he/she will ask you to write a "EDP" Employee-Development-Plan which is a very lengthy document that will remain in your drawer for years after you've drafted it and nobody will even act upon it. So in the end, you won't get the development you need. Here is an employee ladder at Dow with job position titles: Level 138 - Engineer Level 158 - Lead Engineer Level 181 - Senior Engineer Level 208 - Associate Engineering Manager (HR of Dow says that most employees will retire at this level) ... ... ... ... Level 500+ (These are director and executive levels) But there are so many positions left, so why stay in a company where you retire after jumping into 3 positions? and it takes 3-4 years for each promotion which is completely unrelated to how hardworking you are. Last but not least, is the GEOAS (Global Employee...Survey). This one is a real joke. Dow collects feedback every year from its employees about how the company is doing in terms of stress/recognition/management/safety/accountability....etc and EVERY year the feedback repeats again and again and again. They just use this GEOAS as a venting machine for employees like me (who give honest and very critical opinion). There are tons of cons but honestly I am just too tired of writing....