data center technician

field service technician

service manager

senior project engineer

senior product specialist

The duties of my most recent role as Strategic Business Development Manager varied in nature and focus throughout the course of each month.  While researching and developing ways to ever increase sales of our electrical utility products for the renewable energy generation market was a prime responsibility, I also devoted considerable production to analyzing and presenting numerous marketing and engineering performance indicators to all functional departments within the Division.  I also routinely made presentations, supplied reports, trained and evaluated personnel, and attended trade conferences.

Inasmuch as my in-house, as well as external, customers varied extensively in terms of personnel, requirements, and preferences, I'd learned to become very flexible in my work manner and perspectives to optimally accommodate individuals’ needs.

While it was the responsibility of my managers to call directions and thereby 'lead the way' toward particular goals, I quickly discovered that their effectiveness significantly improved as I became more adept at proactively interpreting their unspoken requests and consequently deliver more strategic results.

Many of my co-workers were new to their assignments, a situation often repeating throughout each year.  Having served a number of varied roles in the past, I was generally able to supplement their training and develop tools and procedures to help them more quickly assimilate their responsibilities.

Much my work output depended upon receiving accurate and timely information from other individuals.  It was an added challenge to complete a task whenever such information was either late, insufficient, or inaccurate, and the responsible person was to be absent for an extended period.  I quickly learned to develop alternative informational sources or to maintain personal databases upon which I could rely upon such contingencies.

Much of my reporting and analytical duties frequently depended upon performing a series rather complicated software procedures.  One of my personal goals was continually improving the accuracy, relevancy, clarity, consistency, and speed of the information that I delivered.  I recognized that I held an important stake in helping our business advance and prosper by always striving to deliver the most germane and highest quality information that I could generate, an accomplishment in which I regularly derived great satisfaction.

The job was not hard.

Management did not work very hard they spent most of their time talking about things outside of work and planning community events. Certain employees clearly had privileges due to nepotism. There was a couple engineers and salesmen who worked ten times harder then everyone else. It was depressing to see them stressed out everyday keeping everything running. Some managers would come in and look around the factory once in the morning and spend the rest of the day sitting on their phone in meetings then take a 2 hour lunch before heading home early. General management wanted me to do unpaid community events for a community I'm not a part of. The company was big on DEI specifically elevating women.

The most upsetting thing about working was misrepresented advancement and benefits. I was told I would receive a significant pay raise once I achieved certain certifications. A year later when I did they refused to honor their promises, which was the only reason I took such a poor paying job in the first place. Additionally I was promised "unlimited PTO" but if I ever needed to take off it was a problem and they started the process to fire me. I did not see this happening to other people who took significantly more time off.

The company was very successful during my time there. We ranked number one for the program I was responsible for in America and top three in the world but I saw nothing from it. They had a big meeting were they told us how great we did but didn't give me anything as a reward. Despite other programs in the factory also being successful, no low level employee received a decent raise, everything got sent to the top. Don't get me wrong, I liked my direct report supervisor, he worked hard and wanted me to be successful but didn't have the support to elevate me to success. Lack of support was the reason for most problems at this location. No one wanted to work together and get things done, they wanted to kick the can further down the road.

Discipline was a joke no one ever got fired for not following the rules people only got fired for angering a manager or attendance. I liked the lower level employees it was people just trying to get by, some of them were understandably grumpy.

The firsts thing you’ll notice when you start working here is the conditions of the inside.
Floors are a wreck, if you operate an order picker or reach truck you might as well go run a jackhammer. Sections of floor are busted down to the sand.
Rollers on modules were never repaired, racks are busted daily, every single rack leg is damaged, conveyor belts or ripped, dock doors left wide open. 

Maintenance does absolutely nothing for 90% of the day. If you want to work maintenance this IS for you, you can sleep, play on your phone, eat snacks and get away with doing only the most trivial work for a day, maintenance has been moved to a back corner far away from everyone else now so it’s even better for them to catch sleep. 

Management is a joke. Their only concern is orders going out, no matter how difficult it becomes to push them out. Their backwards ideas consistently delay other areas which later causes another delay in orders going out. They cannot keep employees at the shipping dock, if you go in as a order filler you are likely to end up on the shipping dock because everyone walked out. Shipping is back breaking because you HAVE to go fast and bend from line to floor, there is no way to ergonomically move product at that speed. They have NO pallet stands to relieve any strain. They exhaust you with no weekends off ever. 
Supervisors and leads sit and stare at a monitor and their phones all day and their highest degree of work is getting on the radio to let you know it’s break time.

The isles are filthy. Modules filthy, pallets standing in modules, on the floor and sometimes in pick racks.

There is an unspoken rivalry against 2nd shift by 1st. 
2nd shift gets the blame for anything 1st shift is responsible for. 
2nd shift has fewer people on shift but is expected to clean up after 1st. 

Forklifts are left uncharged by 1st so the first 30 minutes of the day is fast charging your equipment then you play catch up. 

Their is consistent chatter on the radio, operators don’t have a separate channel. 


A typical day at work is repetitive and mind numbing.. your peers are hostile and passive aggressive at best. Very buddy buddy and unless you know someone or are related to someone don't expect to move up or be treated fairly honestly. I learned to remain quiet in the face of adversity.. management is a joke and is openly sexist at best. No one actually attempts to train you they just throw you on a line and hope for the best with no or little to no guidance. The workplace culture is to talk about ppl, exclude you if you're new, mock and belittle you and then wonder why you're miserable in your new work environment. The hardest part of the job is a toss up between feeling like there is no light at the end of the tunnel, the lack of guidance they actually give you, or the fact that they WILL suddenly shove you into involuntary overtime with little to no warning and expect you to not only like it but appreciate it as a dazzling opportunity. It's beyond hot in there with little to no temperature control and they put you in areas that you don't stop moving/ don't get to actually cool down..I remained dizzy and moderately dehydrated the entire time I attempted to work here...all while being harassed by my coworkers daily. The most enjoyable part of the job was when I got to leave honestly. I destroyed countless pairs of jeans in there.. it's filthy and hot and you will work yourself half to death and it still won't be good enough for your micro managing supervisors or their favorite employee that does no wrong. Save yourself and don't go here unless you absolutely have to.  

I worked as a supervisor at ABB, but every day was filled with anxiety, fearing it might be my last. The constant need for machine repairs added financial pressure, and requesting funds from the plant manager felt like a daunting task and mistrust. Without a proper preventive maintenance program in place, I was assigned the task of implementing one. However, frequent machine breakdowns, facility issues, and a lack of skilled personnel, coupled with the rejection of funds for a computerized maintenance management system, made progress unattainable. Despite working long hours and sacrificing weekends, I only ended up burnt out with minimal progress. Each step forward seemed to result in two to three steps backward.

My salary was inadequate considering the immense responsibilities I carried. I was in charge of maintaining around 150 machines, overseeing 22 staff members, and managing two facilities, including HVAC, sanitation, offices, pest control, and parking lot lighting. I even had to deal with unusual situations one evening, had to return to work at 7 pm to address an ant infestation in a gazebo after someone accidentally disturbed an ant hill nearby, and escort  spider web clean-up team a few Sundays.

Leaving that job felt like being flushed out and distorted, but I quickly moved forward. Every job negotiation reinforced the realization that I should have left ABB much earlier. Every potential employer offered significantly higher salaries than what I was earning at ABB. The first offer I received was $20,000 more than my ABB salary, but I chose a much better offer from a company that seemed like a vastly superior workplace. Now, I work for a company that pays substantially more, with a manageable workload. I oversee just three machines and five personnel. Issues like clogged toilets, leaking offices, or a warm break room are no longer my concern unless it directly affects me.

At this plant, the management focuses on what they want to accomplish in the next hour. 
It is amusing to see how each and every process is chaotic, random and makes no sense.
The management has in a true sense lost control of the plant. Zero effective communication and work flow between the departments. No one cares about one day, one week, one month, one year down the line. They just work to get the money into their banks for one day and override each and every process to make it happen.
For any professional, this place is a dead-end as you learn nothing new. They use tools and software (if any) that was outdated decades ago. The plant runs on intuition and not data. 
This place is also the perfect example of talent wastage. Doesn’t matter if you are a trainee, an engineer, a senior engineer, a manager or whatever. You will be expected to do manual work on the shop floor that will waste weeks and weeks of your time that you could’ve put into actual projects to improve this place. You will be putting fires out the entire time you are here. The management wants to improve the processes but there are no processes at the plant to begin with. They have big plans in place that make the corporate happy when they visit the plant, but it is all shiny from the outside and hollow from the inside. 
I have never seen a plant where each and every employee is unhappy and knows the place is not doing well.

There is a pro though. The people are amazing. They will have your back no matter what. The pay is competitive and the benefits are good. 
Even though the HR is extremely helpful, employee appreciation at this place is woeful. They just want you to work and make them $. Team culture = non existent. No efforts from the management to make you feel belong here. 

All in all, avoid this place. Don’t go after ABB’s name on the walls.

Thomas & Betts is a plastic injection molding factory, I worked in an area refereed to as L cell, where we primarily made plastic electrical boxes. I would come into work, the team lead would tell me my assigned press and you get straight to work. With how they strive for a consistent quality of plastic, they only shut the press down when they absolutely need to, and you must thoroughly check the quality of every part. That didn't necessarily make the job difficult, just made it have a higher learning curve than most, being that we would rotate to a different press everyday, and they all have unique operations. Some presses were parts going straight out of the press, adding a upc, and boxing. Most involved the parts going into a screw setter, where different components are added to the parts. The screw setter added a lot of more complications to how quality can be sub par. I started the job with it having a high turn over rate, and it was that way throughout my experience there. Meaning, new people were constantly coming in and learning these presses, while being switched to a new one everyday they came in, to them eventually quitting out of frustration of constantly being criticized by management for not keeping up with regular employees. With me gaining knowledge of the various presses, and the high turn over rate, I became a permanent trainer. I enjoyed every aspect of training, specifically motivating new employees to not give up and always believe in themselves. Noticing how the turnover rate dropped a lot after I started training was something I was very proud of and gave me a bright side to coming in everyday. Watching someone progress and hearing a thanks for your effort is so encouraging, training was something I never dislike doing for that reason.

While this job pays well, they demand a LOT of hours. A LOT OF HOURS. Long 10 hour shifts, backbreaking work, standing on your feet all day, and they make sure to micromanage even your bathroom breaks.

Barely any time off for people with families or just to rest after a long work week. Short-staffed constantly and a workload that is not friendly to the amount of workers, meaning that we are constantly behind getting shipments out.

Management is okay, however, they tend to put a lot of emphasis onto getting shipments out while the workers break their backs and hands trying to reach goals that are far beyond their capabilities. Not only that, they flip-flop around everywhere and cancel certain benefits whenever they feel like it. 'Unreliable' would be a good word for management.

Workplace culture is...'tense'. There always seems to be someone fighting or arguing with someone else about something and stuff constantly breaks down in the facility. Imagine yourself among a crowd of exhausted, homesick, moody coworkers and you got the workplace culture summed up in one mental visual. Not only that, but the lack of cooperative workers always leaves 2nd shift with barely any forklifts that have juice in them. So blame-throwing and rivalry between 1st and 2nd shifts is high right now.

The hardest part of the job is getting up another day and knowing you have to walk back into this nightmare just to make ends meet.

The most enjoyable part of the job is when you walk out the door and go home to clean up and sleep off the stress.

What I learned was that this place should be a temporary job. It's something that can pay the bills while you work on school or another goal to get you into a better position in life.

ABB paid me well for the job I was required to do.  That was where the pros ended.  You will be told in the interview that you are hired in as a contractor but that you will have the opportunity to become hired in full time sometime between 6 months to a year if you are a good employee.  After hiring in they will explain to you (did to me and others that were hired in around the same time) that it isn't true and that you will likely work there as a contractor for years for the possibility to get hired in as it may never happen.  You will be told regularly that you are just a contractor and not important to ABB.  You will be kept on edge every day about the possibility of being let go at any time for any or no reason at all.  They are open about keeping employees as contractors because they regularly let large groups of people go on a whim.  You will hear things like "you are just a contractor" and "you don't work here" in casual conversation which is insulting and unprofessional.  These things come from management.  

You will also regularly be required to perform tasks that you don't have the proper equipment to safely complete.  Thankfully my team lead usually took the lead because he recognized it was unnecessarily dangerous.  You will be made to feel that you must work unsafely and with improper equipment or you will be let go.

Bottom line, I've never been treated as poorly as I was at ABB and can't imagine working for a place that would treat you worse.  I would steer clear of ABB.  While the pay is pretty good, and the work life balance is good, they will let you go with no warning at some random time any time after the day you start.  

ABB is a great company to work for if you are an engineer, they are a huge company so there are plenty of opportunities to find something that you like. As an intern, I learned a lot during my time there that I don't think I could have learned from a textbook in school. I loved the people and everyone I worked with, but I do see some problems that they need to fix.

First off, ABB is a huge company made up of many division; however, there is very little collaboration across division, or at least that's how it was in the division I worked for.  I believe this is mainly because each division acts as its own company and sees the others as separate businesses under the same name, ABB.  

Branching off my first point, ABB is made up of bunch of companies they have bought over the years, such as Baldor Motor, B&R, Thomas & Betts, and recently GE Industrial, and these companies are what make up the different divisions of ABB.  A big problem within ABB, especially in the United States, is the culture that has formed within these business units.  For many of the older people who worked at the company before it was bought by ABB, they have this 'Big Brother' mindset when it comes to ABB and act as if they are the 'Dark Side'. I believe that this hinders collaboration and movement between the business unit.  

Also, pay for Interns is competitive/average when compared to normal businesses; however, there are many companies is the area that pay 20-30% more.  This is also a hindrance as many broke college students are going to pick another company based on compensation.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Data center technician 408 salaries reported	$55.50 per hour
Field service technician 209 salaries reported	$77,615 per year
Service manager 187 salaries reported	$185,250 per year
Senior project engineer 183 salaries reported	$130,477 per year
Senior product specialist 183 salaries reported	$130,650 per year

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