production technician

software engineer

security specialist

senior network administrator

human resources manager

Ball Corporation

The work culture is toxic. Weak management that allows lower employees to make critical decisions based on personality differences. Preferential treatment of certain employees and extremely poor treatment of those not in the yes man role. A lot of pressure to do things fast and not quality. The higher employees and managers will engage in employee bashing sessions while behind the glass and then it seeps its way to the Production floor. Production Manager makes personel decisions based upon the opinions of 10 people that have clearly steered the operation in the wrong direction for years as opposed to making their own decisions.  There is very little respect or integrity among leadership and everyone is looking to stab each other in the back for managers clout. Job performance is judged by how much overtime you work when your told its a 4x4 schedule. Some overtime is necessary but constantly staffing the crew that is short when it supposed to be off days is unsustainable. New employee retention is rare because of the workplace toxicity. Decent training is rare and the attitude of permanent employees horrible. Treat you as inferior or stupid because you're new and unfamiliar with equipment theyve taught you nothing about. The hiring process drug on and on and they definitely sell the 4x4 schedule knowing you'll rarely see 4 off days. Basically, they work you to death while showing little to zero appreciation except to those in higher up positions. The pressure to perform while not being mentored is so intense I've seen more than 5 grown men drivn to tears out of frustration and lack of  being taught anything about machinery. The seasoned employees forget what its like being new to can making and treat you like you're dumb and share their feelings of discontent with other seasoned workers. So everybody is talking behind everyone's back. Its totally disgusting and toxic. I cant believe they've been in business as long as they have just based on new employee treatment. Who would stay at a job like that? 1 in about every 60 people can stomach the toxic work environment. Probably because they fit right in with such horrid, rude, backstabbing workforce. I only met 2 or 3 people that were patient with new employees and were active and attentive trainers. Its not a great place. From the schedule to the people it was all pretty terrible. The building leaks all over the place even near finished product!  Its supposed to be a food safe environment. I seriously doubt that. How do people get promoted? Not sure but I'd bet it involves chap stick and knee pads. Not skills and merit. Thats my assessment of Golden Balls plant. 

Being a startup plant, everyone is there to climb the ladder. Aggressively, at any cost to their coworkers. Over the next few years lines will be added and the plant will slowly grow to its full capacity. During that time there will be a lot of advancement opportunities. Until THAT dust settles, what there is is essentially a hyper-aggressive, self-first culture. I was looking forward to being part of helping to develop a culture from the ground up at a new plant. But the reality is most of the people that work there are from the Cascades plant that closed down. Whatever nasty culture they had there was brought to this plant. 

I was also looking forward to gaining more technical knowledge, compared to what my previous machine-operating jobs had exposed me to. The classroom was fun and elucidating and so was getting some one-on-one with a few engineers here and there. Unfortunately, on the job, you have coworkers who will "hog" all the learning opportunities, unless you get really aggressive with putting yourself "in there." But I don't want to have to fight to learn. Learning opportunities should be something happily shared by your crew. It's not. 

Also, the work on the front end can be extremely physical at times. Keep this in mind if they offer to hire you as a front end technician. And it can be stressful as you are expected to tend to a multitude of body makers going down while you're attempting to do whatever mechanical work you may be doing on one machine. And something they won't tell you is, as a front-end technician, about 70% of what you will do during the day is the cumbersome process of clearing out body maker jams with needle nose pliers. Also, in the summer months, it's hotter than you can imagine. I have worked in hot places; this place takes the cake. 

All in all, if you're okay with working very hard almost every minute of every shift, and have no remorse for putting yourself above everyone else, you can go far at Ball.


They don't care about what is in the employees best interest. There has been over 20 people out with COVID-19 and they have not protected those that are still expected to work 70+ MANDATORY hours a week. They have no regard for extreme heat of 90+ degrees for 12 hour shifts. They don't provide sick pay and if you are sick you get points. Those points determine your status and your eligibility to be promoted. They have employees that were promoted even though several employees submitted complaints against them. Complaints that would get a person fired anywhere else. There is a lot of favoritism and your status isn't based on your abilities and the value you bring to the company. Your status is based on how close you are to someone's butt. Although the pay is good, you work hard for every cent that is given. Those that aren't favorites are afraid to say anything negative for fear they will be retaliated against. Because retaliation is a widely known thing there. I want to have a long career in a position that I can bring value using my exceptional skills and talents. A company this big should care about that. Employees don't ask for much but put up with a lot from the inexperienced chiefs and management. One thing that could help make this a better place is if they just cared more about their competent employees and stopped hiring incompetent people. That doesn't show equality! You can't pay someone that has mechanical experience and skill, and can manage all aspects of the job and pay the same to someone who admittedly doesn't have any mechanical experience nor any desire to be a functioning mechanic. Hiring people like that make it even harder for those that are competent because they have to carry the weight of at least two people. Bad for morale and bad for production.

This place moves very fast.  It's very difficult learning the job as a the person who's training you likely has to jump around doing other duties of their own along with training you.  The job can be very stressful because a lot of machinery just doesn't work very well, and maintenance is a rarity, resulting in lots of problems.  

My Ball corp location has let people go left and right within my time there. It's as if instead of trying to really keep the experienced people that we have, they are always looking to replace those who are jaded and or worn out.  You get lured in with the idea of 4 day work weeks, followed by 4 days off... but then once you're  qualified to do a job, then you get more overtime than you have asked for, barely giving you any time off.  I have worked three 72 hour weeks with only 1 to 2 days off in between them.  There is not a pair of workboots out there that can make this ever enjoyable. Everyone complains about having some form of pain in their body from constantly having to be on their feet.  Employees have about three hours to themselves between shifts.  There are a lot of things wrong with this particular plant, but the money is so good that it keeps people around for a while.  Employees are constantly overheard talking about applying for work elsewhere.  They are only here as long as they need to be.  Once a more promising job comes along, they leave.

This company doesn't do a great job coordinating the work.  The idea of teamwork is something that is hugely discussed, but rarely ever followed. It's almost as if many of the employees have the mindset of "out of sight, out of mind". People mostly work for themselves, not thinking about how it affects everyone else. 

This is a great job to earn some quick money for your bank account, but this is not something I can see as a long term career option for many.  From my experience, most people quit, or get fired within two years. 

What is the best part of working at the company?
They pay well and have good benefits because no one would work there if they didn’t.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
They put a lot of pressure on people. I had more work to do in 12 hours than was possible to get done without cheating things. I never finished everything and it always bothered me. I worked myself to the bone every day trying.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Toxic. Very toxic. They only care about profit and have no care at all what they are doing to people. They have a very domineering approach to motivation and use threats to “motivate.” People only stay because they either can’t do anything else (qualifications), or they need the pay and insurance despite how miserable they are and they are just riding it out until they can retire.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Hit the ground running every shift and cross your fingers that you get a break. Be undermined at every turn. Very little instruction on how to do your job but lots and lots of condemnation for not knowing. And in my department, if you do your job right, you constantly create more work for yourself and cut out your own break time. Lots of physical pain from the conditions of working there but so much mandatory overtime that you can’t go to the doctor. Go home and have stress dreams about trying to get everything done while at work. It’s really hard on families and relationships.

The pay and benefits are outstanding. Its also nice working for a company that has been around so long. It gives you a false sense that they always will be. Ball could be a fantastic place to work. A game changer. But they seem to be struggling to blend their old school manufacturing environment into this decade.

If you are used to any other corporate environment, or a Fortune 500 company, you might struggle here.

This company is very laid back. And while there are aspects of that culture that are good. The majority is bad. It takes forever to get anything accomplished. Everyone at corporate is very silo'd in their job and one area doesn't talk to the other. No one sees the big picture. No one owns, or wants to own, any process. Its just assumed you will figure it out. SOP's are non existent.

The policies are all very old fashioned. Job titles are old fashioned. Every system is outdated and old fashioned. Its like working in the 1980's. Almost all of the senior management has been here far to long. They are set in their ways and are not open to new ideas, or improved processes.

A lot of time wasted doing very old school stuff. Everything is very very manual. Heavily male population adds to the "Old boys club" feel.

Someone at the top needs to take a good hard look at things and make some drastic changes. 

Corporate is very out of touch with all the separate manufacturing plants as well, and there is ZERO consistency among the plants or the divisions.

Productive place to work and you stay busy. It’s an extremely loud environment, so you can’t really get to know people as you would at other places. It can also make it difficult when trying to learn new things. Pay is definitely above average for an operator job. Medical insurance is terrible. They do give you $1500/yr for a health savings account, but it still leaves a lot of money out of your pocket to cover up to your deductible. Vacation starting out is about on par with most places, but you can’t roll over to the next year. It can be hard to schedule days off sometimes because as a startup plant, we are understaffed and can only allow a couple of people off per shift. The work life balance is good with a 3 on, 3 off schedule. It may bother some folks to swing days to nights every 6 rotations. But it’s also a fair way of doing things. Overall a good place to work if you want something to keep you busy and make the 12 hour shifts go by fast. HR here is awesome and very helpful, which is a plus after coming from a place where they couldn’t care less. Can’t say much about management as I haven’t dealt with them much. There should be plenty of room for advancement as this is a brand new plant. We are all learning together so there are definitely some growing pains, but should get better with time and experience. 

Though the team you work with at the plant level may be united & enjoyable to work with, the corporate/division culture is horrible.

At the Division level you are micro-managed, usually from afar.  It doesn't matter what your site-specific issues are, there is a Division plan you SHALL follow and that plan often detracts from activity at your site.

At the corporate level, there seems to be so much concern with either litigation or tarnishing the Ball image that plants are rarely able to handle difficult employees the way they need to - handling personnel problems are mandated from Corporate.  On the flip side, rewarding good employees is undermined because working for Ball is "about the experience, not the pay"...But when site managers know the pay is not good & the work environment is challenging, something about that has to go - it tends to be good employees.

Compound these perspectives with the fact that Corporate & Division are often at odds - and give conflicting direction - and you can imagine the challenge of managing around THAT minefield.  We're often told to come to either for support, instead we tend to get more tasks by both.

I strongly encourage you to ask the right questions about autonomy if you're applying for a management role at a Ball production facility.



Their “selling point” for working in Production is 4 days on, 4 days off. Get ready for the majority of your work weeks to have mandatory overtime, maintenance days, conversion of production equipment, covering for other people’s vacation, (60-72 hour weeks) 7 weeks night shift, 7 weeks day shift, 12 hour shifts. Your sleep cycle will be disrupted, affecting your overall attitude at work. They will tell you they will get you trained in 18-months, that is a joke. I worked there 4.5 years, consistently asking to complete my training. Management turns a blind eye to to focus on making cans. I applied to several other jobs, told “no” to all of them. 

Very political work environment, they (Fairfield plant) do not care about your credentials, your direct work experience at the plant, or how long you have worked there.i volunteered for several side-projects, none of that helped.   The people that are “liked” get promoted. Very much a “good ol’ boys club”  Fairfield plant has been hemorrhaging top employees since March 2020, lots of new people with little/no experience tasked to run the factory. They do not care about the poor management as long as people buy their aluminum cans. 

The only good thing they did was offer differential pay during my deployment to the middle-east, but even that was a big fight with HR to prove it was in their corporate policy. 

VP has been to Monticello multiple times this year due to overall poor performance on all of the lines. Blames the management team but no action has been taken to correct it. As soon as the VP leaves management cracks down on hourly employees. High percentage of employees have low morale. Management doesn't back employees whatsoever. People in management who haven't ran machines in decades or more try to tell you how to do your job. Too concerned about cosmetics and image rather than performance, then they question why the plant is running poorly. Most of the management is made up of the slackers and brown nosers that used to work the floor. Poor and almost non existant training program for new employees and newly promoted employees. You have to keep on the supervisors to get your raises. They tell you to ask in a couple of weeks and when you do they ask why you didn't say anything sooner. A lot of do as I say not as I do going on. Management is severely inexperienced. Big smoke and mirror show, they act as if they value employee's opinions but they could care less. They could care less about your family life. I could go on and on. It's probably the worse place I've ever worked.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Production technician 3 salaries reported	$29.67 per hour
Software engineer 15 salaries reported	$155,700 per year
Security specialist 1 salary reported	$95,000 per year
Senior network administrator 10 salaries reported	$123,875 per year
Human resources manager 10 salaries reported	$116,590 per year

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