assistant superintendent

sales representative

superintendent

customer service technician

purchasing assistant

D.R. Horton

Originally this job was great.  Morale was high.  Management was stocked with talented people, the sales team was amazing and full of really high quality pros (most of which have left and are performing well on their own.)  Neighborhood locations were excellent, ranging from the southeast to Henderson to southwest.  The Division seemed to get all the good spots and its locations were the envy of other builders.

Just as this Division was dominating the market, in came a new voice.  This new leadership had a preceding reputation of working people to the bone until they quit and couldn’t take it anymore.  Loud, aggressive, untactful, and sometimes downright obscene, slowly but surely people starting fleeing the company.  One day it was a shared floor, the next it was a competitive floor, then it was capped commissions, then the commissions for the month weren’t capped.  I mean, make up your mind!  Morale began to sink as turnover increased and employees watched tenured employees being outed, fired, forced out, our quitting replaced by crony friends.  Who you knew became more popular than work performance.  For sample, one person was hired because the management liked the way she once served him drinks waitressing, one year later she was working the top selling subdivision with no experience that all the tenured agents wanted.  Other people got written up at the blink of an eye for the smallest things.  There was no equality or favoritism based on work performance.  In fact management made it known he had ‘too much responsibility for performance’ to be bothered working alongside people he didn’t really like.  True story.  He also referred to himself as Bill Belicheck.  Another true story.

This Division is now in shambles and has gone from the #1 builder to #4.  The geographic footprint is now predominantly North Vegas and it’s obvious this Division doesn’t get first or second or third pick on land anymore.  It also doesn’t build in master plans.  No Summerlin, no Cadence, no Sky Canyon, etc.  This means a scary job outlook since the other top builders all get fed a few hundred lots per year through these relationships and this Division is slowly disintigrating.  One or two tough years with low land supply like my commercial broker friends tell me is coming up and they’ll probably have to start thinking about layoffs here since that steady flow of lots wont be there to prop them up.  That means as a salesperson you’ll either be stuck in NLV selling the same box as everyone else but with capped commissions or in a small tract and on the move every few months.

After corporate woke up and realized that their Division was being led into the abyss, they termed the senior management.  Instead of replacing the position they just gave some promotions to the managers there and threw some VP titles out to the managers remaining.  Another blow to morale as the people that got promotions were the crony, yes-people so it was a gut punch to a lot of people who were hoping for a more thorough cleanse.

No matter, the bottom line is while the pay is decent, the ship is sinking.  Some of the managers are decent and knowledgeable, some are a joke.  There is no vision, no real leadership, and the Divison’s communities that used to be cutting edge and set the local trend are now blasé.  It’s almost like there is no creativity in the land planning and let’s just see how many units we can cram into a box with the same cookie cutter amenity.  What’s depressing is this Division used to lead the market in creative ingenuity, now it’s not even a good copycat.

Sad to say, but it’s just not a fun place to work.  People are putting in their time hoping for something better to come along.  Sales staff has been obliterated, watching former agents crush it for other builders is a reminder about how strong this place used to be.  It’s a really sad state of affairs considering how many people used to love working here.  There is a large group that stays in touch and always reminisces about the good old days.  This place even badmouthed me to my current employer when I was seeking employment, of course the words were not true and had eminated from the stench no longer there.  I’m busy crushing it for another employer, just like I once had for this place.  Every Division is different across the country, so my opinion is for this Vegas Division only and shouldn’t be reflective of other places.  This Division has been tainted and will never be the same until they completely clean house and build it over.  I would NOT recommend working here unless it’s an entry-level or stepping-stone job.

Lack of good management, unqualified managers, emotionally-immature leadership. Lack of advancement opportunity, expectation of taking on many extra tasks and working late and on days off. You are told to not have overtime, ( we only make minimum wage plus commission) without prior notice.  You have to work on your days off in order to be responsive to buyers and Realtors and manage your backlog.  They tell you to log your actual hours you worked but when you do you get the nasty message that you shouldn’t be working on your days off. We all work after hours and on days off! Not for the few bucks of overtime, but to keep buyers happy and do our job. Then you get scolded for it! D.R Horton is a huge company so I think this could be a great job depending on what division you work for. In the Denver Division the two guys that run the Division are land acquisition guys, no background in sales at all so they make horrible detrimental decisions because they don’t understand sales. They also do not care at all about you. In Colorado the law says we have to be paid minimum wage as a base pay. We all do it for the commission, nobody is killing themselves for a job like this for minimum wage!  Right now Colorado has a fantastic housing market. But a lot of us are making minimum wage right now!  The division messed up so many things! We have too many sales people and not enough neighborhoods. All our new neighborhoods got delayed. Many neighborhoods have 3 people assigned to them instead of 2. We work a competitive floor and there are very few houses to sell so everyone is fighting for sales. Some neighborhoods have nothing to sell but they are staffing them. So you are stuck somewhere that maybe you can sell 1-2 homes a week between 3 people. A lot of us are living off minimum wage for now until at least next year. I’ve been in new homes sales for 17 years and this is the lowest paying year I have ever had! All because of lack of planning from the Division Managers. They also started a rumor that they don’t want to hear any complaints. Unrealistic expectations! Sales people want to sell! But they are limiting us on sales. We have a price increase every single Monday. This company has become very greedy. If you have already sold two homes for the subdivision that week you are not allowed to write another contract. This is two homes per subdivision, not  per person. This is so the other buyers have to wait until after Monday when there is a price increase. Realtors and Buyers are very mad about this. The company has complete disregard for need to have a work-life balance, and worst "benefits" package experienced to date.  Your Managers are useless. They have no power, they just pass on the message from their bosses. They won’t defend you, won’t deal with customer complaints, and basically never answer their phones or respond to emails. At any other company you would be fired for this! 
Communication is horrible. Policies change almost weekly. They change things all the time and forget to tell us. Construction runs amuck and never hits their deadlines and nobody holds them accountable so be ready for delays and angry  buyers on a regular basis. This job is very stressful. Not the selling part, most of our division is very tenured and experienced in new home sales but this Division is a train wreck in the way it is managed. And they are cheap as possible. Bottled water for the models?? You have to buy it and pay for it yourself. We aren’t even allowed to order SOLD signs anymore because “we can’t afford them”.  We are no longer allowed to print in color because “it got too expensive”, in fact, trying getting any office supplies, you will either get denied or you will get the Spanish Inquisition on why you need soap, pens, folders, etc. 
 This is a huge company with deep pockets and they can’t afford pens or bottled water for the model homes?!?!?!? 

Worked for this company for a few years and boy do i wish i had those years back. Let me start with the bait and switch hiring tactics. "We don't pay as much as the other guys but we give bonuses" Translates to we will underpay you and then you will beg for the bonuses that add up to what you SHOULD be making in that position anyway. Don't fall for it. The bonuses don't make up for the lack of pay and the highly stressful work environment. They will also always hold the bonuses over your head saying "they're not guaranteed, don't rely on them". This company also has VERY questionable morals and ethics. Look them up, TONS of class action lawsuits from homeowners in communities they've built. Company culture is also very poor. Nobody wants to hang out and see each other outside of work because of how stressed out everyone is. Anyway, I learned A LOT of what NOT to do from working here. There is a numbers over quality mentality that is a systemic problem. They are more interested in pleasing shareholders by hitting goals than they are about making quality homes and having happy homeowners and employees. Upper management is seriously lacking experience in the construction industry and at the end of the day this is just a construction company with lipstick so that's not a good recipe. It was very frustrating trying to look to upper management for help and guidance at times but they just don't have the experience to help. The workload and expectations are also through the roof. You will be thrown into the field upon hiring with no training and expected to close over 100+ homes a year and do so while trying to handle unsatisfied homeowners and angry subcontractors who are always struggling to make a buck because Horton only takes the lowest bidders. There is no formal training program so every project within a division runs differently because there are no enforceable standards. So you can throw what you learned from one project out the window once you start working under a different Superintendent who does things his/her way at a different project. There is also a very questionable bonus system that I was told is based off of the number of closings we do per quarter but there is nothing in writing to prove this and the Bonuses never correlated to the amount of closings. Single family (8-10 closings month) making the same bonuses as the multi family superintendent with 16-30 closings. I have nothing good to say about this company except that they provide free lunch occasionally and the people i worked with in the field were genuinely good people trying their best. With that said, the stress levels for everyone working their were always elevated.

A typical work day for me at D.R. Horton consisted of planning, scheduling, and managing marketing campaigns for our new home communities.

Having my finger on the pulse of our new home communities, I would field customer inquiries both by phone and email, review traffic reports, collaborate and check in with our creative agencies, and prioritize any modifications and fine-tunings of any mission critical marketing materials or information.

Oftentimes, I would proactively engage with the Division President, the Sales & Marketing VP, and the internal sales team for the latest and greatest on news and information for product updates and price changes, sales promotions, broker events, and discussions of media schedules and campaigns.

In addition, the maintenance of our corporate division website was a top priority of mine that I managed daily. I would frequently peruse the website and look for any errors, typos, mis-spellings, outdated info or images, current products and pricing, and then make any necessary changes and publish immediately.

Developing email marketing campaigns was another web-based focus of mine, especially as new communities sold out and new ones opened. Advertising of spec homes was often a topic included in the email blasts. If feedback was received, replies would be sent promptly and leads would be dispersed accordingly.

Managed a leads database for the sales team and provided maintenance on that as well and monitored user accounts.

Community signage, landscaping, model home merchandising meetings, and vendor agreements and negotiations were also a typical part of my day in which I had proposals to review, meetings to attend, creative layouts to approve and/or edit, connect with interior designers for our sales offices, and oversee accurate and effective completion of tasks and submittal of invoices from our sales and marketing vendors.

Developed a routine of "checks and balances" of our marketing department and touched on nearly all of the responsibilities each and every day in one way or another.

Efficiently carried out tasks, problem-solved, and managed many campaigns and projects from concept to implementation.

The hardest part of my job was trying to be in more than one place at once! Catering to almost 15 different sales people got to be a little demanding at times.

The most enjoyable part of my job was managing all of these different projects and marketing campaigns and seeing it all come around full circle with success!

I worked as a Marketing Coordinator in DHI's marketing department with the understanding that this was mostly a creative position (I'm a graphic designer by trade). Since this seemed like more of a copywriting/coordinating position than a creative one, I probably wasn't the best candidate, and was miserable the entire time I was there. Upon being hired, they knew I had no experience with designing for this industry, so to be fair, they gave me a little time to learn the jargon and the MULTITUDE of rules for creating marketing materials for a mortgage firm by giving me fewer, easier jobs to begin with.

But as soon as they felt I had enough time to learn the ropes (a few weeks to learn everything there is to know about mortgage lending), they unleashed the fury and I was completely overwhelmed with new projects coming at me constantly throughout the day with short deadlines. Stress levels were through the roof!

The legal requirements for marketing materials vary from state to state dramatically, and EVERY tiny little punctuation mark counted. So being the newbie who didn't know all the ins and outs yet meant that I made some mistakes (and received scathing emails from my manager every time a proof was sent back to me), and had to go through several rounds of proofreading and depending on co-workers to get proofs back to me in a timely manner so I could remain within my tight deadline.

I truly did my best to eagerly learn all this new information; I took on more responsibilities and worked extra hours (unpaid) in order to be a team player and to make up for my mistakes, but all I ever got in return were gripe sessions in my manager's office. I felt as if I was walking on eggshells not to set him/her off. Another co-worker and I were reprimanded for "not looking like we were working hard enough" while I was being trained in the private marketing room for some new duties that I was taking on. I guess we should have been scowling the entire time? I'm not really sure.

Lastly, I just didn't feel welcome here at all. Most people just seemed miserable as if they hated their jobs. Apparently, there was some kind of drama right before I was hired that no one liked to talk about, that resulted in a few staff members quitting unexpectedly, leaving the department in the lurch. That should have been a red flag for me.

The bottom line is, if you're a creative, don't try for this position. It should just be filled by a left-brainer that knows how to use the creative software, and they'll probably get along just fine. Just keep your head down, nose to the grindstone, and don't expect it to be a friendly environment.

As an Area Manager of higher end homes, ours was a small division within the company.  It was a fantastic job with a terrific group of colleagues.  We worked all sorts of hours but it was rewarding and personally challenging.  From finding and negotiating buildable properties to working with municipalities to get approval to build, all the way through making selections and ultimately securing a contract with a buyer.  This was a perfect job and our small group was so supportive.  
Then came the change in leadership with a new Division President and everything became unraveled and fell apart; not just our small tear-down and in-fill group, but the Chicago Division in general.  Attitudes became corrosive, angry and mean.  I heard the DP say to our group's leader one day when frustrated about a cancelled meeting, "Let's go visit a few jobsites and see who's day we can ruin!"  For many, this might have been humor but for this guy, this was the culture he instituted within months of joining the Chicago division.  Gone were the days of being supportive and cooperative.  Those were replaced by highlighting everyone's faults and sabotaging people's effort and morale.  The company would put on quarterly company-wide gatherings to focus on unity and teamwork, but everyone would laugh and how unauthentic it felt.  
Without notice or explanation our small group's line of homes was discontinued and in compensation we were all either offered jobs of huge demotions or laid off.  The culture around the office became so incredibly brutal that over time most everyone quit or was fired.  Some had been with the company for many years prior to DR Horton purchasing a very successful family owned business.  It was amazing to see how detrimental the hiring of one key employee could be to an entire major company.  
But don't despair, the horrible Division President was eventually fired as well, unfortunately too late for many who really loved working for the original company and then DR Horton.  I suspect in time it will be a pleasant company at which to work again.

They expect you to work 12+ hours a day AND bring your work home with you, all while paying you a joke of a salary. They constantly fire people and let people quit without finding replacements, they just dump the ex-employees work in someone else's lap until they are so overwhelmed that they burn out and break under the pressure. All while refusing to give you raises for doing your job and the job of 3 other departments.

They implement random dress codes after you've been there for years without one and only enforce the dress code on POC & Women. 

They give you PTO but treat you awfully and threaten your job if you ever dare to use it. Seriously, you can't even take a day off to take yourself to the doctor or your car to a mechanic without your manager giving you the third degree and threatening you the next day. Managers will throw you under the bus and frame you for mistakes they make, and make up lies about you if they don't personally like you, regardless of how well you do your job.

I finally quit during COVID, after they made it clear that they were not going to follow CDC guidelines while forcing us into the office and cramming us into our cubicles like sardines. Best decision I ever made. They do not care about you or your family, but expect you to give your blood, sweat, tears, and first born child to them.

The worst part is that they build some of the worst homes in this country. I'm talking brand new $500,000-$700,000 homes with leaking ceilings, sink holes, uneven floors and trims, among a million other nightmares. Then they have the audacity to call themselves "America's Number One Home Builder." The only thing they are Number One in, is building awful homes that fall apart right after you move in.

Don't work for them OR buy a home from them, it will only lead to stress and irritation, I promise you.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Pay was fair for the industry in busy areas.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Poor management practices throughout the division.  Lack of communication on major changes in communities which often times led to fire drills at the last second.  Nothing was thought out or planned as it hit the field.  Commission pay promised on multiple occasions only to be held back due to utility delays in communities.  Delays out of the superintendents control and you still lose money for your efforts.  Divisions go negative for one quarter based on the division presidents decisions and purchases.  Then everyone on commissions lose big money so they can make profits look better for shareholders.  Typical publicly owned company…

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Work hard and lose commissions due to issues out of your control.  Backcharge vendors with the only proof being “they were the last scheduled trade in the home”.  If you’re not upper management, get ready to lose commissions and money when the division makes poor decisions that lead to losses.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Walk houses first thing in the morning to find out which of your homes has broken windows and kicked in doors.  Send photos and proof on all damage that went on overnight.  Get questioned and harassed like you didn’t do your job when someone breaks in and steals appliances or whatever else tickles their fancy.  Waste half of your day putting out those types of fires then you can go and close homes.  All because management refuses to even install dummy cameras as a deterrent.  Fun stuff.

When initially hired as an assistant superintendent, I was assured that after a year's worth of gaining experience, assistants are promoted to "lead superintendents". This could not have been further from the truth. It seems management likes to promote their "favorites" even though these individuals do less than quality work. 

All superintendents are forced to close homes that aren't ready for the sake of "numbers". In addition to closing a high volume of houses on a monthly basis, you are tasked with the responsibility of making sure trades show up to do the work you scheduled them to do. Most of the time, these trades do not show up when scheduled which adds more stress to your already short timeline to close multiple homes. Managing the trades becomes second nature, but safety on the job site and wearing the proper PPE is not policed or enforced. 

 All superintendents are constantly measured on their customer satisfaction scores via the Closing Survey and the EXCEED survey. These surveys are EVERYTHING to the company but for some reason, the construction superintendents are the only ones expected to bring these surveys in while other departments like sales have no expectations. 

You are given no formal training for your position and learn by doing it the wrong way. In addition to receiving no formal training, you are also expected to work more hours than what you are paid for. You are allowed 5 over time hours a week but most of the time, there is an unspoken expectation to not take your lunch break. 

The pay is good and you receive a bonus for every house that you close. IF you are ever promoted, there is no area for growth past that.

Pros

- Employee discount on homes after certain amount of time working there
- Big Salary if you want to have no life
- Easy to sell

Cons

- Culture is awful. It's sales so be prepared to work with two faced people who will do anything to beat you in commissions
- Coworkers are trashy and uneducated
- Corporate events are drunk fests
- Terrible Management; they were distant and unhelpful. They often seemed like they were trying to find ways to write up employees. Treated us like numbers and not people
- LONG Hours, required to work until the sun goes down (You basically will never have time off even on your "off days")
- You will never really have time for your family, kids, friends, etc. outside of work
- Backlog is very extensive
- Commute is long most days in training (average of an hour drive to the neighborhood). Neighborhoods are very spread out and in the middle of nowhere
- Only one Saturday off of work every 6 months
- Training salary is extremely low (roughly $13 / hour)
- No structure to training, very much sink or swim
- They live by "the customer is always right" even if the customer is completely in the wrong and verbally attacks you (happens often)
- Customers will treat you like their servants and expect you to bend over backwards constantly even when they have unreasonable requests

During COVID:
- Management did not enforce any employees to wear masks even though there were multiple outbreaks in the office frequently
- Management kept outbreaks a secret from sales reps out in the field

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Assistant superintendent 201 salaries reported	$64,118 per year
Sales representative 89 salaries reported	$16.86 per hour
Superintendent 139 salaries reported	$89,529 per year
Customer service technician 1 salary reported	$45,000 per year
Purchasing assistant 78 salaries reported	$65,301 per year

Working at D.R. Horton: Company Overview and Reviews

D.R. Horton

D.R. Horton Ratings

Popular jobs at D.R. Horton

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected