3d printing technician

scientist

mechanical engineer

sales representative

senior scientist

Formlabs

Pros
* Talented and dedicated employees throughout the organization.
* Interesting technical challenges and opportunities to work across many business functions.

Cons

Over my 5+ years at the company, I watched a gradual increase in organizational entropy.

The company has no shortage of intelligent people, but effective execution becomes increasingly difficult when transparency is limited, priorities are conflicting, and decision-making authority is unclear. Strategic direction often feels disconnected from day-to-day realities, leaving teams to infer priorities rather than receive clear guidance.

A recurring challenge is the gap between accountability and authority. Senior managers are expected to own outcomes, yet key decisions are frequently made above them without their involvement. This creates situations where leaders are responsible for delivering results but lack the ability to meaningfully influence the decisions that determine those results.

The culture can also become highly political. Decisions are not always communicated openly, and information is sometimes shared on a need-to-know basis even when broader visibility would improve alignment. Whether intentional or not, the result is an environment where leaders spend significant time navigating uncertainty rather than solving business problems.

Perhaps most concerning is the tendency to undervalue institutional knowledge. Experienced leaders and employees who understand the history, systems, and business context are often excluded from decisions that directly affect their areas of responsibility. This creates avoidable friction, weaken trust, and lead to the loss of talented people.

Amazing first tier employees. Some of the brightest young engineers I've ever worked with, unfortunately the best ones seldom last more than a year before moving on. There is no clear path for advancement within the company and almost no mentorship for young engineers. As with many start ups, the ability to sell oneself to upper management outweighs contribution and dedication. 

Much of middle management was promoted based on longevity and many of those managers are in a role they are unprepared for and often didn't want.

Upper management is completely out of touch with the rest of the company and, at times it seems, reality itself. Serious mistakes often go uncorrected for far too long with no accountability once they are remedied. Both upper and middle management turnover is nearly constant. I had 3 supervisors reporting to 4 separate department heads in 3 years. This inconsistency in leadership leads to inconsistency everywhere else.

An amazing technology company with the potential to become an industry powerhouse if they can get out of their own way.

I worked at Formlabs for two and a half years in the Services department, and the highlight of this job was definitely the sense of connection among the team members. I loved all of my direct peers and we had great rapport. There are some people from my time here that I am still friends with to this day :)

However, midway through my tenure the head of the department changed, and so did the vibe. I had some issues with the way upper management shifted priorities regarding metrics and job expectations, particularly in lack of clarity around how certain roles were defined. There were times I felt actively mislead by management and felt pressured to switch into a certain type of role despite this expectation never being clearly expressed beforehand.

In my time there, there was a lot of burnout amongst my peers and the retention rates were pretty bad. This was my first non-retail job though, and the benefits for me were great for me at the time, but in the end I don't feel the compensation matched what I was putting in. 

Can be very repetitive. Not always a clear direction as to what you should be doing or where you should be going. A lot is placed on you to figure out what you should be doing which can be great but also stressful when you're tasked with something you haven't been trained on and are expected to carry out. Hardest part of the job has been trying to differentiate what is the right/normal way to do things and how formlabs does things. The people are all very nice and down to earth but upper management can act like they have a chip on their shoulder  

What is the best part of working at the company?
Catered lunch 3 times a week, access to printers to use, exposure to 3D

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Constant change in leadership, overworked and underpaid

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Always changing culture, lack of access to up to date information 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Stressful. Must be in able to constantly switch tasks, heavy metric and data focused company, losing focus on the individual. Burn people out and then fire them.

Formlabs is a great company in a lot of ways. The people are incredible (for the most part) and the work can be really rewarding. There's a lot of freedom to go after what interests you and to make career leaps that wouldn't be possible in more traditional work environments.

The bad parts are the bro/sales/sports-type culture (SO much drinking), inexperienced management, and almost every non-technical employee is severely underpaid. 

I'm very grateful for my time there and I've found myself missing the community of people, but overall I'm glad I moved on.

I interned there during the summer. However, my manager promised me the sponsorship when I took the offer, but he didn't keep his promise in the end. This is a fairly good company to experience the startup feel, but not good for long-term growth. The company hires a lot of summer interns to do different projects, but no intention to keep them. I think they just want to control the cost. But think of it, instead of hiring every year, why not have some more positions for interns to stay?

Pros: Working with cutting edge technology every day, technically knowledgable co-workers, workplace with modern "benefits" like free lunch, beer, and flexible work environment.

Cons: Inexperienced leadership, lack of personal coaching and development, a culture that is loosely defined and tone-deaf messaging from upper management and leadership. You'll be asked to sell a product that is oftentimes unavailable to ship to customers and is wrought with delays and lead times.

I was there from 2019-2020, so I’m not sure what has changed since then. But it’s a good place to get experience if you’re in your 20’s. Almost everyone is super smart, friendly, creative, and welcoming. I loved talking to different people in the company. 

However, pay is embarrassingly low and upper management shouldn’t be trusted. No clarity on business strategy from upper management. 

The culture is great and management is largely easy to talk to about serious issues. I currently work remotely, but they are 9/10 an on-site job. I would encourage anyone to apply for the Services roles, and then move onto other teams should they want to.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
3d printing technician 110 salaries reported	$105,973 per year
Scientist 96 salaries reported	$104,781 per year
Mechanical engineer 58 salaries reported	$146,017 per year
Sales representative 64 salaries reported	$100,719 per year
Senior scientist 68 salaries reported	$129,324 per year

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