field technician

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laboratory technician

Intertek

It's been several years since I've worked there and I've worked for several of their competitors. That being said, I only would only suggest using this company to get your foot in the door. When I started there they were really good with training and teaching you the right way that will help you succeed when going to a competitor. They are one if not the lowest payed labs in the Pasadena, Deer Park area, don't go with the first offer, get as much as you can out of them. The pay discrepancies is huge from $14-$25/hr; same title same pay same workload. You will not get a raise even after taking more responsibility (but this applies to every lab; but as mentioned Intertek is the lowest pay). They have high employee turnover rate because of this. You are overworked and they promote by senority and not for the person who is the most qualified for the position even if it's bringing a better suited person from the outside. At the time that I worked there they had some of the best people in the industry working and had a strong team in every level of the company but because of bad management decision, ego and having the lowest pay rate they have all left (or let them walk without counters) to competitors making them suffer financially putting them in a slum and dropping them in dominance compared to their competitors, it's a lab that's is just there now with no major clients caring or considering much of it. They have recently put effort in turning it around but honestly they can't compete with the other third party power houses whom have a huge lead by a longshot, and they've already lost their best people (who they could have kept and afford at the time) and to be frank I don't think their training is as good as it was before. The damage is irreparable, if not for those reasons Intertek could currently have been the biggest power house. It's too late and I don't see them coming close or pulling as much work and revenue as their competitors. 
The ones running the place now are people who have stuck it out and waited for their turn (people who aren't competant; no education, skills). That being said there's no room for growth because these are the ones who are gonna stick it out, and this has been their downfall and continue to be their downfall. Furthermore, they will give you the run around as much as possible to keep you around but you'll eventually see it for what it really is. It's not the best lab to work for but it's also not the worst.

The training program for new employees is non-existent. You will be at the mercy of other engineers in your group, who are already overworked and overstressed by management. They will never tell you that you are doing a good job, so don’t even think about getting rewarded for going above and beyond. As this company operates on a monthly revenue basis, there will be constant stress when it comes to months closing and how munch money you have been able to bill for them in a given month. God help you if you drop some previously forecasted money last minute, even if you had no control over it whatsoever. Your direct management may initially pretend like they care about your growth and advancement, but honestly shortly after they stop caring. They have dollar signs in their eyes and that’s the only thing that matters to them. It’s not like there are growth opportunities anyway. You pretty much have to come up with some innovation that will earn the company more money in order to even be considered for a promotion. Otherwise, only other way to get a raise is to threaten that you are leaving and potentially have an offer letter from another company. Be prepared to get rejected by the management if the other offer is more than 5% of your current salary. Over the last 2 years, more than 40% of their their skilled employee bases has left the company and they replaced it with individuals who have no experience. And guess what, you and your group are still expected to produce as much as you used to, plus another 15-20% more than you did the previous quarter or year. Even without the support of the experienced staff that’s no longer there. The company and the Ops Manager have an unspoken ideology of everyone is replaceable when it comes to their employees. This creates a very demoralizing, depressing, stressful and overall toxic environment. No wonder people are leaving left and right. The only saving grace that this company has are some employees that are rays of light in such a stressful place. Most of them though seem to be shells or their former selves.

I joined Intertek in January 2023, and I left after several months because of the poor management of a number of projects and it was leading me to get burned out so I had to leave. 

I was in the Environmental department of the company and there is no such thing as a typical work day. Ranging from surveys to site reconnaissance to reports, it just depends on the demands of the customers and managers. While that isn't a problem by itself, the issue became that management would assign reports and they have hard deadlines, but also get assigned to field work which could take all day and leaving little to no time for report writing at the office, it was not uncommon for me to take home work, even on the weekends. It got to the point to where it was affecting my sleeping pattern due to the stress to perform.

My title was a joke, I did very limited industrial hygiene work so don't put too much emphasis on your title.

I felt like my voice was not heard. I would give input, ideas, and want to resolve scheduling conflicts, either I just felt like nobody cared or would listen. I don't expect all my suggestions to be taken but after months, it gets old and the feeling of isolation is very discomforting.

You get NO overtime if you a salaried employee which I was. My only comp day was when I was a project site for hours, then had to go home and work on another project, resulting in 16 days, and only comp day was in the middle of a project where being there for almost 50 to 53 hours a week was the norm. The only reason I got the comp day, I feel was because it fell before Independance Day and the subcontractor were not coming to the site on the 3rd.

The IT department for Intertek is no better then customer service reps for big internet or cellular companies. The first line of communication is the Philippines and if they can't figure it out, you get sent to the next level of IT support but response is SLOW to nonexistent. I left Intertek and still had a trouble ticket open which was open 3 weeks prior to my departure.

Every month, the cycle repeats: you're given a multitude of projects to complete in one single month. Roughly 80-90% of those projects will involve travel, potentially over the weekend. If there is a chance that a product would be noncompliant, you're required to basically screw the client over by billing them for half (or more) of the work done, and issuing a non-compliance letter so that you can move on to another project as quickly as possible. Everything is about money, and for some bizzare reason, the entire office is constantly missing the budget target even though almost all employees work 60+ hours per week. 

Did I mention that the engineer is the person responsible for handling billing of that work as well? Because yes indeed, the engineers are responsible for not only an insane load of project work, but also billing, quoting and selling (endless sales calls), reviewing other engineer's work (which takes large amounts of time), mentoring and training (which is typically poor quality due to lack of time). All this, and everything closes out every month, so you better get it all done in those 4 weeks! Then, the cycle repeats itself, leaving no time for recovery or to catch up in any way once you get behind, but you will be aggressively reminded that you are behind and need to catch up. Thus, resulting in engineers working 60+ hours per week. No reward is given for all of this unpaid overtime, it all just starts again at the beginning of the next month.

Between traveling for 7 weeks straight, and multiple weeks of working 70 hours, the work/life balance is non-existent at Intertek. 

Most people end up only staying for 2 years. High turnover rate in both engineers and managers. This creates lack of expertise in certain standard categories, and lack of training only adds to this problem.

I would not think of recommending this company to anyone.  

All Intertek seems to care about is the current months revenue.  The company is too cheap for their own good.  I witnessed new lab employees getting 4+ year old laptops.  Some of the stuff was so old, people could not even do their job effectively.  I was once denied a $20 USB thumb drive because my manager at the time wanted some other group to pay for it.  The IT infrastructure in many US locations is obsolete and goes down more often then it should:  Few managers want to spend money on hardware or the people to support it.  Nothing but fire drills to get systems back up and running with the business screaming at you because they could not do their job.

In the Information Technology Department, there is no room for advancement.  There is not even an allocated budget for IT training.  Pay is not great.  Raises are minimal.  One year, they even screwed me out of most of my bonus.

In many cases when Intertek acquired another company, IT management refused to insist that the acquisition integrate into the central IT support model.  This not only resulted in shadow IT groups within the business that basically did what they wanted to, but it ended up costing Intertek a fortune in the long run which no one seemed to care about as there was no immediate expense for the integration.

During my tenure, upper IT management didn't seem to have a clue on how the "real world" worked.  They often just hired people they favored from jobs they had held at other companies ... and they didn't even try to cover up the fact that this was happening.  I applied for one internal job and during my interview was told that the job was already filled by someone who they presumably just found by canvasing the internet.

The stress is enormous and they just throw you away when they are done with you.  Please don't work here unless you are truly desperate for the money!

What is the best part of working at the company?
Do not join this company as a technician in Tampa. They will tell you that they have “plans” for you. The only plan they will have is to over work youTampa is a huge area and you will be working 12-15 hours a day. I was getting up at 2am and working until 6pm. Then asked to say later to fill out paperwork. If you have a family, they offer no work life balance. I worked saturdays and late most days. The secretary yells at you for not doing paperwork correctly. And when you work hard they tell you there is promotion potential but there is none. 
You can move to a project manager but even so they had the project managers doing technician work too cause they are so short on people. People quit constantly and they can’t keep people because of the scheduler. They will schedule to work 12-15 hour days. Then complain how you aren’t fulfilling those needs. Training does NOT exist. They put me in a truck my second day and expected me to know everything. They talk bad about you when you are or not there, and then expect you to perform well. 
Management micromanages and then holds meetings about your short comings behind your back. 
Office culture is toxic. And they make you feel like you don’t know anything but they never take the time to show you. 
All together, if you are thinking about working here at this branch, do yourself a favor and don’t. The company culture they have created is terrible. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Management and office staff and schedulers can’t do there part 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Toxic. New ideas aren’t welcome and difference of opinions aren’t valued

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Stressful. Driving around and trying to visit every site but falling short on time. Clients are sometimes rude.

I'd like to start by explaining my title: Management = Inner Circle, Employees = Outer Circle, Everyone else = Proles. They hire everyone as a temp with the thought of being "converted" to an employee eventually as a carrot on the stick. I bought it.

Some of the people who had been there longer warned me not to trust the management but I chose to give them the benefit of the doubt. From day one I worked all the OT they offered and jumped on any project that was offered to me hoping to show my value and be converted. I stuck it out good times and bad. There were a lot of times where we didn't have enough work for a full 40 hour week. Supervisors would pick names from a hat to decide who worked the next day. After about a year and a half I was told I was on the list for the next group to be converted. That never happened.

During this time I learned that politics get you further than anything and the management is interested in nothing other than getting to the next pay grade. HR will side with management over employees. The GM sexually harassed the receptionist on a near daily basis but HR would fire her if she complained. The other manager struts around the office like he's everybody's friend to get you to talk to him only to sell you out to the GM. The month they were going to make me an employee they had me train new people and then let me go. Only one person from the list remained to become an employee.

I've read other reviews of the company from other offices and they all say the same thing. HR doesn't care about the employees and management isn't interested in their employees. I should also note that they aren't interested in testing things properly as long as they can charge the client for more hours.

This is a company that has the potential to do well, but has slowly been shifting away from that every year. 

This company has monthly meetings to boast about how well revenue goals are being met. That is it. Money. This company helps so many people continue to be safe and instead of focusing on that, they only care about money. 

Safety is only a concern when someone is watching or when a scheduled visit from OSHA is coming. Proper PPE is typically not provided until after an incident occurs. 

Yearly raises are VERY small, and yearly reviews lead to nothing at all. There is nothing "competitive" about the pay they offer. 

Training is virtually nonexistent, unless you specifically ask for it. 

The pressure to meet deadlines is a lot to handle. The end of the month is often met with burnt out people and rushing to complete work just to be able to say it's done and get the money for it. 

There is no transparency and there is huge lack of communication.

The site lead has no idea what happens in the building, outside of their office. 

There is no ladder to climb. There are no growth opportunities.

This site rewards hard work with pizza parties instead of any type of recognition whatsoever. It's easier (and cheaper) to supply cheap food than to reward deserving employees with actual pay increases above the measly yearly percentage given. 

This site has horrible health insurance options. 

Upper management could not care less about anyone doing the work, only the people selling the work get recognized.

I can not stress this enough - do not waste your time here, especially as an engineer. 

Intertek is a London England based company and try's to form fit all other international divisions into their mold.  Intertek leadership is not as good as they would like to think they are and just miss various cultures and employee needs around the world.
Intertek leadership seem to come up with a new campaign every two years, then roll it out with fan fair.  The programs are very basic like 10X more success and 5X5 which is only basic management skills and efforts.  They are not strategic in their follow through or marketing / sales which are non-existent.  Sales support is about the worse we have seen in years.
Intertek is not the technology power house they would like to think they are.  Intertek has many good employees who are helpful but team work is not encouraged by upper management.  
Intertek is a typical big corporation that has Growth plans and most likely executive pay is based on growth through acquisitions not organic growth.
Sales and organized sales efforts are failing the company and not pulling their own weight as needed.  This is the number one area to turn around to grow revenues.  The second area to lean out is the Corporate Overhead and HQ support which is little to no support.  Overhead cost burden is just too high for little output shown from them.
Intertek has a future if it allows freedom for the smaller business units leaders to grow their divisions as they see fit.  This makes sense in that the people closest to the workers and customers know what needs to be done and not the corporate leaders or overhead personnel.

Where do I start? Too much to include here but here is some insight on the 16th worst company to work for -  No holiday bonuses, or incentives are given to the overworked employees who keep this company operating, the ones bringing in revenue growth year after year instead you get a one minute video of the out of touch CEO rambling about “appreciation” and “happy holidays to all of our colleagues” and you might get a free lunch.  Next, Intertek is extremely inefficient given the  volume of business they handle. They do not put the clients first which they proudly try to promote; they put their numbers and spreadsheets first which have astronomical targets. Intertek uses out of date applications and software making jobs more complicated than they need to be. Given the volume of business  they are very understaffed  clients pay premium prices yet foot the bill on inefficiencies then get hit with slow turnaround time, bad reports, bad communication, etc because everybody is working on too many projects at once. As far as culture is concerned, there is none, there is a very small amount of comradery. Benefits are not the cheapest either,. The good things I will say is that you have 21 PTO days (but if you take vacation time, you won’t hit your target that month unless you work on your own time off) and a 6% 401k match - however,  both of which are starting to become pretty common. As someone who takes pride in working hard, and being the best version of myself everyday I feel like it didn’t pay off here at all.  I could go on, but too much to add. Glad I left. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Field technician 1 salary reported	$30.00 per hour
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Laboratory technician 1 salary reported	$30.00 per hour

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