operator

manufacturing engineer

solderer

quality control inspector

quality engineer

Jabil

I started work for this place because I knew a higher up and I needed a job due to my current job reducing compensation and bonus structure to the point it wasn't worth the hours worked for the yearly salary. 

I had to apply with SMX Staffing which advertised aggressively online that the job paid $16.50 an hour. When I applied I was in a room with 25 other people applying for various positions, this place is rather large facility. I went in, did an on site drug test in an uncontrolled environment e.g. if someone wanted to falsify the test they sadly could. once the test was completed I left. a week later they call and say I got the job over the phone so I come in and fill out paperwork. Now back to the $16.50 an hour.... Its only after I fill out the paperwork that they tell me they they only pay $12 an hour for the job. I pull up the adverts on my phone and the HR employee and she told me thats incorrect despite them plastering job sites with that information and did well after I left the company. They are VERY deceptive at compensation. You get no benefits, all holidays are unpaid, 

Here is the best part - The absolutely insane attendance policy. its a 3 point system. 1 day late less than 5 minutes = .5 point. over 5 = 1 point.  Call in sick = 2 points. Any day asked off even with sufficient notice is an automatic 1 point. No call no show = auto termination. 2 days sick is termination at this place is termination. You only get 30 minutes for lunch and that includes the 15+ minutes to get through the metal detectors off the clock. You get no holiday pay but you have to take them off also.

The managers are overworked and under compensated for their time and it showed in the way they acted and treated their employees. There are good ones though but are few and far between. We had this one floor that was an ex USMC drill instructor that apparently though he was still dealing with recruits. He would stand over and intimidate people that were slow. The other guy that was over us would just grip about how slow we were and use examples of people in the departments that did the numbers they expected. BTW those people he refereed to RAN to the racks and would stack their desks with easy repairs and would curse you out if you asked why and did more harm than good to the company. I'm sorry 32 latch clips in one day isn't the same as doing 8 motherboards on a convertible touch screen laptop. The managers would overlook this very important detail of repair to hold over our heads bad numbers.

People that couldn't push out 8 units a day were escorted off the floor and let out of the building. I felt sorry for the people that got the water damaged lots because those would always take longer and eat up valuable time.  Most of the managers were so infatuated with Six Sigma that they lost touch with what it takes for employees to be productive. You cant squeeze blood out of a turnip and if management is giving the opportunity to make a choice of over working and stressing employees and high production numbers or respecting them and having quality product come of the line. They chose quantity every time because it helps their bonus and it bites them in the rear with defect returns every time. The goal of Six Sigma is an ideal return of 3.4 defects per million opportunities. This is not a realistic goal with something repaired by hand with parts that are being refurbished on other lines and sent to us. The managers would hound the techs and blame us for them not being able to get black belt certified. I'm sorry if you believe in a flawed form of process engineering for anything outside of semiconductor manufacturing but its not going to ever happen with whole unit laptop repair due to the immense complexity and details of repair.

On a side note about SMX Staffing (this temp agency to my knowledge at the time only handled Jabil as a client) leads me to believe they are possibly connected somehow and simply use the agency as a way to avoid paying benefits and penalties under the affordable Care Act. 

Ending thoughts, Avoid Jabil and SMX if you want to have a life and stable employment. The company is flawed to the core and a miserable place to work

If you work on the Manufacturing facility floor, you will consistently work 6 days a week all year. Year after year. Unless you're taking PTO or if there is a Holiday. Once in a blue moon, you might be given a full weekend off, but it's for the company's benefit and never yours. The company still tries to get you to work during Holiday's. Under paid employees are convinced they're making money working all the overtime given, and they are but they're still underpaid. This is a part of their trap here. To make you feel like you're making money, when in actuality, you're just sacrificing all of your time to catch the crumbs falling off the dinner table. The same people in positions of making decisions to have people work six days a week all year, are the same ones' enjoying every weekend off. The company's attitude is that you don't matter and neither does your family. This company knows that they underpay and are not in line with our industry competitors. Hence, the 6 days a week and forced overtime. This company is steeped in nepotism. It's all a buddy system with regard to advancement and how employees are recognized and rewarded. This company prides their selves of hiring the offspring of people in power and then fast tracking them to success. Lots of very underqualified young adults riding their parents coattails to success. If you BBQ or go to the bar with the right people, you will have an advantage over the people that don't in regards to wage increases and career path advancements. Loyalty, punctuality, and eager to be of service means nothing here. I've seen a lot of people come and go due to all of the things I've mentioned. The management blatantly shows their favoritism and selective accountability. This is all contingent on whether or not they like you. Guess I should've went to the BBQ or bar with one of these more important than me, functioning people.  

My Day started with me clocking in at 215, my shift started at 230 but i has to get my (pass down)which is an update  from 1st shift employee on how my line was running, and weather or not i had to finish a part replacement on the computer hard drive or if i needed to go ahead and check over their work and start the system. Then once i checked my line i found an order that QC had pushed out and was ready for me to test in the computer system. Once i finished logging all the system part numbers and serial numbers into the computer and everything passed it was time for me to grab my cables either the client who unit i was testing had ordered them or i had to use what we called golden equipment which belonged to the facility. to test the unit. Once the unit was fully cabled it was time to start the testing through computer software. The hardest part of this job was working with 5 other males who felt intimidated by me because my boss hired the only woman in our department. and i was good at what i did. The most amazing part was we were all a family. From QC, OBA, Configuration, Material Handlers, Packout and us Test Operators. We celebrated every Holiday together because the company always had so kind of gathering for its employees. Management was amazing they greeted u every mourning and afternoon. We where always having meeting about the company and what was going on inside of it. My supervisor was amazing i couldn't have asked for a better man to have worked for. The most enjoyable part of this job was the learning process. Being able to learn how to use different types of computer systems to test equipment. And knowing that Test was the heart of the company. Made us want to go to work and work extra hard everyday, And to know we was appreciated for what we did for the company and the clients who were relying on us to build and test their product.

Jabil as a whole is a great company. Great benefits and fun company events with food and drinks especially the holiday party.  Good pto, good 401k, affordable health insurance, company paid life insurance, 4 weeks off parental leave, Stock options at a discount. Free sports tickets as well. The corporate office is an awesome place to work.  Great culture! It has a  affordable food court, free  gym, and a free doctors office.   A lot of people work from home or leave early on fridays. The corporate office also gets 2 weeks off for Christmas. Unfortunately Jabil doesn’t extend the same culture to production plants. Only the corporate office shuts down for 2 weeks. The production plants do not. Production plants are long hours  and  get very little time off for the holidays. They are chaotic and disorganized. Production runs 24 7 including weekends so someone from each support department needs to be onsite during the weekend. Lots of last minute decisions and schedule changes at the plants. On the plus side Production plants near the corporate office do get invited to company events and do have access to corporate amenities. You usually get requested pto. Overall the company perks and benefits are worth putting up with the chaotic production plants. Advice to management: more oversite for production plants and extend more of the corporate culture into the plants. Stop letting plant managers run the plants however they want. They only care about numbers. Is working overnight into Christmas Eve morning  really going to make or break the month. For a company this size production plants should be way better organized. Corporate should make standard production plant policies that apply to all sites. Why does one site work overtime on weekends, one work 12 hour shift with rotating weekends and  another works 8 hours m-f then has a weekend crew come in. 

I would clock in. Went to receive a passdown from previous shift, we were allowed 4 minutes early start so that we would be able to do this. I would then verify machine program names and quality. If job would almost be done make sure everything I needed for the next setup was at hand.
Co-workers were amazing they would come around if they were caught up and ask if we needed help with anything before they got ahead of the setups. We understood the importance of customer deadlines and ensured it would be meant to the best of our ability without jeopardizing production quality.
The hardest part was when they had a last minute job that had a complex built to it and it had to be rushed. This would happen often where someone forgets to release a job that was supposed to be released last week and it is do yesterday and we would be the first step in the building process. I strongly believe in customer on time delivery and satisfaction but sometimes it was just impossible to meet. So that would be the hardest knowing that no matter how hard I would try and rush it the ontime delivery was not going to be met.
I learned allot here as far as surface mount machinery goes. Before this job I never even knew what a circuit board looked like, now to know that I could build one is great. The most enjoyable was last break where the coworker and on occasion the supervisor if he wasn't too busy would play a game of volleyball. That united us on a different level then the work could ever do. Of course I would be lying if I didn't say the last bell would ring because that meant it was time to go home and see my family. Although I loved my job I had a home life that would be waiting for me.

In a typical day at work, expectations are not as high as expected. However, overtime work is normally not done in order to maintain an 8 hour work day. On the other hand, personnel must work harder to reach targets that normally would result in a stable work week, and month in a shorter time, ending in work lay-offs.
What I learned is that a forced labor system with overbearing supervisory and management makes for great profitability, at the expense of the workers. Bonuses are cancelled, and profit shares are given only to upper management and their close "subordinates". Management is friendly to the face of the workers, and then hides profit actualities claiming an unproven economic crisis. Production and operations are then sent to Eastern EU countries where labor is 75% cheaper. Good for management, bad for Netherland's workers.
Co-workers will sell out their souls for a make believe promotion at the end result being "0." security. Various aspects of cultural and belief differences are used to keep tension high at all times. Only playing the politics cards will move you up. The hardest part of the job is keeping your mouth shut when management openly uses "Crash Management" tactics claiming literally for years that new and better clients are coming in and then never show up.
The most enjoyable part of the job is in knowing that I can make any High-Tech operation more functional by not using back room politics. Workers appreciate honesty as well as the former management that I still have the greatest respect for.

I would have to say that honesty and integrity at Jabil Amsterdam never goes unpunished.

Jabil used to be a good place to work, but not anymore.

management has become so concerned about their next bonus that the facility and the workers have become afterthoughts if they are thought of at all.

Jabil calls themselves ethical, that has become a joke around the production floor. The bonus system has created a clear conflict of interest as managers attempting to secure the best bonus possible by saving money withhold needed tools, personal and pay increases.

Pay raises in the production building don't generally even beat out cost of living increases from year to year. So a person starting 5 years ago probably still has the same (or even less) purchasing power as they did the day they started, because the insurance keeps going up as well.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years... Same exact place if you choose to work at Jabil

Most people who succeed at Jabil are the ones willing to step on their fellow workers to get ahead and the butt smoochers. 

Hard work, loyalty and professionalism get you nothing. Being efficient and getting work done quickly just earns you more work, but don't expect any compensation for it. The once a year "merit increases" are generally just a tiny percentage dribbled down to each department from above. That tiny amount has little (or nothing) to do with an individual's actual merit, or performance. 

Layoffs are common and the people who remain are left to pick up the workload. Most departments are hilariously under staffed with people doing 2 or even 3 jobs for the pay of (if your lucky) one, oftentimes employees don't even make the industry standard for their titles.

I don't recommend Jabil as an employer at this time.

 

Constant late warning of mandatory overtime 1-2 days before said day gets exhausting. The supervisors of all departments don’t even know about it before then most of the time. Got plans you made a week ago? Want to spend time with your family? Want to take a break from standing hours on end because chairs haven’t been invented in Jabil’s timeline yet? Too bad. You’ll get a point against you, and 8 hours of pto will be taken from you. If there was an holiday that week, they’ll tell you your holiday pay will be forfeited, you have to use your pto for the 6th day you can’t work, and you’ll get a point. All because they want to hit numbers. If your shift hits numbers everyday except where things like broken machines prevented it, you’ll still be told to work 6 days a week.
Middle management is pretty decent and you can tell they try their best to help their employees but unfortunately they’re not the ones who decide the OT. 
The worst part of it is HR told us during orientation that OT was always voluntary 3 times in a row. The first week I’m on the shift proper? Mandatory overtime. Honestly, if they were more caring about your personal time off, this place would be way better but I can’t respect a company that doesn’t respect me and my time. Half the time when we come in for the 6th day, the machine are down or something so we don’t hit number that day anyway.  I’m so tired, I feel like I’ve already worked there for a decade. 

Working at Jabil I was able to gain a good understanding of warehouse and shipping/receiving procedures. I worked in the detrash area of their local warehouse and was taught to use the SAP database system and RF scanners for processing shipments and inventory. Most days I would arrive and stop by my locker to get my gear and unload my lunch etc. before heading to our section of the warehouse where we split the quantities of parts from boxes that were pulled from the floor. Most days I would pass by my supervisor sitting at his desk near the entrance and didn't require much input from either of us. However some days (I was on the PM shift) there would be some sort of issue related to the previous days orders. Sometimes it was a simple problem/misunderstanding that was resolved quickly, sometimes a more serious problem that I would have to solve, but other times it was a problem that I would later find out had nothing to do with me and, either by mistake or by a co-workers manipulation, was blamed on me. I feel as though this became a real negative aspect to the job because eventually the go-to answer for many mistakes was that it was my doing. I feel as though there wasn't much I could do to change this because the people above me weren't very accessible for those kinds of conversations, and being a temp worker my word didn't hold much weight.

Easy work bordering on tedious, yet somehow a lot of 'superior' types. 12hr shifts for production floor seem there to stay.

NO training, only OJT. Management desperate to promote operators to lower leadership roles yet will not provide a clear path or guidance. Most positions are a revolving door which has not changed the past year. Heavy use of temp agencies to shove unmotivated folks with a pulse into positions to make numbers look good for corporate is  a clear red flag. It's so awful that there might be some 'short-term' company benefit to it that we are not privy to (depressing wages?), certainly not worth the brain drain to other companies in the long term.

Management makes inexplicable 'solutions' unrelated to issues presented and is largely out of touch with production floor and warehouse needs leading to preventable downtime. Management good at talking but not acting, I've seen so many folks get burnt out on empty promises and leave.

Workplace culture seems cliquish by design to turn ground floor employees against each other instead of uniting around their common complaints (divide and conquer). HR reacts to honest rational commentary to improve production and morale with theatrical emotional outbursts. Lack of downstream communication leads to a powerful rumormill and uncertainty about the future.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Operator 8 salaries reported	$20.64 per hour
Manufacturing engineer 4 salaries reported	$93,838 per year
Solderer 1 salary reported	$21.00 per hour
Quality control inspector 2 salaries reported	$21.00 per hour
Quality engineer 2 salaries reported	$106,550 per year

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