manager

brand manager

recruiter

account manager

business analyst

Nestlé Purina

A typical day at work starts at 7am (being a salaried position starting time is between 7 and 8 am however I usually arrive at 7). First order of business is a discussion of any plant issues or equipment breakdowns that have transpired over night.  Being on call for 24hrs on a every other week rotation any emergency calls are thoroughly investigated. Next  emails are checked to see if any vendors have made contacted or required information for project work that has been assigned. Typical projects can be anything from installation of a new packing line to installation and testing of new laser printers on existing equipment. Once all e-mails have been reviewed and responded to the rest of the day is spent between responding to any mechanical breakdowns of the equipment as a first priority, followed by project work which involves writing necessary code required for communication and operation of equipment upon installation. Electrical prints and  schematics must be reviewed and updated,  equipment must be ordered such as electrical control cabinets, motors, gearboxes, drives, photo eyes etc., that are all necessary for proper installation of equipment.. Once the days goals have been achieved (usually by 4 or 5 pm. it is time to leave the plant but the day is not over yet, being on call you can usually count on typically 3 to 4 calls an evening from either maintenance technicians or team leaders with equipment breakdowns or operational problems requiring assistance.

In a typical day there is always so much to learn due to the constant upgrading and installation of new state of the art equipment that every day is a learning experience.

Management is under the gun daily being responsible for meeting extremely high production needs (2,000 tons required daily) and tend to look not only what breakdowns have occurred and how to prevent them on a daily basis, but also who is at fault and what disciplinary actions are required. This last par t"who is at fault" (even in the case of a mechanical vs. operational breakdown has led to good employees afraid to make a decision due to fear of reprisals. This in turn directly affects my job as maintenance finds it easier to call controls when breakdowns occur, rather than be responsible for any downtime that has occurred.

Most of my fellow employees are competent in their job skills and I have a good relationship with them as valued customers. 

The hardest part of my job is the 24hr a day on call. As stated previously on average you can count on 3 to 4 call an evening what you cant count on is when the will call. You may receive one at 6pm another at 11pm. another at 2am and again at 5am. This disrupts not only my sleeping habits and those of my wife, but also at times anyone else in the household.

The best part of my job is project installation knowing that I have completed my project on time and watching something I have spent many long hours on operate as designed, that is a great feeling.

When you first start working here you will be in a honeymoon phase. The animals are amazing and you will soon grow attached to them. As any place, you will naturally drift into your group of co-workers/friends. Depending on who you drift towards will set the path for your future. If you befriend someone upper management likes, you will be treated kindly and move up through the ranks. If you don't, it will eventually lead to your demise, increased stress, unhappiness and possible unemployment. 

The basic job consists of the care of the animals, cleaning, feeding, weighing, grooming, socializing and conducting food trials. It all sounds pretty easy going and slow paced. You wonder how can I possibly get paid so well to work with these loving animals in this wonderfully calm and clean environment. Then some time passes and management steps in. You begin to see what is really going on. Whatever you think is normal and makes sense to do, they will expect the opposite. Many demands are placed on the employees. There are an enormous amount of added duties to your daily requirements. So many, that it is impossible to complete them all. Once behind, catching up is an impossibility. You will also be required to attend meeting after meeting after meeting, including weekly meetings to fix things that aren't broken. You are asked to continually brainstorm on new ideas, but are ridiculed for the ideas you present. However, some favored ideas are implemented even if it is not beneficial for the whole team. Employees are not compensated fairly according to their abilities. Upper management plays favorites and it contributes to low morale. Things are the way they are and will never change! The turnover rate is proof of that. Many seasoned employees have left and others are considering it. Don't jump into this job blindly. Consider carefully these things I've said and see if you believe you can handle this type of environment. For some people, working with the animals is enough for them.

I liked all of the giveaways Purina had, the hours were great and the benefits package was nice, but the management in Quality Assurance never really gave me much to look forward to.  They told me that I needed to just do my job and that I should not be helping other people out because I would make them feel like they are not needed in the company.  I was also given hundreds of hours of vacation time, but every single time I came back from a vacation, the management acted as if they were angry at me for using my vacation time, telling me it was supposed to be used, but I could not use it when others were using it, essentially saying I could not use it because other people in the department were of higher priority than I was and then they went off on rants about how everyone was of equal priority in the department and should be treated with the respect that comes from that.  Quality Assurance management also played favorites, giving the people they did not like (me especially) more work than other people and then getting frustrated when I needed to either stay and work overtime to finish it or finish it the next day with the rest of my work.  They told me that certain people should not have to do more than five tasks a day and then be done for the day because they were overworked and then, even with those five tasks they had, they were still pushing off work on me so that they did not have too much work to do.  Overall, the management was really not that pleasant to work for and I really could not catch a break from that unpleasant culture while I was there.

The culture is great, very inclusive, very open, and the people are amazing. Really amazing people and I enjoyed working with them. 

The management ranges from flatly inept, to catastrophically bad at their jobs. They'll give architects with a proven track record projects they're simply not prepared for, on tech stacks they don't understand. I've seen this kind of thing happen more than once, and it's shocking, to say the least.

From there, they hire a lot of novice project managers who simply aren't ready, and not capable of the jobs they've been asked to do. As a result, resource allocation is a nightmare. Some team members are working long hours and weekends, while others go for weeks without a meaningful assignment. Incidentally, the decision to run things this way has nothing at all to do with the talents or attitudes of the individuals involved. 

Vendor management is frighteningly bad, with failing vendors given endless opportunities for future projects, with little to no meaningful oversight. 

Contractors are treated poorly. Required to go through onerous authorizations, and they're terminated abruptly with no communication from management at all. I've been laid off by slack before, but this is the first time my career that I've ever been told about it, after the fact, by a recruiter.

I'm not sure how much of this is simply being bad at workiing remote, and how much of it is the effect of bad management from the start. I suspect that it's a little bit of both.

They really need to get better at communication, at every level.


Loved working at Nestle in both Allentown (ALPO) and Jefferson WI (little Friskies) plants.  The projects were both challenging and interesting.  Made many new friends and contacts that I have since continued contact with and look forward to working with again some time in the future.

On a typical day I would issue work permits, inspect the job site for both production according to schedule and for potential safety issues which could result in either or both personal injury or plant damage.

I worked closely with Nestle Engineering personnel as well as Nestle Plant management and the contractors working on site which include a multitude of trades from carpenters, millwrights, welders, fitters, boiler makers, electricians, conveyor specialists, and other specialty contractors during the entire length of the project until the turn over of the new kitchen facility to the plant which was interfaced with the old equipment.

Safety is one of my key items on every job site, because I know we can get the job done one way or another but if we're going to do the job at least on my shift we're going to do it safely, so I was constantly on the watch for potential safety concerns for personnel  under my control or working on or near my project.

The most enjoyable part of every job is getting to meet and develop long term relationships with new people from different areas of the local geographic area and parts of the country too.

Very enjoyable, procedure oriented, efficient company.  Encouraged innovation.  Discouraged speaking in calls if you weren't a key player (felt like they discouraged open communication but they are a huge company so I get it).  Heard an executive on a call say (concerning downsizing), that, "we gave managers instruction to hire people who were junior to the ones let go". Sounds like age discrimination to me, but I don't know how they define junior.  Otherwise work place culture was pretty good.  They had a lot of online resources that were great to learn from, the only tricky part was finding the ones you needed.  The manager didn't say take this course, they tell you where the courses are and you figure out which ones are applicable.  Also eating out is very rare.  Most people warm food in the break room and eat at their desk.  Which is good for productivity but bad for relationship building. 
A typical day at work involved a lot of measures and building spreadsheets.  The hardest part of the job was getting the spreadsheets to work with massive amounts of data, without crashing.  Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't and you had to try multiple times and ways to get them to work. Was told by a long time employee NOT to tell a manager if something wasn't working.  That seemed counter-productive to me.  The most enjoyable part of the job is they treat you like an adult and don't breath down your neck as long as your work is turned in on time. 


The Factory has been in operation for 50 years . If you are considering employment in the factory, you can expect a lot of overtime, weekends and possibly be on a Backshift. This is considered a training factory by Nestle and as such a lot of salaried leadership people tend to be there for a relatively short period of time. This being the case , by the time they are really getting started , they are moving on to another factory. Consequently, some areas or issues rip for improvement don’t get addressed as efficiently as they should. The good news is that the Plant Manager , the Production Manager , The Human Resources Manager, The Maintenance Manager and The Training Manager seem to be aligned in the belief that work loads and areas of responsibility should be fairly balanced and an equal effort should be expected of everyone . They also share the philosophy of holding people responsible for doing things right and are liberal with Praise and Financial Rewards.
It will be hot in the factory and there is not enough supervision on the Backshift, but if you are looking for good pay , steady work and advancement and are willing to work hard , you will most likely be happy here 
The Good 
Current Factory Leadership 
Good Pay Scale
Good Benefits 
Defined Benefit Retirement 
401K With Match 
Opportunities For Improvement 
Need More Leadership on Backshift 
Improve Opportunities For Backshift Workers to get weekends off
Build upon Initiatives on Fairly Balancing Areas of Responsibility 

The work is typical factory maintenance. Some days are easier than others, with day shifts primarily focused on PMs and night shifts fixing things that pop up.  People tend to get along pretty well, but seniority is literally everything. 

Days off, shift requests, holidays, OT -- everything goes my how long you have been there. When I was hired, I was told I would usually work Mon-Fri and every other weekend, with some OT during the week as well. However, OT is not mandatory so every day it gets passed from the most senior workers down to the newest. The 12 days in a row maximum I was told to expect became 19 days, of which as many at 15 could be 12-hour shifts. No one wants to work 2nd or 3rd shift, so while days might have more than 10 people working at once, all new people get put on 2nd and 3rd, and those shifts were ALWAYS understaffed. We were told each shift should have 3 people each, we always had 3 people between BOTH shifts, so the shift (2nd or 3rd) would have to alternate 12-hour shift to cover. Then despite 1st shift having 10+ people, if one of them was out for a day, someone on 2nd or 3rd would have to stay or come in early. The last month I was there I worked 25 days straight, the last 18 of them were 12-hour shifts!

The senior techs throw their weight around and beat the heck out of anyone new. So when Ball or Coors open positions for a few dollars more per hour, the new people jump ship and the senior techs whine about it.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The pay is the only positive about working there. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The work environment and office folk 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
The office staff needs to be replaced entirely; Training department and especially HR need to go. They have mismanaged paperwork for employees causing issues and then blame the employees for the mistakes that they themselves caused. They've cost people their jobs because they can't take responsibility for their actions or execute their job functions efficiently. No one seems to know what's going on and you can't even ask them basic questions without them ignoring you or deferring you to someone else just for that person to send you back to the previous one like a horrible DMV experience. And they'll get angry at you and act confused as to why you're still asking questions they haven't answered. There's no communication or coordination between any of the departments and that's somehow the basic worker's fault. To reiterate: Training department, HR, and management are profoundly incompetent and unprofessional and don't care about anyone but themselves.

0 stars if I could give it 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Everyone running around trying to figure out what to do because communications are perpetually down, and despite there being 9,000 bosses and leaders, no one seems to know what’s going on.

They only care about productions even if that means over working you. HR is a joke overall. they will try to say you have more points than you do. Drama filled work area and they don’t care. Do not waste your time working hard for this company because they don’t care. The money is good if you don’t want a life. The point system isn’t fair for how many days you work, 12 on and 2 off.  You’ll get over time a lot through the week depending on what’s being ran. Only a week of vacation unless you work there forever. They don’t listen to concerns. They keep people who will teat you bad everyday. They do favorites. They’ve fired people for non real situations. You can get ahold of corporate all you want, but they hate that. Their raises are joke because they don’t want to do union. They will take forever to get you your start date after being told you’re hired. You can’t get ahold of anyone at the plant for any reason you need. If you call off, they might try to say you didn’t even call, keep screenshots that you have. Any time you take a day off you will risk your job even if you’re allowed to take the day off, they mess things up all the time. You aren’t recognized for hard work, but they might give everyone a pizza party or cookies. Your word doesn’t matter over certain people so don’t even try. Everyone in the plant has about the same issues with this company, yet nothing changes. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Manager 3 salaries reported	$118,333 per year
Brand manager 5 salaries reported	$139,600 per year
Recruiter 5 salaries reported	$65,500 per year
Account manager 3 salaries reported	$133,167 per year
Business analyst 4 salaries reported	$85,750 per year

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