tanker driver

plant operator

maintenance technician

technician

material handler

POET

I started at POET some time ago while looking for some place stable that pays well. POET's starting pay was well above others in the area, and since has continued to improve while other wages in the area rise.  After a year, you receive eligibility for profit-sharing, but along the way you may receive value sharing.

The schedule for Plant Technicians isn't for everyone, and I've seen many come and go in my time there due to this. 12 hour shifts, rotating every 6 weeks between days and nights. It can be rough, especially with a family and kids. Every other weekend is a 3-day weekend. 48 Hrs one week, 36 the next. Shutdowns are the only exception, and they're scheduled in advance.

POET's company culture is great! They push safety and well-being. Every incident I've seen has been handled well and there's always follow-up to make sure you're being taken care of. 

Along with this, the management is good at taking care of their employees and prioritizing their homelife too. If you need to take care of something at home, most managers are good about letting you figure it out because everyone has a family that comes first. 

The company as a whole prides itself on being a forerunner in the ethanol industry and being the pioneer in growing the field for future energy. If you want to move up, there are plenty of opportunities throughout the company to apply and move to, not just in one location but all of them.

A typical day at work as a Plant Tech would be spent grabbing and running samples, ensuring machines are running properly, doing walkarounds and checking up on others to see if they need help.

This is definitely a good place to start if you are good with mechanical things or electrical things. If you have experience with computers, this would be a good fit for you as well. 

A typical day is sitting in the control room monitoring and juggling the various processes, punctuated by sampling.  However, at any moment a piece of equipment could break and cause critical machinery to shut down.  It's much like an ER in that sense, boring down time and then sudden mayhem requiring fast decisions.   It takes a long time to develop competency/confidence in this position, and you don't get much help in way of effective on-boarding or useful training.  There is training, but it can seem pretty distant from what you will actually be doing as an operator.  If you are truly a self starter and inquisitive, you will do well, but training lacks serious structure.  The worst part about being an operator is that if anything went wrong, it always tends to fall on you, regardless if it was a communication error by management, or if production is pushed to the point where you get put into a no-win situation.  Generally speaking, you only see upper management in the plant when there is a problem, which fosters bad working relationships.  That being said, managers do care about what is going on, and many of the problems occur because their bosses, the corporate execs, are located far away and try to manage from there. 
The most stressful part of the job is also the most rewarding: when something goes catastrophically wrong and you find the problem and fix it.  
Culture and feel is going to very vary a lot from shift to shift, but the overall corporate culture is positive and puts safety as its priority.

POET has a well-designed plant model and offers great overall job experience, including dealing with both wet and dry product systems, as well as steam systems experience. 

If you are willing to learn, there is much to learn, but (being surrounded by small communities) there is also some favoritism towards family and friends. If you're outside of that crowd, you will not be given the benefit of the doubt and may end up needing to work harder to prove yourself.

On top of this, there are frequent disconnects and miscommunications between staff and management. Management often doesn't understand why something is not good for the plant, or sometimes, why it is not even possible. They understand the profit and money end of things, but not the wear and tear (and eventual repairs) that will be required to achieve what they want. Then, when things do go bad, they tend to blame it on operations and operator error. Their lack of understanding causes a lot of unneeded stress and ill will.

Jobs in operations involve monitoring systems from the control room, doing some basic preventative maintenance (such as greasing bearings), and running regular samples of the products to keep them in spec. as well as monitoring the boilers, turbine, and water utilities systems. Shutdowns happen every 4-6 weeks, and require more physical labor for a day or two. 

The pay is decent. There is profit sharing and several other occasional bonuses the show up from time to time.

Overall, it's a decent job, but there are other places out there that will pay better and require less of their employees.

It's a job.

Been working here for awhile. We hire people who just want a paycheck. Don't actually want to learn or move up. Once they found out raises were based on title, they moved up to get said raise and then stopped. They want 0 responsibility. Which starts with culture and discipline. That causes the few that do know everything to have to do the work of multiple people. Which puts those guys behind on everything that theyre supposed to do for their job. And this goes back 4 years to where no accountability was had. The right Department Managers are in place but the GM of the plant doesn't like people being fired for underperforming. Think theres always a way to train them up. But after years of trying and no one retaining information still cannot let anyone go. Even after multiple safety issues as well. Maint and ops teams are doomed with that person in charge. And not allowing the managers to do their job and make decisions.  The managers will try and enforce something and GM will come around and undermine them without them knowing. Micro-managing to a T. Worries more about his non direct reports than his actual direct reports who dont do their job very well. This could be a good place to work. Unfortunately everyone above the GM also does nothing about what's going on. The culture. The incompetence. Multiple HR complaints. This has created a stagnant work culture to where now people are literally there for a paycheck and dont care what happens or what they do because they know nothing will happen if they just fly under the radar and do the bare minimum. 

To work here, you need to be able to work 12 hour shifts. But, you need to be there early for the shift exchange meeting, so you're working more than 12 hours per shift. Every month, you will rotate and work night shift. Management does not respect what this does to your sleep schedule. Expect mandatory training sessions to be scheduled to start an hour after you were supposed to get off in the morning, or perhaps you get to come in several hours before your shift should have began. You get paid to do this, but you'll rather be in bed. 
This company decided that operators should also be maintenance technicians. These are two completely different types of positions. It is extremely rare to find someone who can excel in both of these roles, so you probably will do better at one or the other, but not both. This will be their excuse not to give you a decent raise.
Expect to have people who are terrified for their jobs to rat you out to the boss if you utter an opinion that isn't the opinion the boss thinks you should have. 
People have been terminated for saying bad words, but the boss is allowed to swear like a sailor. Don't complain about it, or else.

Poet started off great.  New facility, new teammates the whole concept was great.  As time went buy, it was apparent that Poet did not care about family/ work life balance.  Poet is the first to judge and condemn when you make a mistake.  Poet plant management micro manages way to much and does not allow the teammates and company management run the facility.  I do not recommend Poet for anyone.  The culture statements that Poet says that stand by means very very little.  Key personnel in the wrong spots , no accountability, no guidance, quick to judge and discipline and termination, micro manages way to much.  Stress level working at Poet is very very high for teammates.  Afraid to really speak out of fear of retaliation from management.  They talk the talk and boost everything up to be absolutely the greatest but in reality it is by no means.  They need to really listen to the teammates.  Read the poet openings on there website and ask yourself why key positions are constantly posted.  Poet does not treat plant personnel fairly or equal.

Work at POET is easy yet tiresome.The schedule is 12 hours a day    7 days a week. I worked that for the first 5 months that I was there and the pay was good.After I was sent to other POET plants to bring back the new or different policies that I had learned and teach those policies and ways to do and sharpen the skills that I had learned to my fellow workers. After the first year I went on a 12 hour a day shift for 3 days one week and four days the next week.This was fine all the way up to the day that it was to much to handle and I had a stroke, Also there is no smoking in the plant that I was at but you were allowed to smoke at other plants and everyone was always friendly and very supportive.The stoke it was finally discovered caused by a blockage in my carotid artery and not from working to much, But that took a gang of 27 Doctors throughout 7 different states to figure out.

POET Research is one of the best places to work for where you bring your knowledge and  skills in to practice with cutting edge technology. My work experience at poet taught me the real difference between the knowledge we use in the text books and how we implement in the real world. I learned through my Research at POET that "an accurate implementation of ideas  produce  very fascinating outcomes". We work with our co-workers in a friendly manner, greet one another so that no one seem as a stranger.The management considers the effort of every employee as a contributing factor for the profit of the company. The hardest part at POET is you have to face challenge with the type of ideas you use to get your work done. You have to drink "a lot of coffee"  and keep on developing new ideas to get your job done. However, your handwork is always valued  and every one embraces the change you contribute to the company, which is one of enjoyable part.

Compensation is fair enough. You have to be careful how much work you take on. You can easily overwhelm yourself. A full effort isn't always put out so there's always a little extra work to be done. Safety is pretty good. Some turnover but most all has been positive with positions filled with higher caliber employees. Good place to be if you are intelligent, have ethics, and easily establish good work relationships. Some may wish to slow it down union style but they are few and outnumbered by the new and motivated.

Biggest fear is burnout, lack of recognition, and punishment for failure. Failure because you are doing so much you are spread thin. If you can bring your A game annnnnd not mess up it's a good place to be.

Overall, my internship at POET was very helpful insight on the professional world, and very educational in both a general professional sense and about ethanol. The team was always very helpful when there were things that I didn't understand about the standards of the modeling that was to be put in place. The typical day varied between traveling to sites for visits and modeling work at a desk, which I enjoyed the variation a lot, but it was a bit more time spent at the desk. The atmosphere there was very open and inviting overall, and there were several other interns, which we would all get together after work occasionally. The management was at times very busy and hard to get in touch with immediately when it came up, but that was the nature of the office; very busy and always things to do. They would get back to as soon as they were available.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Tanker driver 15 salaries reported	$77,733 per year
Plant operator 7 salaries reported	$21.57 per hour
Maintenance technician 7 salaries reported	$25.71 per hour
Technician 3 salaries reported	$19.17 per hour
Material handler 8 salaries reported	$20.31 per hour

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