software engineer

project engineer

assembler

electrical designer

system engineer

Schweitzer-Engineering-Laboratories

Typical day at work: EST test walk onto the floor into the dept and sit down and begin work. 
Work consists of reading work instructions and following computer directions how to assemble or complete a task.
This is not hard work but it is boring at times.
Work instruction are not always updated and your work is slowed because of this. Workers are judged by how much they produce.
Lack of updated work instruction results in the worker  getting poor numbers and getting in trouble with supervisors. Its disorganized. 

There is unprofessionalism by managers, and power plays with bosses and line leads against employees.If a worker works better than a line lead the line lead can stop there training and deny the work job progression If the manager receives a complaint about a line lead from a assembler they tell the assembler to 'don't talk about this, I will handle it." The employee does not know what has happened.
Or issues are ignored by upper management. 
This happen to me and several people I know.  I asked about it and was told, "we always support our line leads, no matter what."
The managers walk around a don't do anything they just watch workers work. Its menacing and stalkerish, the cameras and hovering of bosses is ridiculous.

I was given excellent feedback from my trainers on my work, they wrote weekly reviews on my progress.
'Good attitude, great work, quality etc'...then when my evaluation   came this feedback was ignored. Not even discussed.

I was top builder in my dept and still given poor review, equivalent to a C-.
My review said,  "Does not meet standards." I had no absences and no tardiness, perfect attendance and great trainer evals. 

None of my work mattered. 
The supervisor and managers wrote what they wanted about my work.I had made this mistake of going to HR about the very manager who wrote the evaluation. This was never changed.


This particular manager told me (in a evaluation) when I persisted on examples of why I was given a poor score on a work detail that:
"No one likes working with you. No one likes you.That's what you need to know." 

This was unprofessional.

  I inquired further saying, "I do not understand what is going on in this review. I have not been given this feedback about my work, I was told my work was great. I don't understand this please explain where this is coming from?"

This manager said, " Do you understand English? I mean you do understand English don't you?" "Are you gonna cry now?"
I was tearing up and shocked to be spoken to like this.

I got up and went to HR. They listened but didn't do anything.
To my knowledge he was not reprimanded.
 I never had my questions answered and my review was not changed or addressed.
 I was told, "This is great opportunity to learn from this feedback." 
Incredible. He is still working there.


One man  I talked to had been at SEL for 15 years. he hated the managers, he had been denied training and progression so much that he had given up trying. He said he was on a disciplinary action for 3 years. He now was working as the head trainer in the cell but not promoted. Not paid more money and not credited for training others. Not given a raise for that amount of time. 

There are good people working as assemblers. Lots of great assemblers there and kind people. But many will not say anything bad about a manager, line lead or supervisor for fear of retaliation. They are scared.


In the meeting to cover the results of the greatest places to work survey at SEL the HR rep did not answer employee questions about what SEL was prepared to do about the negative feedback given about supervisors and the unfair treatment towards employees. In particular, a 75% overall negative approval rate was given about Managers and Supervisors. Some of my colleagues asked what was gonna be done since the feedback was so poor about management and supervisors.

The HR representative responded:
"Well we are not going change our systems at this time. We feel we should stick with our way of doing things and see our processes through. This is a survey for feedback, only. " 

People in the room were shocked.
Some employees said, "So why ask for a feedback if you are not willing to learn and Identify Measure and Improve?' 

(SEL Value) Which is a business model SEL preaches daily and at all friday lunches. 
The HR rep repeated they same statement. She was of course non responsive to everyone.

Schweitzer spends  money on painting a great picture about itself. The marketing and public relations can be seen by the platform they sell on every advertisement all over the Palouse and Spokane area.

SEL is not a great company.
 Its assemblers are miserable and scared to speak up about issues. There is retaliation, dishonesty, oppression, bullying and unmonitored game playing from bosses,  a lot is bad things are happening there to good people. Its too bad that there is not a union there. It would alleviate the games and hold SEL accountable.

SEL goes through assemblers and hires many assemblers because they cannot keep them. IT IS A TERRIBLE WORK ENVIRONMENT.
They fire people all the time. They treat their employees like they are are expendable.

(True story)
 I saw one young father get fired, he has cancer and a family of four. Just finished his third chemo series. He had been there 5 years, I was told he was a outstanding employee by several people who worked with him.  He was fired for writing a small smiley face on a tag.)
I know a employee who was written up for hugging a friend who received some bad news about a family member. The employees had known each for 7 years.

All the nonsense there and bullying destroys the morale of assemblers, leaving them feeling like nothing they do is good enough. Eventually, they settle for the oppression or get fired on some trumped up charge.




If you want to work for a fascist military company....work at SEL. You can expect prejudism,dishonesty, favoritism and lack of advancement. 

Do not work for SEL.  
Underrneath the 'greatest manufacturer in the US" neon sign SEL tout's and advertises themselves to be is the hidden, big fat check SEL writes to keep the public from knowing the truth. The assemblers are bullied and treated badly. No money or benefits can change the gross negligence of the administration to identify, measure and improve their management antics.
 
IT IS A GROSS WASTE OF YOUR TIME AND SPIRIT TO WORK AT SEL. SEL does not appreciate their assemblers.

As an assembler your work is based on numbers. 
The worker is required to produce a certain amount of units.
Working in little cells with other people can be fun. However managers and supervisors hover.
 
SEL touts to be a great company to work for.
 In the manufacturing plant part SEL managers and supervisors hover over workers.

Workers are singled out and used as an example if they speak about an issues and the supervisors and mangers don't agree.
Favoritism, dishonest reviews on evaluations are standard operating procedures. In the plant work, I found bosses say one thing and do another. They are not held to SEL standards, though they preach them all the time.
It feels a lot like a military environment. Be seen and do the work but don't talk and we don't want to hear what you have to say.

Line leads, supervisors and managers push assemblers to reach for training and for being certified in depts yet they do not offer this when an employee ready. Tough to get advancement and recognition. it seems as though this is based on if the employee is liked.
I saw many people passed over for advancement when they were ready for training because they were not liked or did not kiss up to the line lead or supervisor.
SEL old managers on evenings have a rep for being bullies. I found this out from several employees. Some stories involved, disciplinary actions that were trumped up.

SEL is good at publicity and marketing but these human rights violations on the manufacturing floor are serious and not discussed.
HR when told about these issues does not take them seriously.

I would not work for SEL again as an assembler  nor will I refer someone to them for that work.

Assemblers are treated as a number.Furthermore, assemblers are constantly being hired because there are problems on the manufacturing floor that HR has not dealt with. It is too bad because there are some good things about SEL. However the bullying and prejudicial decisions towards employees is a huge problem. 

The most enjoyable part of the job was getting to know people in the cells.
There are many hardworking and kind assemblers at SEL. Some enjoy there job and managed to avoid the landmines there. Many have chosen to ignore the issues and survive regardless.

This company has changed so much in the 6 years I've been here.

I used to encourage friends and family to apply.  No longer.

The company is corrupt from the Executive team down to the Assemblers.  There is no honor and SEL Values have become a joke.

The Engineering and Research division is the only thing keeping this company competitive.

Isn't it ironic that in a college town, where internships are invaluable, that so many of the positions are filled by the children of the executives and managers?

Nepotism is the rule in this company and HR is so wildly inconsistent in it's application of accountability that employees are summarily fired for extremely minor offenses, while others are free to sexually harass multiple women with no consequences.

Just an incredible amount of bad behavior going on that I marvel how the company continues to run on a daily basis.  The horror stories of open hostility by supervisors, outright lies, nepotism, and incompetent management could fill a book.

The Best Place to Work survey was canceled after a couple of years of such awful results that management decided it was bringing too much attention to their failures.  Really.  Instead of trying to fix things, they choose to ignore and obfuscate the facts.

The Manufacturing division in Pullman is ran by management that is ignoring the horrific abuses of power by the supervisors.  They took away the freaking chairs of assembly line workers for no other reason than to physically torture them!  God, this place is just evil on every level.

Maybe if you want to work in engineering or research and don't mind having to work 60+ hours a week and getting paid less than others in your field.  Maybe you should consider SEL if you don't mind blatant nepotism and no 401k matching. 

SEL is the largest employer in the area and they bully their employees because they know they have few options.

SEL West Lafayette has been without a Factory Manager for nearly 3 years, with no sign of filling the position. The culture has declined since the departure of the factory manager, and the quality of work has worsened in many areas. 

Roughly 80% of employee owners that relocated here have left the company (which speaks volumes). Many have been unhappy with the leadership hired locally and supervision has even admitted regret in some of those hiring decisions, but they refuse to take *ownership* and fix the problems. SEL West Lafayette has been and will continue losing quality employee owners. 

Funny enough, management seems to primarily focus on “developing” future leaders. The inconsistencies that revolve around their idea of development is laughable. An Assembler or Senior Assembler can expect to preform production lead duties and essentially hold the title of “acting production lead” (with no increase in pay) for nearly 4 years before getting promoted. Assembler Specialists roles are just as convoluted. 

Not all assemblers get held to the same standard. Management preaches about “depersonalization” and “taking ownership”, which makes no sense when you think about it. 

The manufacturing environment feels like a typical high school social setting. Certain supervisors have their favorites. Certain people conveniently get opportunities & larger raise percentages. Others get micromanaged and criticized based primarily by perception. 

Overall, I feel that SEL is a great company with quality, reputable products & services. Dr. Schweitzer is a brilliant mind that I feel lucky to have worked for. Unfortunately, in West Lafayette, it’s become another high turnover factory job. SEL executives really need to analyze how this factory is functioning, because there’s definitely more than meets the eye. 



When I left the company I was working through a 28 day cycle, 5 states away. 12-16 hours per day, and in extreme heat and no days off. I was written up for exhaustion. Quality of work and efficiency are not valued. Things are structured in such a way, with a "performance management software" that they use, that performance isn't accurately conveyed. Management is consumed by this software displaying information that inaccurately represents high performance. This information is then examined by the higher echelons, who are so far from ground level operations, that they are being misinformed and deceived by those aware of the flaws of the software. Some find a balance in manipulating the information, while others lean too far one way or the other creating a spinning door for low level managers and employees. 

As a technician my days were entirely consumed by work leaving me with roughly 5%-10% personal time over all. I watch several peer's personal lives crumble due to the lack of personal time, including myself. Families moving on after their husband and father were no longer present in their lives. Leaving them to devote more time to the never ending torrent of work hurled at them. I began speaking with management several times to tilt the scales to provide better balance between work and life and was ignored. Management do not care about the impact on the lives of the employees. My peers, too scared to speak up, later praised the ideas, but acknowledged that they were afraid to mention them to anyone out of fear of being replaced by ever increasingly under qualified employees, from the revolving door of technicians they had created.

I found that the company had a set of core values that felt applied to the employees, but not the top most management, verses employees were punished for doing things in direct alignment with those values.  Innocent and simple mistakes were punished through severe means like termination, often months or even years after the acts occurred.

Employees were often made to pay for poor estimating by making up schedule gaps with forced overtime.  I recall many late nights where engineers worked until late to get a product out, often against their will.  They were, of course, told they were free to go home, but the unspoken consequences were well known.

The company has a culture of intellectual elitism, where employees don't respect others unless they can trump them at a game of engineering analysis, hence whiteboards proliferate every desk, so employees can self-appoint themselves as teachers on the fly.  Information exchange and learning is important, but at this company it pervades in a constant sense of intellectual one-upsmanship.  This was confirmed when working at other emngineering companies, where the general impression of SEL is that they have great customer service, but don't really seem to value true diversity, as you don't fit the culture if you're not an uber-analytic type, and hence maybe great at engineering, but perhaps contributing to an imbalanced culture.

These people will sell a job to you harder than a used car salesman. On paper, SEL is a great, reputable company - when you focus on the product & services. If you’re applying for a position in engineering or customer service, then you’ve got little to worry about. 

SEL West Lafayette (manufacturing) is a different story. This manufacturing is honestly some of the simplest labor in the area, but this place LOVES making more work for themselves by “simplifying” and promoting “continuous improvement” which ultimately results in supervisors pushing useless projects on anyone who thinks that completing them will help progress their career. 

Recently there has been high turnover & management seems to think there’s nothing that needs reflected on. They know exactly where their faults are & will do anything it takes to avoid doing the work to improve. 

The shifts have constant conflict & supervision has even instigated the conflict at times. They used to preach “one team” mentality, but haven’t practiced it since the evolution of the 2nd shift. 

Nearly all assemblers are looking for a way out, except for the leads who have it made with supervision. So many experienced employee owners have left in the last 3 years. 

It’s obvious that workplace drama exists in nearly every environment, but that shouldn’t be an excuse. I suggest using your best judgment upon interviewing. 

SEL Technical Job Opportunities - Good
SEL Assembler Job Opportunities- Avoid



Work-life balance
Work-life balance at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories is horrendous.

Pay & benefits
My pay and benefits at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories are way below industry standards for what I was doing.

Job security and advancement
In terms of job security at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, I think if you are a yes person you will succeed.

Management
I really loved the supervisors besides my own. Those that become managers need continuous training. Also, senior leaders should maybe take ethics. My supervisor was a pathological liar and I wish someone would call them on it. I’ve never seen so much manipulative behavior from a leader. It was pretty distasteful. Think bullies who pretend to be your friend.

Culture
Collaboration with my colleagues at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories is horrific and truly not a team effort. People are quitting left and right because of work balance. Or if you don’t fit into the mold or outshine anyone else you are a bad employee. All my efforts were simply overlooked and anything I did slightly wrong was hyper focused. Childish antics too, unreal.

Overall
My experience working at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories was the worst job I’ve ever had and as upset as I was about leaving I am truly happy that I’m no longer overworked without any sort of positive recognition.

Schweitzer is an absolutely amazing company. I've thoroughly enjoyed working here the past few years. 

Schweitzer has a strong set of workplace values and they truly live by them instead of simply playing lip service to them. I learned a lot about manufacturing and production and was given the opportunity to find new and exciting work that a truly enjoyed. 

My supervisor during my time here was the best supervisor I have ever had the pleasure of working under. Their true devotion to my growth and my fulfillment in my position was unparalleled by any job I've had before. 

The two things that I can say that I struggled with during my time here was the monotony that comes with working on the production floor and the rigidity of how their internal promotions on the manufacturing floor worked. Sometimes they can be a bit too focused on people checking the right boxes instead of fostering people who excel and are truly talented and valuable to the company.

The people I worked with at this company were what made me happy to show up to work every day. The community within the company is beyond anything I have ever seen. I have interacted with people from all levels of the company all the way up to the founder and president and CEO & CFO.

I would not suggest this company to anyone. They cannot keep good employees because they are not honest.

They said one thing and did another. I felt like I worked in a hiring mill. 
There was no sincere monitoring of managers and managers would say one thing to employees and then do another. 
    I am not one to be unkind to a company but this company is lacking ability to keep up with growth and maintain a great working environment. 
They spend a lot of much money on marketing and not enough on resolving employee issues. Lots of unfair employment practices.

Their company presentation is fantastic...but on the inside its cut throat employment antics and unfairness to employees. Employees mostly are afraid to discuss their concerns because management does not want to hear them. 
I met the goals of the company managers repeatedly and was held back when I had been promised advancement after meeting those goals. 
When I spoke of unfairness and asked questions  I was repeatedly told my work was lacking. It was not.
 Head bosses are comfortable and not willing to hear employees.

Don't work for SEL, its a meat market.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Software engineer 22 salaries reported	$98,724 per year
Project engineer 3 salaries reported	$103,167 per year
Assembler 13 salaries reported	$20.07 per hour
Electrical designer 4 salaries reported	$31.50 per hour
System engineer 9 salaries reported	$126,600 per year

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