packer

machine operator

welder/fitter

welder

shipping coordinator

Valmont Industries

I won't specify the location I was at but for 3 and a half years I worked for Valmont and always gave it my all. During that time I saw many things that no workplace should have. Mandatory Overtime was something that took your whole life over personal time. It seemed like 8 out of 12 months of the year we were working 10-12 hr shifts 6 days a week. This was due to poor scheduling of job orders by upper management as well as the high turnover at work. Noone who knew their worth wanted to stay. The work conditions are terrible there. You're breathing in lots of aluminum dust, steaming coolant fluids coming from tapering machines, and smoke inhalation coming from welders since there is no proper ventilation system at this location. Picture just a few vents through the warehouse and doors that stay closed during winter months. That place will mess with hour health. I often didn't feel appreciated at my job and had to do the work of 2 people. I was never compensated for that. It's like they expect you to be a superman of sorts. Many times they expect you to know what you're doing without getting the proper type of training. Most of the tools and machines at work were also very out of date and needed lots of maintenance. Whether it was dull dies, presses that didn't have enough pressure to punch a hole or tapering machines that were so overworked that maintenance could only put a band aid on them instead of doing the proper maintenance on. Everything about that job made us and the machines feel overworked and not appreciated. The few positives of my time there were the people who worked there. Most of my coworkers were great passionate people. It takes grit and integrity to work there as much as they did. I will always remember my time with them as one of the few positives about the job.

As QA and NDT Level II with an AAS NDT degree, I thought I could make a career out of Valmont.  A couple months in, I knew I had taken the wrong job.  There is no 'quality' here.  NDT is a joke here and not compliant.  If you are in NDT, you know what I mean..the things that go on here are not to code and we all know what that means in the real world.  If something is rejected, production (or anyone really) can  just rip the tag off and send it out.  I have rejected products, outlined repairs and then found the product out in the lot with no repairs and the reject tag GONE.  Write another tag, it goes back in...within the day it will be out in the lot again, not repaired and reject tag GONE.  They also let non NDT people perform some of the NDT against all standards.  This cheapens what I worked so hard for (my NDT education and certifications).  Why work hard in NDT if they are going to let any Jack of the street do things they can't do and know nothing about??  It's like letting a secretary stand in for a doctor...NOT SMART.

If you have a college degree in NDT and you want to work where you are valued, don't take this job.  The environment is terrible, you are not respected, you have no authority to do your job and Valmont will require you to compromise the code of ethics your certs require you to uphold.  The culture here is rotten and quality is not the only department like this- it is company wide. The place is dangerous.  It's so packed here that I don't know how they get around OSHA.  It's not safe.  HR is not there to help anyone, most of them should be fired for the things they pull.  They are completely worthless dead weight and they live off of everyone's hard work and still don't respect you.  Management is corrupt. No one advances with knee pads.  I even saw one post on here about Valmont doing united way stuff.  You know how they do that?  They intimidate employees and force you to pay in so THEY can look good and take their bows.  This place sucks.  Thanks Valmont, for the black spot on my resume!!

Maybe valmont has other departments that have a much better work environment, but I worked in what they call Mid-size, when i bashing the company as well as the management. We would have machines that would break down constantly with a maintenance team that would slap a band aid over it and when I would question that, the other employees would say yep thats just the valmont way, and that I picked the worst department to work at, I was hired as a seam repair welder for second shift, I was trained for it on day shift for a couple months and when I moved to evenings the had me running the machines and the other monotonous jobs that no one else wanted to do, 4 months they had me doing that. apparently that was the norm for newcomers but it was never explained to me before I accepted the job that thats how it would be. Keep in mind I have a degree in welding technology, and they knew that I could weld. When I would confront my manager about it and how long it would take me to get over to the welding side he didn't have a clue. we worked 7 day weeks and we even had a guy in upper management tell us "If we could have you guys working 8 days a week, we would." we had 2 10 minute breaks with 15 minutes to eat our dinner. It was all about production production production they could care less the last time you were able to spend time with family. I once had a coworker tell me that once he worked 6 months with not one day off. I know for a fact that the only reason any of those guys worked there was the overtime pay and benefits, most of them made it obvious they didn't actually care for the job itself. The only thing that made it hard to leave was the coworkers. They were the only thing that made my job bearable. If you are seriously considering working here, do as much research as you can and talk to people that have worked there first, however I do not recommend working mid-size.

In my position at Valmont, being able to multi-task is a must. Taking care of the welders and keeping them welding is first priority. This contains gathering parts needed, loading and unloading with an overhead crane. Secondly, the welders need product to weld, so it is also my job to make sure the aluminum poles are punched for hand holes, routered, cleaned properly, and that the bases are expanded onto the poles before giving to the welders. Throughout the shift I am delegating tasks to other welding assistants, verifying that what the welders are working on, are the orders that get fulfilled first and so on throughout the week. I also determine what and how much the welders are welding on a daily bases and at the end of the shift input that information and numbers into excel. I am assisting up to four welders per day. What I have learned from my job at Valmont, is knowledge in welding and aluminum manufacturing. My experience with management has been great at Valmont. Even though it is a manufacturing warehouse the upper management works hard to keep their employees safe while also being productive. At Valmont we all work as a team and my co-workers have made it an enjoyable place to work. The hardest part that I have been able to overcome is working in a warehouse environment with predominantly all male co-workers. The most enjoyable part of my job is the challenge that it brings. Both physically and mentally. I also enjoy being able to train new hire employees. Lastly, I enjoy knowing the products that we manufacture are able to be seen around my town and other cities as well. I am proud at what I do and to say that we have provided new stadiums, highways and small towns with light poles and flag poles.

A typical day at work: 
I start in the morning, plan my day to ensure the most urgent work is done first. I learned what was the most important thing of the day and what jobs needed to be done first. 
Workplace management is the key to making yourself more efficient and increasing your productivity. I love to improve teamwork and productivity.
But apparently, it was decided that I was not a “good fit”.
Do not waste your time!!! Their rules and policies only apply to certain people. 
HR is a complete joke! Incompetent HR Department 
If they decide they do not like you for ANY reason they will bully and harass you until you make mistakes and then terminate you for those mistakes by using reports that aren’t shared, just referred to, yet managers expect you to perform to them and even use them against you in order to terminate you. But one never sees said reports or knows how to train you to run one so you could begin to understand / verify the information they were telling you and or to use them to make needed improvements.
Management and HR talk to employees and customers horribly. They have no idea what they are doing, they change their minds in a daily basis of what’s expected of you, they use these invisible reports, and their communication skills are nonexistent. 
If you plan on being stuck or worried at a job then this is for you.
Worst leadership I have ever experienced in my career, by far.
Bullying and Workplace Harassment are just part of your day here
Very poor training
Extremely toxic place to work.
I have no respect for Management or HR at Valmont

You are a number to them . You are not a person with a name . Dont get rail count or get your Recoverd hr. .you will be working 6 or 7 days a week. But office people and bosses have all weekends off to spend with there family. Screw there employees . Nothing is good enough.  Its always we can do better.  They love to take your vacation time away from you any chance they can. You call in you get a point and 8 hr taken away fro. You. Instead of just a point with no pay or the option to use vacation.  If you aren't a favorite you are a nobody.  Just a worker that makes them look good. They our the first ones to tell you its your fault if something dont come out right . Instead of the equipment that is old and worn out.  They spend money on things that dont need to be fixed. 
Instead of fixing the equipment that will work right and get the job done right . If they would fix it we might could get weekends of  or have the opportunity to vallinter.  But no To them its are fault. Its always our fault. Ok what management tells you to your face well thats why i make the big bucks and you dont. Really sorry but management 
should never say that. If you have a problem and you go talk to a manager.  Thay shouldn't tell you to grow some thicker skin, or dill with it. Im only here cuz i have to pay my bills for my kids . I could go on and on but its would take forever to list it all. If you have a family you dont want to work here . You wont get to see or spend time with them . But one weekend a month. 

This job is perfect for a single work aholic, you can expect to work hard in all kinds of elements, zinc smoke from the kettle, it's always at the least 15-20 degrees hotter in the plant than outside, It is an open end building on both ends and the wind during winter can cut like a razor, You may be ask to move from one department to another when they are short handed or assigned to several jobs to cut cost for the company. The management is willing to be helpful to you as long as you are dependable and hard working. Job commitment is a plus, The hardest part of the job is the switching of shift hours. you may work a week like this Mon.-Sat 8hrs a day then the next week Sun-Sat 12 hrs a day, then if production requires it you may work Mon-Tues 8hrs Wed-Sun 12hrs. A normal sleep schedule is often out of the question, which will make you tired and rundown and you may not always be able to think on your feet. I often think of it like the military. So if you can handle all of this plus the fact that the company has always tried to reach 100% Quality and Quantity and Safety since the day the doors opened, but are not too willing to buy the right equipment or hire enough people long enough to be trained properly. The most enjoyable part of the job is the benefits packages and quarterly and yearly bonuses, as well as frequent breaks for long shifts.

I loved the type of work I did, so that was not the issue. The people that I worked with (management and their cronies) were the issue. I finally had to quit because I couldn't take it anymore. Working remote helped, but I can't tell you how many times I was spoken down to and told that I was stupid. I am not stupid and I am smart. I would bring up an issue with my superior but I was unheard. Then another co-worker would bring up the same issue, and suddenly it is a huge problem that we needed to solve. Raises were non-existent. Never got a merit-based raised in all the time I was there. Management spends so much time looking for new people that they are gonna lose all the people they have that are really great. I don't know why so many of the people stay that are there, everyone complains about management (and minions) behind their back. Give raises when people are doing good, not just for inflation, those raises are not keeping up with inflation! The accounting staff can go get higher paying jobs that start at a higher wage today than what they are currently getting paid. Management does not get it. Think about it from our perspective, isn't that what you are being paid to do? 

Horrible, untruthful management. They operate on a buddy system, which means they will side with other leads/management over floor employees, often times trying to make it to seem like you're the problem. They let bad employees keep their jobs, they let them total forklifts and come right back to work like nothing happened. They don't fix machines and if they do, more often than not, it's with the wrong parts or they use duct tape and zip ties. Benefits were okay and pay was good but that was only because everything else there was terrible. A typical day of work consisted of being lied to, not being told entirely what you're supposed to do, backtracking because management couldn't do their job to begin with. Other floor employees were okay, but even then there was a lot of backstabbing. There was no real enjoyable part of working there. HR was a joke so it was bordeine piintless to go to them for much. They never told you when you were working OT until the end of the shift on the day prior. Leads try to act like.your friend and immediately turn around and throw you under the bus. The amount of OSHA violations present in this facility should be enough to close it, but since they get a heads-up as to when they're coming, they hide it all and as soon as they leave it goes back to being a PROPER safety authorities worst nightmare. 

I worked in the Quality department at the Brenham facility. As I have read in other posts, the recruiter will paint a wonderful picture of what the facility is like....and that is the first lie you will hear, but not the last. This place will promise everything they can to get you in the door, but it runs off of a buddy-buddy system that is corrupt and incompetent. I have actually stood on the production floor and rejected product and had the facility manager tell me to pass it out the door and sign off. Everything is production bound and this facility couldn't produce a quality product if they tried. Their quality department is hamstrung at best, with lazy leadership that is constantly bullied by production. They cannot keep good help and if they get good help, it doesn't usually last long. Most employees that stay only do so because they are close to home. The management is two-faced and laughable. The floor leads are custom fit to their chairs and just as incompetent. The safety program is an absolute joke. Training to build product is normally done by trainers with less than two months experience building the same product. Unfortunately this place is all about bottom line, which is unfortunate because there are a few good people left there. As a company though, Valmont is nothing I would sign up for.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Packer 39 salaries reported	$26.05 per hour
Machine operator 5 salaries reported	$25.32 per hour
Welder/fitter 4 salaries reported	$26.91 per hour
Welder 7 salaries reported	$25.74 per hour
Shipping coordinator 10 salaries reported	$34.00 per hour

Working at Valmont Industries: Company Overview and Reviews

Valmont Industries

Valmont Industries Ratings

Popular jobs at Valmont Industries

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected