What is the feeling of job security at Protolabs?

Used to be great company with great culture and flexibility

New CEO Surresh has come in and completely destroyed the company culture that made Protolabs a great place to work at and was often awarded as such. Every meeting is coated in anxiety and the impending doom of layoffs despite record profits. In January a RTO was announced and there has been no flexibility and a straight up refusal to provide ADA accommodations to disabled employees by the HR department. They have taken away the flexibility that they used to provide to working parents that allowed them to work in office after/before their kids go to school despite not paying a living wage that would allow them to afford additional childcare. They have also chosen to make it even more difficult for employees to even receive a meets standards on their reviews as a cruel attempt to ensure they don’t have to give reasonable raises (which are rarely above 3% as is and they don’t provide market adjustments.) It’s unrecognizable from the company it used to be. They underpay, overwork, and expect the world of their employees while refusing to treat them with respect.

Good work life balance; you can completely disconnect after work hours.

Do you want to work in the most cliché corporate American company? Then this is the place for you. Pizza parties and holiday luncheons are the extent of management’s creativity when it comes to creating company culture. After years of employee surveys pointing out the substantially lower than market pay, any event has a $20/person budget, and any “appreciation” gift is the cheapest possible thing (like this year’s plastic ramen bowl and ramen packets). That is the level of tone-deaf that management is when it comes to listening to their employees. In addition to tone-deaf gestures, management will happily resort to gas-lighting employees about the low pay, by saying they conducted “independent market analysis” that shows you are being paid fairly. When asked for details about this report, they will decline further details. The corporate equivalent of “just trust me bro”. Let’s not forget job security, because there is none. You could be well liked and critical to your team; you could be a subject matter expert; you could win multiple awards; you could get promotion after promotion; at a moments notice you can be pulled into a meeting with your manager and HR and be eliminated right then and there, and the only information you will get is that “your position has become redundant.” It's hard to understate how lost leadership is[was]. (Perhaps the new CEO will fix this, TBD). In the past four years leadership has been selling a vision but providing no tangible updates or accomplishments along the way. Protolabs purchased Hubs for $300M 5 years ago, and to this day does not know how to utilize this resource or integrate it into their offering. Meanwhile their closest competitor has eclipsed them in market cap by almost 3x. This is not a place to progress your career. Chances are you will learn very little. Climbing the ladder is likely a futile endeavor, there is little financial gain with promotions, and the scope of work at the next level is essentially the same. There is no empowerment to make changes or departmental developments. Your team most likely won’t be a priority this year, but “next year it will be”.

• Remote work options based in a few select states • Company swag (shirts, hoodies) are higher quality than most • Micromanagement does not seem to be a common problem • Decent gig if you're management • Some DEI initiatives (see below) • Great coworkers (excluding HR/management)

• Management can be petty, vengeful, and ineffective. • Turnover is high, which is telling in the current market • In my 10 years of professional experience this company has the most sociopathic over-policing and out of touch HR group I've ever witnessed. At any company I have low expectations for HR, but this group still fell short. • Decisions impacting employees are often made without sufficient understanding or effort to learn. • Abysmal communication from leadership, but it doesn't matter since they will not take your feedback anyway. • Some sales managers seem to be completely unaware of anything, don't know how to help with any of my problems and are not willing to try. • Low salaries across the organization and sales commission structure that works against sales people. Some coworkers have received promotions yet earn less after promotion. • Questionable practice of adjusting sales targets on a whim, directly affecting comission payouts since sellers must meet a threshold to be eligible. • While DEI is promoted, support for neurodivergent staff is absent, upper leadership and HR shows little understanding in this area • Engineering teams have appalling salaries for the work they do. New hires are trying but lack acumen gained from on the job experience -> lost sales -> missing targets -> lost comission. • The company does not value you, they will never counteroffer or respond to a request for a raise. They'll let you walk instead and will backfill your spot with a lowballed college grad. • Many key knowledgeable staff were laid off or no attempt was made to retain staff that quit, creating operational struggles for those remaining • Protolabs crushes every company they buy. They do not take time to understand why companies they purchase have excellent growth (compared to their approximately 0% growth). They learn nothing from acquisitions. • Raises are fractions of a percent higher than COLA, but Protolabs does not have COLA. • The plan to combat poor culture and morale created by management and HR is pizza parties, pancake parties, and ramen packets. • I'm not kidding, this is a large multinational publicly traded company that gives ramen and pizza parties to try and fix their problems. • From the bottom of my heart I would not recommend Protolabs unless you have a dire need to put food on the table. I do not know employees outside HR or management who are satisfied with their jobs. I am ashamed of this company that I tried to like.

The company is a recognized leader in its product segment and provides a unique, highly valuable service to its customers. Its core product and technical capabilities remain best-in-class. Many frontline employees are talented, dedicated, and genuinely care about the mission.

Upper management in MN is destroying employee morale, creating toxic environment of mistrust and retaliation. Here is a non-exhaustive list of some examples: - Retaliation. While the company invests in leadership and review training for managers, in practice, honest feedback is not welcomed. In my experience, offering constructive feedback to an upper-level manager resulted in clear retaliation, which was neither subtle nor addressed by HR. While technically not illegal, this behavior is directly at odds with the company’s stated values. My case was not isolated. - Mistrust. After acquiring Hubs/Network, leadership promised to preserve its innovative and collaborative culture. Instead, that culture has been eroded. Many employees with deep institutional knowledge were laid off without proper knowledge transfer, creating long-term risks for the business. Others were given significant additional responsibilities without corresponding pay adjustments. Employees who devoted years to building the business have been let go abruptly, with little foresight or appreciation. - Economics & Morale. Company’s growth has been stagnant. To change that company is laying off long term valuable employees and gifting plastic bowls with a packet of Ramen noodles on employee appreciation day. True story. Much was said in the previous reviews about the noodles as well as about the notoriously low pay across all sectors of the compony compared to the market. The only ones who are compensated fairly are senior executives and HR. Director of HR is compensated 40-50% more than directors of other departments. 
Speaking of the senior management, while I cannot speak for all, some are arrogant and unapproachable, while some are incompetent in the areas where they should be competent. Example: Company procured a software solution from a vendor at a cost of $240k. The only problem was that there was absolutely no need in this software/solution and, moreover, internal GTS team did not even have the bandwidth to implement it. Company continued to pay for nothing, all while the most employees could hope for is a 3% annual raise max…and a packet of Ramen noodles.

- My immediate colleagues are wonderful, intelligent, and great to work with - Benefits are decent

I’ve only been with PL for a little over 2 years and things have gone down hill FAST. What once was a company built on culture and people, has now turned to profit and greed. It’s very clear that the c-suite team doesn’t care about the employees or their concerns. Entire teams have been laid off without a plan to continue their workload, managers with years of experience have been laid off without warning, or a way to keep the knowledge within the company. Wages have been low since day one, but even after hiring a pay specialist (and they quit shortly after) nothing was done to give any sort of market value updates. The leadership teams somehow are still patting themselves on the back for “listening to their employees”. Wild take considering many folks barely got a raise (like 3%) or none at all. High level AM’s have been leaving left and right for better positions and the solution is to offload the work onto other teams that are already struggling with demand. Folks are burned out, scared to speak up, worrying about losing their job, and are generally miserable. The culture that was here when I started is completely gone. I’ve already felt like I’ve overstayed my welcome here.

This used to be a great company to work for, but is now mandating a full RTO- we all know this as quiet layoffs. I’m confident that they will use this policy to fire those who do not comply fully.

The future of the company is bleak- financially and culturally. I hope to leave as soon as I can even in this tough job market.

- Great coworkers! My colleagues always made Protolabs a welcoming, collaborative environment! I learned a lot during my time here. - The benefits are great...for now

Where to begin? - In general, people here are just a number. Instead of being treated like a valued, contributing member of the organization, employees are perceived by management to be an extraneous line item eating away at their bonuses. Nobody's job is safe. In the past few months, entire departments have been shuttered with very little notice or severance. High ranking and highly respected individuals at the managerial and director levels have also been terminated with absolutely zero notice and no plans to delegate their responsibilities. - It's clearly a sinking ship. Most people who have the ability to do so are leaving, many premier account managers in particular have jumped ship in the past few months. It is unclear how they plan on maintaining the top-tier client base that they so covet without those good folks on the ground doing the actual work. - Low pay. Positions pay well below market rate, and raises are hard to come by. Instead of leaving raises to merit and managerial discretion, everybody gets the same tiny pay bump that doesn't even cover rent increases regardless of performance. Sales had their commissions chopped down to next to nothing. - Gaslighting leadership. All-company meetings are filled with leadership crowing about high profits and the thriving culture while laying everybody off and cutting funding for team events down to nothing. Their response to a tsunami of negative employee reviews was that those employees should just quit. Instead of hiring on expensive consultants to fix your issues, literally just take accountability for your actions. It's that simple. - They announced record profits and an end to paid sick leave within a week of each other. Think that just about sums up the management style around here.