The Cons far out-weigh the positives at this place.
*I can only speak as a person working in 15 Volvo as an Applications Engineer, from what a hear, Engineering is awesome and is a totally different world*
First of all, the main office is occupied by a cult of "professionals" that were simply at the right place at the right time. These executives are simply there because there are very dedicated and unsung hero working at lower levels of the company.
Its all political and constant mismanaging. Everything you do, you will be scrutinized. Take to many trips to the bathroom, you are going to get called in to speak with the director (which is the the most narcissistic demeaning man on the planet with absolutely no respect for his employees and has the text book characteristics of a Napoleon complex). The bottom line, the management team is ineffective at managing their assets and their employees. This is evident by the extremely high turn over rate, and the fact that most of the engineers are right of college.
The job itself is stressful and there is no reward for your efforts other than the potential for a customer sending in a letter thanking you for saving their rear ends.
You are given the title of Applications Engineer, yet you are nothing more than a tech support agent. The management and director will expect you to pick up all of the slack despite the fact that there are multiple offices across the country, meanwhile they are looking at porn and Facebook profiles of employees in the office.
Management does not care about its employees. Each morning you are forced to attend a morning meeting that is utterly pointless and is just an excuse for upper management to exercise their power over all of the different offices and employees. You are there for 9 long hours, much of which are thankless (from both management and the customers you interact with). You will end up helping incompetent people who get paid incredible amounts of money yet you will see nothing but a yearly raise of 1-4% (You will never get 5%). The biggest disrespect is when they tell you how well the company is doing and how sales go up every year (the company is valued at about 1 billion dollars) yet, you never see any type of bonus despite being part of one of the more essential and over worked departments.
Unless you brown nose, you are not going to get ahead, and there really isn't such a thing as a promotion. You can move up one peg on the latter, for example, Your title may change, and your work may get easier, but you will always be controlled by someone who is less intelligent and capable than you.
The company also has a lot of unethical practices like telling employees not to apply for jobs or not to use social media. Forcing employees to stay past their time is also a common practice. They will force you to help customers who are no qualified just because they spend a lot of money or because they are friends with the director or CEO.
HR is a complete joke and trying to switch departments will lead you nowhere. You will simply be stone walled and bullied.
My advice, do not come to this job, its extremely political, you will be harassed and bullied.
