Competitive pay, beyond terrible leadership, a horribly toxic work environment, and in a spiral towards its demise. - Supply Chain Manager RockAuto Employee Review

-If you are "lucky enough" to be hired as an SCM, you first have to make it through an ever-changing set of "standards", which have nothing to do with the work that you will actually be doing. Countless new hires do not make it through this process, and are let go within weeks of starting (even if they relocated specifically for this job). -IF (it's in all caps, because it is a very big "if") you make it through the SCM training process, you will then be tasked with creating a dependency chart. For those who are not familiar with what that is, it is essentially a map of steps that need to be taken, in order to achieve the desired result. In theory (and in reality, at many other companies in different industries), they are a great idea. In practice, at RockAuto, they are meaningless documents that are ever-changing, due to suppliers' fluctuating schedules (and perhaps, not even being interested or capable of taking on the "project" at hand, at the time). As a result, SCMs spend countless hours merely updating wording and dates on their dependency charts to appease teamleads and the company’s owner, rather than actually working with their suppliers on things that impact the company’s bottom line. -The fun part with dependency charts comes each month (it was previously every week!), when you submit monthly “goals”. Per Merriam Webster, a goal is “the end toward which effort is directed”. The problem is that at RockAuto, whatever “goals” you set for yourself each month absolutely must be completed 100% by the next monthly meeting (or you face being berated by the owner of the company and whichever hapless teamlead you report to). The RockAuto definition of a goal results in minimal motivation for Supply Chain Managers to set actual goals for themselves that may be slightly out of reach for a one month timeframe, and leads to grasping for the easiest goals that they are certain they can accomplish in a month. This means that countless innovative, useful and profitable ideas are never actually taken on, because they cannot be accomplished in a month. -None of the teamleads are actually leaders, or halfway decent at managing a team of people. This is evidenced by the near-constant micromanagement, subtle threats against the future of your job, as well as countless snobby (sometimes, downright rude) emails about something that the company’s owner didn’t understand or changed his mind/forgot about, so he threw a fit. Your teamlead will not give all of the facts to the owner of the company in their monthly meeting, and will throw you under the bus to protect their own jobs and avoid further conflict with the owner of the company. As a result, the owner of the company does not have any idea what his SCMs are actually doing, because teamleads selectively share information (and do not step in to correct him on anything, when he begins going on a tangent about something relating to one of your suppliers). -Countless talented and intelligent individuals have been demoted from the SCM position, despite being at the top pay rate (meeting all of the pre-defined "standards"). Unless you are in the select group of untouchable people (most of whom have zero relevant education to be in the positions they're in), rest assured that you will eventually be demoted. -Sexism is alive and well at RockAuto, but not in the traditional sense. The owner of the company makes it a point to surround himself with females. All supply chain teamleads are females, all product managers are females, and all but one of the marketing department are females… If you are a male and hoping to get promoted to a different department, it simply will not happen. -RockAuto does not own any of its suppliers. However, they are a very large customer for many. As a result, suppliers are often willing to listen to process improvements that RockAuto proposes to an extent. The problem is that management at RockAuto (read: teamleads and company owner) think that they inherently know what is best for all suppliers, despite never having actually worked in a warehouse environment in their lives. There is also constant conflicting information between pushing a supplier to do a specific thing, and negotiating with the supplier. Some teamleads insist on having their teammates’ suppliers do specific things, without actually thinking about what they’re asking. Other teamleads say things to the effect of “there is no RockAuto way,” and seem to encourage you to negotiate with the supplier. Where the owner of the company lies on that spectrum is unclear and ever changing, and is as predictable as which way the wind will blow from one day to the next. -Nobody in the Product Management department is actually familiar with cars or working on them. As a result, many growth opportunities are overlooked. -The owner of the company has countless philosophical arguments that limit the growth of the company. -They are a non-essential company that is exploiting the vagueness of what constitutes an “essential business” during the Covid-19 crisis. Nobody is allowed to work from home. -Writing a Glassdoor review for RockAuto is the closest you will come to having an HR department to air grievances to while working at RockAuto (seriously, there is no HR department).