Vantaggi
The benefits and work-life balance were great. Some of the people I had the pleasure to work with and manage were fantastic.
Svantaggi
Where do I begin? Grainger is so slow to adapt and change it's painful, especially in ecommerce. "Holistic, Agile, Lean,..." all words thrown around to make it sound like the leaders know what they're doing. The thought process from leadership is the equivalent of having your car side-swiped front to back and thinking that changing the door handle will fix it right. The company can't grasp any change of significance and instead foolishly focuses on making things pop and changing a color. Politics... oh the politics. The philosopher Plato said, "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." How true. There is so much wrangling and maneuvering going on it can make your head spin. Wins are celebrated individually because for many people at Grainger, gaining promotion is the only importance. It creates competition between individuals, and misalignment between the team's objectives and those individuals within it. Wins are rarely - if ever - shared by teams and it's common for managers to exclude other managers within their own division to push forward secret projects, many of which contradict and undermine work already in progress. If you want to do meaningless commerce work while stepping on those around and beneath you to get a promotion, good for you, Grainger will be perfect. That is, if you can deal with 2-3 reorganizations every year and multiple rounds of layoffs.