There's a good amount of secondhand bitterness I'm sensing here.
I understand letting interns go before their end date is not common practice and reflects poorly on the company's hr as well as strategic planning. But this is one intern of one division that ran out of money.
You can focus on that one intern's experience to give you an idea of what it might be like for the rest of us, 50,000+ who work or have worked here. But to get a more complete picture of how 3M regards their employees, consider how they were one of the last major companies to replace pensions with 401ks. Think about how many layoffs they avoided in 2009 by offering 3,600 employees early retirement buyouts -what we MMM readers would regard as an absolute fantasy.
I'm not drinking any corporate kool-aid here. It can be a bit of a beige cubicle jungle at times. To answer your question MayDay, I'm an analyst working in packaging and it took me 2 years as a contractor before 3M hired me on full time. Some complain and call them stingy or whatever, but I think they take hiring seriously because they take layoffs seriously. Employees get great benefits and they don't want to lay you off. I've worked with over a dozen different managers in different ways, and their leadership qualities are the best I've come across. As far as I can tell, 3M still is a great company to work for. I'm all about sticking it to the man and everything, but let's not stick it to the straw man here.
