Pros
There are several reasons to work for Cummins. First, Cummins is competitive with its starting salaries and hiring bonuses which tends to attract highly intelligent and talented individuals. Another reason to work for Cummins is that it's a global company with opportunities for not only international travel but expatriate assignments as well especially in countries such as England, India, and China. In addition, Cummins has an excellent tuition reimbursement policy, well-defined profit sharing plan, and offers subsidies to its employees for safety shoes, improving and/or maintaining your health, and even uniforms including laundering. Finally, over the past 10 years Cummins has gone from a company having a bond rating of "junk", market value of less tha $1B and on the verge of a hostile take over by it's competitors, to a Company that has more than doubled it's revenues and tripled it's stock value which was accomplished by focusing on it's core business of designing and manufacturing engines and acquiring companies to secure key technologies such as emissions solutions and turbo chargers which allowed it to be the first to market with emissions- and performance- compliant products.
Cons
There are three reasons one should think twice before working at Cummins...forced ranking, forced ranking, and forced ranking...did I mention forced ranking? After 10 years of working at Cummins all the downsides I've observed and experienced can be traced back to the forced ranking (known also as "rank-n-yank") which is a performance management practice that originated from Jack Welch and GE and requires all employees to be ranked a 1 (best), 2 (average), or 3 (below average) against their peers with a with a forced distribution of 20%-70%-10% (1-2-3) where those getting ranked a 1 will receive a merit increase and inflation adjustment in pay, those ranked a 2 will receive a pay adjustment for inflation, and those ranked a 3 will receive no pay increase and are placed on a recovery plan with a set time limit. From my understanding and discussions with various employees in management and human resources, of the 10% ranked a 3, anywhere from 25% to 100% will be terminated each year depending on the company's performance at the time. In addition, anyone ranked a 3 will find it extremely difficult to change positions within the company since they are typically required to get out from behind the "3 ball" prior to moving to a new job role but if ranked a 3 two years in a row results in immediate termination which creates somewhat of a "catch 22" situation. I may sound biased against the forced ranking performance management process but do believe there is a time and place for it in order to trim the fat and re-establish an efficient and productive work force but that time at Cummins was in the 1999-2001 time frame. Even Jack Welch stated that after three years of forced ranking the performance management process becomes a "war" in which management battles to keep their productive employees out from behind the "3 ball" and at the same time has to scramble to find their quota of "sacrificial lambs" to offer to the gods of human resources. So what is the end result of 10 yrs of forced ranking at Cummins? If I had to sum it up in one sentence (which you can see is very difficult to do since long term implementation of a forced ranking is not only unethical and sadistic but violates national labor laws of virtually every European nation), I would say that long-term implementation of a forced ranking performance management system has destroyed any synergy that Cummins ever had and will prevent the reformation of synergy until the immoral practice is abolished and used only as a last resort. Since synergy is a state in which the output of the whole exceeds the output of the individual components and a forced ranking performance management system results in every employee looking out for him or herself, it's only natural that synergy will be destroyed and any effort to establish synergy, such as Team Based Work Systems, will be doomed from the moment of conception. I could continue rambling on about this matter, possibly indefinitely, but there's plenty of information on the internet about this topic and the long-term negative effects it has on companies and its employees. For those reading this that have fallen victim to the forced ranking and were either terminated or are on the verge of being terminated, try not to take it personally and let it damage your self esteem. What right does someone have to judge you when they most likely have never worked with you and may not even know your name or face. For those of you reading this that are considering employment with Cummins, you might consider doing some more research on the topic of forced ranking and discuss it with human resources during the interview process so that you know exactly what you're getting yourself into, especially those of you who may be considering uprooting your entire family to go work for a company where your job is on the line every year regardless of your or the company's performance. For those of you that are reading this and have recently started working at Cummins... welcome to Cummins.