ProBuild Employer Reviews

ProBuild is a solid company that offers growth and opportunity for indviduals.

If you are an underacheiver and desire to work for a company that strives to achieve mediocrity, this is your company. Sr. Management is disconnected, middle management lacks competency, and the employees suffer. If you want a place to simply punch the clock and collect a check get in line becuase you will not feel appreciated.

Typical day starts at 0600, and you work until the day is done. You have no idea how long that might be. You have no input as to what goes where or how long you'll be working. Typically, if every single item on your truck "can" be handled by one person, they only send one person - YOU. As soon as there is ONE item loaded that "may" require two sets – more... of hands, you get a helper. The people loading the trucks are loading at dock height, with the assistance of equipment - on the jobsites, it's YOU, down a ramp, with no help.
It's like the Family that owns it read a book on how to engage in "such and so" business, and then set out to acquire other companies that were engaged in "that" business. It doesn't matter if those other companies were doing something "right". If it disagreed with or conflicted with the preconceived notion of how "they" thought it should be done, you did it "their" way.
There was NO training offered to me in receiving, storing, break-down of packs, assembly of packs, product/code numbers, paperwork, etc.
Line employees are given no training on parts/profiles if that info isn't required for their job description. Employees are not given ANY computer training to double-check or verify information. I was told repeatedly that "Before anything goes on the truck, we call the customer two days prior to set the delivery day." I lost rack of the number of times I would call a customer to confirm delivery, only to be told, "This is the first I've heard of it..."

Management advanced through politics, marriage, and nepotism, NOT skill, knowledge, or ability.
Most of my co-workers were "English as a Second Language" types who "duck and cover". They put up with every illogical, irrational, and just plain stupid, work demand placed on them.
Hardest part of the job was never knowing from one day to the next, or even, one moment to the next, where you were going or what you were doing. Dispatcher DEMANDED strict observance of his load logs and scheduling. He was NEVER a driver. He was moved into that position from sales. I lost track of the number of days and stupid "double-back" trips because of the way he set up deliveries.

YES... it's important to take care of your customers; it's also important to take care of your employees.

After having worked over four years in the Door & Window industry, and having worked for ProBuild for just over ten months, I can honestly say, I would rather be unemployed and doing nothing than to be dealing with their nonsense. – less

A typical day at work is constant work flow, busy atmosphere with lots of pressure. I learned to be flexible and to be assertive. Management is difficult to deal with, they never give good feedback and ratings are always late or left completely out. My co-workers are hard-working and try very hard to meet the hectic schedules. The hardest part of the – more... job is keeping up with the workload when you are pulled in several directions at once; and putting up with management turning a deaf ear to any concerns. The most enjoyable part of the job is the co-workers. We all respect each other and try and work together and support each other. – less

great place to work. Very good managers. only down fall was being laid off due the economy and home building industry

I've been employed 14 years and have to say that's 14 years I will never get back. The first ten were good but when ProBuild took over it went to heck. Every thing is micro managed, and the management don't care about there employees its all about the bottom line, haven't had a raise in three years thought this year would be better was told for six – more... months that we had a great chance for a raise but when the time came it was NO. The bonus program has gone to extinct haven't seen one in years any and all insintives to work there are gone and were still expected to kill our selfs on a daily basis. I highly recommend not working for this company – less

I've been a loadbuilder/driver/yardworker for almost 7 years, 3 job titles at the same time, you'll review yearly with high marks for performance but wont advance, just asked to take on more responsibility, overall its not just Probuild, the lumber industry as a whole is a poor long term career choice in my opinion

a typical day at work would would include building and preparing trusses for holmes to be shipped

Extremely busy, multi-tasking, moved up in positions in my 10 years there, management was good. Co-workers were great.

Weekly schedule began every morning at 8:00AM with full day job duties for my employees. I maintained my Field Operations, Safety, Loss Prevention, Inventory Control and Customer Service. Management could have had more retail business experience.
Coming into the work place on a daily basis was very productive because I had a chance to work with some – more... very knowledgeable, fun, happy, and hardworking co-workers. I have to say the hardest part of my job was dealing with other stores where the staff was a lot different than our location. I enjoyed the employees always working together and their ability to give their ideas of how our store can be better. – less

Working for this company was challenging and enjoyable. Getting to work face to face with contractors and homeowners forces you to be versatile in all areas of sales.

I work at one of the companies probuild bought and it was a much better place to work at before it was bought, it used to feel like a family and now it feels like all they care about is their own bottom line. I haven't had a raise in over 3 years, in fact I had a 10% pay cut and 20% increase in what I pay for medical with a worse medical plan. We had – more... out hours cut about 3 years ago and have not got them back. The branch manager we have will put any thing damaged or we get credit for from the vendor out front of our store and it looks like we are constantly having a yard sale with bad and damaged items. They constantly tell us to get more done with less hours and pay and being under manned. This company is going downhill fast, we used to be about customer service but now it all about making money and I talk to the customers and a lot of them would rather go to home depot for lower prices and bad customer service than come to our store and get bad customer service now and pay higher prices. I don't blame them. – less

If you have a life I suggest other oppurtunities I get there at 6 am and a normal day I physically work 12 hours a day with a 20 minute lunch the people that work there are lazy and can not come to work on time or at all

While to company is going through many changes, middle management are good managers. They push you to do better.

I have worked at ProBuild twice in my working career, I have made lasting friends and associates through ProBuild.

*execute sales, quotes to meet customer needs
*colloaborate with vendors / customer to provide creative solutions to capture and grow sales

Top shelve company with quality people. Excellent in training,
benefits, and compensation. Enjoyed working directly with
company's customers. Learned a lot about computer programs
and commercial sales / marketing.

A typical day at work was always busy due to being in the housing industry. I learned a lot about data entry and the construction business.

A typical day at work is fast moving, which is nice. We support a lot of older hardware, with AIX, Linux, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, a lot of these servers are between 9 and 11 years old so verifying backups, checking status of fans, hard drives, sysplanar boards, RAM failures, battery backups are done in the morning. This takes about – more... an hour to an hour and half to go through this equipment list since there are about 140 servers in the field.

I have learned a lot about AIX and Linux and how it ties in with our serial equipment. We have a lot of locations running Port Server II 16's which connect our serial devices in stores to an HP or IBM tower in one of our data centers elsewhere. Troubleshooting this equipment has been quite fun because it's something not a lot of people know about and it uses old UNIX commands. I have also programmed PSC Falcon 320 scanners for our inventory equipment using the Falcon Flash Configuration Utility and UPG 2.51 to put our software on these scanners. The scanners use old DOS commands, so navigating around these reminds me of the days of Windows 3.1.1 a bit.

I am really project oriented and I get along great with the management. I have had several managers over the course of four years I have been with the company and every manager I have gotten along great with, and they have liked me. The one characteristic I think the managers and I have liked has been the "go-gettem" attitude I have. I believe this is why when there is a challenging project that needs to get done in a timely manner management looks to me.

My co-workers are friendly and they always have a smile on their faces. They have a great knack for welcoming people in the morning, and coming back from lunch. They have a real enthusiasm for helping those around them and reaching out to people in our field locations to get their equipment up and running.

I would say the hardest part of the job for me has been having to many irons in the fire. There are a lot of projects that need to get taken care of, for instance I may be walking someone in one of our field office locations on replacing a hard drive in a server when another server goes down in the field, or someone comes up and needs seven inventory scanners up and running when I am converting a store over from having a server in their office to working on a Port Server II 16 that is coming into one of our data centers. We used to have a team for handling these types of situations, but now we do not. The diamond in the rough here is the day goes by fast, and I figure out better ways to prioritize the critical situations.

The most enjoyable part of my job is the satisfaction in stepping out of work at the end of the day, stretching out my arms, and thinking about what a great accomplishment it was to finish one of the projects I was working on. I also like to reflect on how far I got on other projects and where I want to get the next day. I enjoy working on servers and their applications, but I also like the fact that I can go and work on the same hardware in my server room and build labs for complicated situations in the field. The flexibility of this part of my job is great. – less

I worked for a company for almost 10 years before Probuild took over. After switching over to Probuild the benefits were better, but the cut-backs and lay-offs began to get ridiculous. I worked 4 years without any kind of raise, yet was burdened with more workload as more and more positions were eliminated and put on my plate. Employees began to feel – more... like only a number, no longer an employee and you never knew when your number was up. I watched people being laid off, then rehired when sales would get better, only to see them let go two months later when they would trail off again. Most of this was not fully at the fault of the store management. I had to watch my store manager fight every month to justify every position and cut back payroll in efforts to keep what few employees were left. If you need a job, they have great benefits, but know that you are only a number in the corporate eyes, and if the store does not make their sales numbers that they want them to, they will force them to cut people. – less