Job Description
Daily Job Function / Overview: The contract manufacturing industry is very grueling. Being a program manager comes with a lot of responsibility with little or no appreciation. Your customers will always be demanding and your internal supporting departments will often find ways to let you down. Your job as a program manager is to figure out the best way to manage these internal supporting department let-downs while making your customers happy. What is required out of every program manager largely depends on how demanding your customers are.
Pros
1) Variation: Everyday is a new day. Not one day is the same. You could be working with purchasing one day to make sure parts are coming in to fulfill an order, or working with engineers to discuss change orders, or maybe work with accounting on how to resolve past due items. If you like repetition or the same standard process to follow every day, week, or month, then this is not the job for you.
2) Like owning your own business: You are given certain customers to manage and you will follow their product from start to finish.
3) Huge responsibility & management: This position requires you to be the glue across all internal depts. such as: document control, purchasing, engineering, production, shipping, A/R, etc.
4) People interaction: This is a position that requires constant communication between all internal depts. as well as the customer
5) Multi-tasking: This is a position that requires you to wear many hats and to juggle many different responsibilities at a time. Often you will have to manage multiple customers and demands from all depts. and customers at the same time.
Cons
1) Stressful: What comes with multitasking, big responsibility, and customer demands, certainly comes stress. This is definitely a high stress job but it also depends on how demanding your customers are and how competent your supporting depts. are.
2) Chaotic: Contract Manufacturing is a grueling business. Everything and anything can change from 1 minute to the next. For example: Shipping can tell you that the order is going to ship in 10 minutes, but 10 minutes later, all of the shipping trucks are out for delivery and can’t won’t be back in 30 minutes. It sounds ridiculous but this has happened to me before.
3) Long hours: Due to the large responsibility and dynamic environment, long hours are very common.
4) Pay: For having so much responsibility, the pay is not worth the amount of work.
Company Size
1000-10,000 employees
Pay Range
$60,001-$70,000
Years in Job
3
Education
B.A.
City
Sunnyvale
State
CA
