I’ve worked for John Deere for 15 years. I started in 2001 as an Intern working part time in what was basically John Deere’s network operations center. At John Deere I’ve witnessed seen the IT landscape evolve around me while John Deere more coped with the changes around it rather then evolve itself.

Reason For Leaving 1: Low Employee Engagement

During my career at John Deere I believe I’ve seen a steady decline in employee engagement. More than 50% of the employee’s who’s skills and abilities that have impressed me the most have left John Deere:

• Scott - Still at Deere
• Charles - Still at Deere
• Monte - Unknown
• Ryan - Left
• Bill - Still at Deere
• Zach - Left
• Ryan - Left
• Tom - Still at Deere
• Aaron - Left
• Nelson - Left
• Jason - Left
• Mike - Still at Deere
• Travis - Still at Deere

Sadly I would say at most 30% of John Deere employee’s are “Engaged”. That is they put in a strong effort to achieve their employer’s goals. I would say the next 50% see John Deere merely as a Job and put in no more effort then required to not be fired. The remaining 20% are actively avoiding doing work. These numbers are typical for a large US employer based off Gallop research.

Bottom Line: John Deere is not an engaging place to work because most of the people you work with are not interested in working.

Reason For Leaving 2: Mismatch of interests

John Deere’s primiary bussiness is making machines and selling them to Dealerships who sell them to customers. My primary skill is making computers do useful work for people.

When computers were more specialized and harder to operate it was critcal for John Deere to maintain staff that could make the magic boxes work. This is good for people such as myself who essisially took jobs as computer maintance people ensuring their operations and usablity.

Overtime the computers have become critical to the function of the company - the computers must work for the tractors to get made and transfered to dealers. But John Deere feels that the operation of computers is a generic skill best handled by a specialist companies rather then internal employees. I sympthise with this approach althought I dont’ fully agree with it. Deere’s primary skills are around logistics, machine assembly and brand management, not Computer Operations.

Bottom Line: If you want to do technical work on computers you likely should not work for John Deere in the future.

Reason For Leaving 3: Career Growth

I actually believe I could go quite high at John Deere. Merely by being an engaged employee of moderate intelligence I could work the political rungs of the company and achive Director of VP of IT by my mid forties. My income would be quite excellent for my area, easily >$250,000 annually. However doing this would require me move from the business of working with computers and IT services which I enjoy and retooling myself as 65% politican and 35% expert in the business of Green Tractors. I’m not ready to commit to that yet, computers are too interesting.

Right now my career goal is to get involved in operations of a large public internet properity. I want to be able to say you know this big website? I’m responsible for making sure it works.

Bottom Line: If you want to work on computers in interesting ways, work for a computer company.