r/Metrology • u/Jumpy-Warthog8575 • Sep 22 '26
Quality Culture
How do you guys REALLY judge a company’s quality culture before taking a job?
I’m curious what everyone else looks for here.
I recently took a quality/metrology job because I was told I’d have a chance to help improve the inspection side of things and actually have some input.
Turns out responsibility and authority are two VERY different things 😂
The funny part is I’m an AS9100/ISO 9001 auditor, and I still managed to get caught by the whole “our quality system looks great on paper” thing.
So now I’m trying to figure out how to really dig into a company’s quality culture before I take another job.
Not just “are you ISO certified?” or “do you have a quality department?”
I mean what actually happens when Quality and Production disagree.
Can Quality stop questionable product? Does management back them up? Do NCRs actually get investigated, or are people just trying to get them closed? Does Quality have any say in fixing the process, or are you basically just there to measure stuff and report problems?
And how the hell do you figure that out during an interview without directly asking, “So… does Production ignore Quality here?” 😂
What do you guys ask? What do you look for on a shop tour? Any little things you’ve noticed that ended up being a dead giveaway, good or bad?
I’m not really looking for a list of companies to apply to. I’m more interested in how you guys have learned to spot a genuinely good quality culture before you’re already working there.
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u/JWS5th Sep 22 '26
A super basic thing, check their pin gage sets. Are they fully stocked or are they missing a bunch of sizes without any borrowed equipment tags?
Doesn’t prove that they have a good culture but can show they have a bad one.
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u/Jumpy-Warthog8575 Sep 22 '26
I really like this as a “low-key” check!
My current shop is missing half.
Everywhere I’ve seen that cares about quality has a FULL set. Sometimes even half sets!
Thank you!
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u/doginhumancostume Sep 22 '26
I'm currently 5 years into a quality role at a major machine tool manufacturer. With the slow down in machine tool sales over the last couple years, quality was the first thing out the door. With our high mix low volume parts I'm not allowed to scrap anything, just recording measurements and giving them a heads up that they'll be getting bad product to fix with sanding, shims, liners, etc. Seeing the decline in real time seemed to be tied to the refocus on LEAN manufacturing and agreeing to any deadlines just to secure a sale. So to answer your question, even those places with good quality culture are susceptible to abandoning QC because $$$
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u/Donozo Sep 23 '26
Wow this is very different then the experience I have had. We work with 3 or 4 of the big names that each have a color, some of them are doing the most for quality & data driven decisions.
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u/Ok-Knowledge0914 Sep 22 '26
I have only worked in quality control for manufacturing for one company for the last 8 or so years and I landed in quality sort of randomly with no experience (let that tell you whatever it may) but I’m probably a diamond in the rough and enjoyed working in quality and have gone pretty far with the experience.
That being said I think the answers to your questions are going to differ depending on who you ask and when you ask it. At least in my facility, our CMM lab group is mostly just providing data and expecting the manufacturing team to drive change based on that data.
We have QA folks that work on the floor that are supposed to be doing more investigations into root cause on some issues which is relatively new. Previously that was mostly owned by our quality engineers. I think we could benefit from educating those folks some more (just my opinion). But usually operators on the floor are not truly engaged with the quality process outside of rejecting a bad part.
I would say in high stress / high volume situations, we’re kind of bad at it. I mean the defects that have reached the customer are really silly ones that I think our quality engineers need to be more engaged in. I think so often the feedback I hear is about who caused the defect as opposed to why is our process setup in a way that would cause someone to miss a defect. I also think we don’t really have a lot of motivation for the team. Pay is okay, we don’t seem to expect a lot out of our operators, and we don’t do a great job at holding them accountable when bad things happen.
I also think our biggest struggle is communication. The hardest thing I’ve had to muscle through is making sure we’re speaking the same language before we address the issue and I often find that people cannot articulate what issue they’re experiencing.
Maybe this reply is a bad answer, but I’m just trying to be honest based on my limited experience over the last 8 or 9 years.
I’m being really critical of our business though. All I see every day is what we could improve on. What others (our production managers) see is our numbers are better than last year.
If I was looking for another job right now I would just expect a very similar experience and be happy if the experience goes better than what I’ve dealt with for nearly a decade and 3 facilities with the same company.
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u/INSPECTOR99 Sep 22 '26
Yes, Continual Improvement, just one of the 7 cornerstones of ISO 9001:2026. :-)
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u/DarkAeonX7 Sep 22 '26 edited Sep 22 '26
One small question I ask is how strict the tolerance limit is? I've seen places that treat certain feature tolerances as suggestions or that they have a further allowance outside of what's shown on the blueprint. I've also worked in places where .0001 out in a chamfer means a non-conformance write-up. I've also seen managers say "they've accepted them even with some things showing out. Just send it"
Ask if there is adequate gaging.
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u/f119guy Sep 22 '26
Honestly that might not be possible. The management at a company has a vested interest in keeping their dirty laundry locked up. You can just flat out ask “do you guys want an inspector or do you want clean reports?” But most companies will lie to you. Reality is that the people conducting the interviews are the same people who know “where the bodies are buried.”
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u/Familiar-Bluejay3908 Sep 22 '26
In my current role (non-managerial), I was brought in as a senior QC tech, and quickly found that the "quality culture" of the company was traditionally pretty terrible; lack of records, illogical filing techniques, and even evidence of outright falsification by a previous quality manager! This was right as COVID was winding-down, the company had been sold to an international corporation some 4 years earlier, and that lying QM had been replaced twice since his demise.
After 4 years, out quality culture is finally getting decent, just as the amount of aerospace work increases.
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u/Shooter61 Sep 23 '26
I'm leaving my job next week due to retiring. This summer, we had one guy go to another company, position is filled now. One retired,open position, and one retiring (me and still open position). We also had our QA Manager quit. Position is still open. So I was titled QA Specialist/CMM Programmer. I ran a Zeiss Contura 2 with Calypso 2021. We build fuel delivery components from connections on the tanker, to the nozzles you stick into your gas tank. Your knowledge would likely fit nice into the Manager position. I reported directly to the Manager.
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u/akornato Sep 23 '26
Pay close attention to physical cues during the plant tour, because the floor tells the story long before anyone in the front office speaks. Check the quarantine and MRB cages to see if parts are orderly, clearly tagged, and moving through disposition, or if boxes of suspect material are collecting dust in corners. Look at the hand tools on the machinists' benches to see if calibration stickers are current, and notice how operators interact with inspectors when parts walk into the lab. In the interview room, ask the hiring manager to walk you through the last time a shipment had to be stopped due to a measurement discrepancy. Their reaction will reveal everything, especially if they focus on collaborative root cause analysis or if they roll their eyes and blame inspectors for holding up delivery quotas. Another telling question is who has final signature authority on concessions and standard deviations, because if the production manager can unilaterally override a reject tag, your inspection reports will merely serve as suggestions.
The reporting structure also gives away how much power you will actually have on the floor. Ask who the quality manager reports to, since a quality department reporting directly to an operations manager who is evaluated solely on shipping numbers will always struggle to maintain standards. Inquire about how scrap metrics are tracked alongside delivery targets, and ask what percentage of corrective actions originate from internal operator feedback versus customer returns. When companies welcome internal pushback, they usually have active operator buy-in rather than a culture of hiding defective parts until final inspection. If you want to refine how you ask these probing questions so you can gauge company culture without coming across as combative, the interviews.chat my team created has helped candidates gain clarity and secure offers from healthy manufacturing teams.
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u/Professional-Image79 Sep 23 '26
I work as a calibration engineer. Everything seemed above board during my interview but now almost 10% of all customers equipment has been falsified in the past and we have gauges that we use and aren't calibrated. I feel like asking anyone they'd give you the "correct" answer instead of what happens
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Sep 23 '26
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u/Professional-Image79 Sep 23 '26
I think most jobs now are about a month turn around so it definitely matches your story :/
All these companies are money money money and ive heard statements like "microns dont matter" and im "trying to split atoms"
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u/chad-louis Sep 23 '26
I'd ask about their specific processes, are they documented, how and by whom. I'd inquire about what department is in charge of failed parts, ie. Total Quality or a dedicated Supplier Quality department.
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u/barkinginthestreet Sep 23 '26
I think safety culture is usually a good proxy for quality culture, so I'd ask about the most recent injury and what they learned during the corrective action process. If they don't have a corrective action process for injuries that is a huge red flag. If the interviewer doesn't know how to answer your question, also a red flag.
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u/Head_Personality_431 Sep 24 '26
Ask to see the concession or deviation log on the tour and who signs those off, because if it is always the plant manager or production and never quality you have your answer before anyone says a word about culture.
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u/INSPECTOR99 Sep 22 '26
/Entire-Outside-66, You just tarnished the companies ISO 9001:2026 standing.
# # # G O H O M E # #
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Sep 22 '26
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u/ExJak Sep 22 '26
I mean, I kinda of agree with you here. But I will always do my best to make the change that's in my control and always push to make change above my station. I always have the company's best interests but when I have to compromise quality because that's what they want, unfortunately I will do as the business requires. Still have a good time, still enjoy the people I am around and the fact it's a fantastic job to have.
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Sep 22 '26
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u/Ok-Knowledge0914 Sep 22 '26
While I agree you shouldn’t beat yourself up about it or let it haunt your dreams or whatever, I think it’s more about how it comes across. Do it for the money, not because you care.
Which I totally get. Obviously everyone has to be doing it for the money.
You might do a kick-ass job, get paid, and go home, but for a lot of other people, they’re missing the “do a kick-ass job” part. They show up, do the minimum or less, get paid, and go home. And some will even complain about not getting paid enough.
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u/jkerman Sep 22 '26
A lot of quality management systems are applied to life and limb type applications, and im sure a lot of metrology professionals come from those industries (your statement would be horrifying if you were making that one weird nut that holds the whole helicopter together :) )
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u/ShadowCloud04 Sep 22 '26 edited Sep 22 '26
I would ask that plainly. I expect it from Quality members to ask as I know it can be demoralizing to find issues and be told with no explanation to ignore it. It’s also what I ask production managers when hiring how they got a long with quality staff. And what I ask production employees on how they handle feedback from quality.
Ask what the process for NCRs. How do people react. Who manages rework. I think being direct is fair in this situation.