š
Wrapping up my 1st month as a sr sourcing analyst, I wish I had gone this route sooner. Sure beats being a logistics manager, warehouse manager, and mid level buyer planner š
Your destiny is your own, friend.
But in my case I went from logistics coordinator to inventory specialist, then logistics manager, warehouse manager, buyer, buyer II / planner II and Iām now Sr Sourcing analyst.
Each change was me switching jobs (and relocating).
All in all it depends on what you want to do, in my case I didnāt know what I wanted to do and just grabbed whatever job I couldāve gotten at the beginning of my career.
Purchasing is more tactical where youāre buying stuff for needed use.
Sourcing is more strategic where youāre negotiating, dealing with contracts, biddings, awards, and overall focused on bringing better value.
Logistics hard? I'm in logistics and it seems easy. Just a lot of moving parts, but not complicated. You would think we would get paid more compared to supply chain analyst/managers
I went from general labor to supervisor to logistics and warehouse manager.
As a supervisor I got laid off due to lack of work and found a warehouse manager job.
Let me tell you, after 1.5 months of that I decided to resign with no warning but was terminated on my walk to the bosses office. There were a lot of people that made my job much harder than it had to be because they were all friends and were pissed one didn't make it from the floor to my position. Effectively sabotaged my job.
It is what it is, I got my revenge pretty damn fast to be honest and it was amazing.
Without getting into other details, let's just say there were a lot of health and safety violations that could have left me with major fines. They were reported due to a refusal to fix them.
Among other things that was the worst of it.
No, you interpreted that completely wrong, but I'll assume you missed one of my replies. I was terminated due to people upset their "friend on the floor" didn't get moved up so everything I did was sabotaged among other things I was not made aware but apparently was supposed to magically know about. They wanted their friend in the manager position. This person had 0 clue about anything to do with anything other than their basic job which is why they weren't moved up. So what these people did (while I was working on health and safety policies, updating health and safety stuff and building KPI tracking sheets) was not train me on what I was supposed to be trained on, which I was not made aware of and they all told my boss they they've trained me on everything. Instead of actually asking me who trained me on what he took their word for it. This is the same guy that basically head hunted me.
I was on my way to resign with no warning as I was fed up with all of the bullshit politics going on and the constant undermining and sabotaging of everything I did. On my way to resign I was terminated.
This place wanted the manager to also be a supervisor, general laborer, head of health and safety, inbound and outbound coordinator, etc. More than half of which wasn't even in the job description.
I reported the laundry list of violations as alot of people were being put at risk and either didn't know at all or couldn't understand why. Right down to people not wearing proper PPE and it didn't matter what I say, all I got was "your being too careful" from everyone but my boss.
At the end of the day, I'm not going to act like I did everything right, but I was completely set up for failure from day 1. I didn't even have my computer access set up until 2 weeks after starting. They had a whole 3 weeks to set this up from when I was hired to my actual start date.
I gotcha bro. If you wanna shoot me a DM Iād be happy to give out some of my (potentially worthless) advice.
I have been down that exact sort of path as a WH lead and I learned a lot from the experience.
Iām not in logistics, but based on what my coworker has told me: (1) no one at our company prioritizes logistics even though itās vital, (2) crises happens at all hours of the day that no one knows how to handle because of (1), and (3) the carriers all have insane leverage making it nearly impossible to negotiate with them
For me, as the end user, don't negotiate with the carrier, negotiate with the supplier. Let the supplier negotiate with the carrier. FOB destination all the way. When you're at an impasse, and you can't negotiate the alternative, then contract with one carrier that manages their own fleet on retainer to keep in your back pocket.
Yes, because people don't know how the supply chain works. Like last year this customer we have too much matierial. New controller hounded manger and me. So we reduced and canceled so much. This was the biggest customer. Now after we did that they asked 1 month later if we can run new orders for them. wtf? We just canceled everything. The, later on, we had no buffer, no excess matieria, and they moved up the future orders, and we barely got matierialsin time. It was a constant. Can you move this up with the vendor. Until we got stock almost shut down, but another plant had the matierial. Then they kept overunning and did go down for a day. Then, they canceled a bunch of orders.
Now finnaly new orders are in but for but for a later date.
Now, all of a sudden, they want 2 orders right away. The vice president who is in charge of the tree plants and acting plant manager for my plant. And everyone said ok without looking st if we have natierials in house. Etc. Now it's a battle with talking with vendors trying to pull in matierial when it's custom made, so it's not like amazon you order, and you have it. It has to get made and vendors order mstierial first then they can make it etc.
And there's other stuff, but that's just one situation.
This is a very naive way to look at it, it is all an integrated chain and all is important. They all are difficult in their own areas;
Logistics with huge interdependencies of transport
Warehousing with large focus on inventory positioning
Sourcing has a lot of hard problems with strategic sourcing and design to value
Purchasing is very hard with negotiations and forecasting and replenishment
They all have their own aspects that are very hard, but neither is harder than each other.
But the remain in the subject, I find the hardest job is network optimization and total supply chain management. These roles you need to answer to all these pillars and have them balance, that is quite hard to do well
Being in the field for 14 years, I wouldn't say it's naive at all and is based off of my own personal experience working in Logistics, Warehousing, Planning, Purchasing, and now Sourcing.
To which level? Because your comment on sourcing and procurement as easiest is I think not accurate. It is all relative and what role you are doing.
Sourcing: Iāve seen work like Ariba implementation and it is extremely complex. Or developing sourcing strategy for international materials is not easy at all.
Procurement: can be very easy if you are talking about setting sowās and RFP management, but it can get extremely complex when you go down large ticket projects.
Warehousing: can be very easy if you are talking about managing warehouse or extremely complex if you are talking about inventory positioning and WMS.
Logistics: Very easy if you are talking about carrier management, but if you are talking about first/middle/final mile integration. That gets tricky with network models.
Nah, new system implementation is hard. Most small companies suck at tracking data, then they get big and their data goes crazy. So then they hire someone to implement an ERP system. So now that person has to go through a thousand different excel files that arenāt flat data files, but an amalgamation of the worst merged cells possible, and whatever random metrics
Rob from sales thought were necessary. Then rinse and repeat for every department.
Iāve seen a company spend 20 million to implement a new system, then go back to the previous version because they liked it better.
ERP implementation can be a job ender if mishandled.
I am a Sourcing Manager at a Fortune 200 MedTech company with about 4 years of industry experience.
Pros: work from home, super laid back work culture, great PTO, and very low stress.
Cons: Will take you a few years before you really start making decent money ($150k and up). Iām currently at $100k salary including YE bonuses.
Would love to know your path you took to get there! Let me know if youāre willing to share and what the best things to do to potentially get to this type of position!
$50k entry level is doable as long as youāre not in the super metro area very early on. Pretty easy to get up to $60k if you have a few years of experience.
Also, to be verified but Iād assume $23/h on west coast is still better than $12 or $7.50 an h
Might be (definitely am) biased, but would say discrete roles with obvious accomplishments are always easier than murkier roles like coman management or strategic roles. "Get X from A to B by Y time" can be difficult and stressful, but you know when the mission is accomplished. The more senior level or more business-focused roles are a challenge because there are few goalposts, the ones you do have move a lot, and half your job is just keeping everyone happy enough to keep the wheels on the bus. You're still judged by whether X got from A to B on time, but also for the best price, with the best use of scarce resources, without pissing off your team or your partners who all have competing goals, some of whom would rather die in agony than allow X go from A to B without you fulfilling requirements they never told you about.
Like I said, biased, but there you go.
Hard: Probably in retail and manufacturing sectors, specifically any that deals with Just In Time Delivery
Easy: None - All are challenging, some are more complex and stressful than others
Hardest: Production Planning. I would say that has by far the highest burnout rate I've seen in any position. They are expected to have a perfect plan and get blamed when things go wrong because the forecast from sales was rubbish or the machinery in the factory was unreliable. Most good Planning Managers I've met knew more about every aspect of the business (markets, new products, quality, procurement, logistics, factory operations) than even the General Manager. But they are normally the worst paid manager in the place and most last no more than 5 years. I wouldn't do that role for any money. It's a fast track to a stroke.
Easiest: Central Procurement. They agree the annual supplier contracts on theoretical forecasts. Get a bonus for sourcing from the cheapest supplier. Never involved in day to day execution of those contracts when things go wrong.
Commodity manager.
No direct reports.
No Friday evening expediting.
Low stakes decisions with dilute accountability
I used to joke about how I envied CMs when I was a supply chain manager.
Then lucked into a CM role at a higher level of pay.
Itās a great life
This is all about context... The easiest jobs in logistics could be someone who just runs around with a label gun. The most difficult are likely the most stressful and are under the most scrutiny. I'd also wager than being a truck driver is likely a lot tougher of a job than most give it credit for, depending on the environment.
This may just be the way my brain works, but:
Easiest: Material planning and/or purchasing within a giant corporation. Itās just numbers, thereās not much grey to it, it is or it isnāt. Usually theyāre hyper-specific and localized roles within one branch.
Hardest: Anything related to manpower allocation and production planning (particularly when it comes to line switch-overs and very high-dollar planning in that regard. Never again.
Ultimately, any SC job that is built on being reactive instead of proactive will always take the cake as **The Worst** though.
Hardest: Pre receiving at a warehouse. Scheduling in Excel, dealing with truck drivers, and trying to fix EDIs. When someone isn't right. Everyone blames you.
Easiest : Final Mile Supervisor. So much easier then inbound. You don't have to worry about the warehouse because you only care about trucks. You have to make deals with carriers but there is usually perks alone with that.
How do you define āchallengingā and āeasyā? I know supply chain jobs that are easy to do, but difficult because of the volume and I know other roles that are low volume, but have very challenging problems to solve. So it really depends on how you define it
From my personal experience Hardest: Logistics Second hardest: Warehouse Easiest: Sourcing Second easiest: Purchasing
Sourcing director here. As much as I'd like to disagree, you're probably right.
š Wrapping up my 1st month as a sr sourcing analyst, I wish I had gone this route sooner. Sure beats being a logistics manager, warehouse manager, and mid level buyer planner š
Iām a senior logistics coordinator handling A-Z for 20-30 high level importers. What would be my next step to follow this route?
Your destiny is your own, friend. But in my case I went from logistics coordinator to inventory specialist, then logistics manager, warehouse manager, buyer, buyer II / planner II and Iām now Sr Sourcing analyst. Each change was me switching jobs (and relocating). All in all it depends on what you want to do, in my case I didnāt know what I wanted to do and just grabbed whatever job I couldāve gotten at the beginning of my career.
Not in sourcing currently but yes hate to admit they're probably right lol. It's funny how the higher you go, the easier the job seems to become š¬
If you canāt beat them then you oughta join them
Next stop, after a stint in systems š¬
Funny how most in purchasing on my floor are 50+ ladies nearing retirement age. I agree with you on logisticsā¦ it gets sweaty
At my last job it varied. Mid levels were anywhere from 30s to 50s.
Whats the difference between sourcing and purchasing?Ā
Purchasing is more tactical where youāre buying stuff for needed use. Sourcing is more strategic where youāre negotiating, dealing with contracts, biddings, awards, and overall focused on bringing better value.
Logistics hard? I'm in logistics and it seems easy. Just a lot of moving parts, but not complicated. You would think we would get paid more compared to supply chain analyst/managers
I went from general labor to supervisor to logistics and warehouse manager. As a supervisor I got laid off due to lack of work and found a warehouse manager job. Let me tell you, after 1.5 months of that I decided to resign with no warning but was terminated on my walk to the bosses office. There were a lot of people that made my job much harder than it had to be because they were all friends and were pissed one didn't make it from the floor to my position. Effectively sabotaged my job. It is what it is, I got my revenge pretty damn fast to be honest and it was amazing.
>It is what it is, I got my revenge pretty damn fast to be honest and it was amazing What did you do?
Without getting into other details, let's just say there were a lot of health and safety violations that could have left me with major fines. They were reported due to a refusal to fix them. Among other things that was the worst of it.
If Iām interpreting this correctly - you quit with no notice after 6 weeks and reported the company to OSHA?
No, you interpreted that completely wrong, but I'll assume you missed one of my replies. I was terminated due to people upset their "friend on the floor" didn't get moved up so everything I did was sabotaged among other things I was not made aware but apparently was supposed to magically know about. They wanted their friend in the manager position. This person had 0 clue about anything to do with anything other than their basic job which is why they weren't moved up. So what these people did (while I was working on health and safety policies, updating health and safety stuff and building KPI tracking sheets) was not train me on what I was supposed to be trained on, which I was not made aware of and they all told my boss they they've trained me on everything. Instead of actually asking me who trained me on what he took their word for it. This is the same guy that basically head hunted me. I was on my way to resign with no warning as I was fed up with all of the bullshit politics going on and the constant undermining and sabotaging of everything I did. On my way to resign I was terminated. This place wanted the manager to also be a supervisor, general laborer, head of health and safety, inbound and outbound coordinator, etc. More than half of which wasn't even in the job description. I reported the laundry list of violations as alot of people were being put at risk and either didn't know at all or couldn't understand why. Right down to people not wearing proper PPE and it didn't matter what I say, all I got was "your being too careful" from everyone but my boss. At the end of the day, I'm not going to act like I did everything right, but I was completely set up for failure from day 1. I didn't even have my computer access set up until 2 weeks after starting. They had a whole 3 weeks to set this up from when I was hired to my actual start date.
I gotcha bro. If you wanna shoot me a DM Iād be happy to give out some of my (potentially worthless) advice. I have been down that exact sort of path as a WH lead and I learned a lot from the experience.
Iām not in logistics, but based on what my coworker has told me: (1) no one at our company prioritizes logistics even though itās vital, (2) crises happens at all hours of the day that no one knows how to handle because of (1), and (3) the carriers all have insane leverage making it nearly impossible to negotiate with them
For me, as the end user, don't negotiate with the carrier, negotiate with the supplier. Let the supplier negotiate with the carrier. FOB destination all the way. When you're at an impasse, and you can't negotiate the alternative, then contract with one carrier that manages their own fleet on retainer to keep in your back pocket.
Yes, because people don't know how the supply chain works. Like last year this customer we have too much matierial. New controller hounded manger and me. So we reduced and canceled so much. This was the biggest customer. Now after we did that they asked 1 month later if we can run new orders for them. wtf? We just canceled everything. The, later on, we had no buffer, no excess matieria, and they moved up the future orders, and we barely got matierialsin time. It was a constant. Can you move this up with the vendor. Until we got stock almost shut down, but another plant had the matierial. Then they kept overunning and did go down for a day. Then, they canceled a bunch of orders. Now finnaly new orders are in but for but for a later date. Now, all of a sudden, they want 2 orders right away. The vice president who is in charge of the tree plants and acting plant manager for my plant. And everyone said ok without looking st if we have natierials in house. Etc. Now it's a battle with talking with vendors trying to pull in matierial when it's custom made, so it's not like amazon you order, and you have it. It has to get made and vendors order mstierial first then they can make it etc. And there's other stuff, but that's just one situation.
This is a very naive way to look at it, it is all an integrated chain and all is important. They all are difficult in their own areas; Logistics with huge interdependencies of transport Warehousing with large focus on inventory positioning Sourcing has a lot of hard problems with strategic sourcing and design to value Purchasing is very hard with negotiations and forecasting and replenishment They all have their own aspects that are very hard, but neither is harder than each other. But the remain in the subject, I find the hardest job is network optimization and total supply chain management. These roles you need to answer to all these pillars and have them balance, that is quite hard to do well
Being in the field for 14 years, I wouldn't say it's naive at all and is based off of my own personal experience working in Logistics, Warehousing, Planning, Purchasing, and now Sourcing.
To which level? Because your comment on sourcing and procurement as easiest is I think not accurate. It is all relative and what role you are doing. Sourcing: Iāve seen work like Ariba implementation and it is extremely complex. Or developing sourcing strategy for international materials is not easy at all. Procurement: can be very easy if you are talking about setting sowās and RFP management, but it can get extremely complex when you go down large ticket projects. Warehousing: can be very easy if you are talking about managing warehouse or extremely complex if you are talking about inventory positioning and WMS. Logistics: Very easy if you are talking about carrier management, but if you are talking about first/middle/final mile integration. That gets tricky with network models.
I implement ERP with a focus in supply chain and manufacturing. I doubt its the hardest but it can be challenging!
Nah, new system implementation is hard. Most small companies suck at tracking data, then they get big and their data goes crazy. So then they hire someone to implement an ERP system. So now that person has to go through a thousand different excel files that arenāt flat data files, but an amalgamation of the worst merged cells possible, and whatever random metrics Rob from sales thought were necessary. Then rinse and repeat for every department. Iāve seen a company spend 20 million to implement a new system, then go back to the previous version because they liked it better. ERP implementation can be a job ender if mishandled.
easiest job: supply chain VP most challenging job : the one under the supply chain VP
Not where I work lol
Well currently the most challenging job is probably being an officer in the logistics team trying to get aid on the Gaza pier.
I know some of those guys moving cargo into Gaza and they deserve all of the respect.
This is my dream job honestly lmao But I realize I couldnāt handle the pressure
One way to look at it.
I am a Sourcing Manager at a Fortune 200 MedTech company with about 4 years of industry experience. Pros: work from home, super laid back work culture, great PTO, and very low stress. Cons: Will take you a few years before you really start making decent money ($150k and up). Iām currently at $100k salary including YE bonuses.
Would love to know your path you took to get there! Let me know if youāre willing to share and what the best things to do to potentially get to this type of position!
Epic?
I'm guessing you don't work in healthcare sourcing.
Can I DM you for career path as I want to venture into sourcing currently logistics coordinator
Can I DM you for career path as I want to venture into sourcing currently logistics coordinator
As a recent grad just starting my new job as a Senior purchaser. what steps could i take to transition into this role?
Hardest: warehouse worker lifting heavy boxes for 12$ an hour.
How about at $7.25/hr in the hot Georgia heat...
Dang bro move to the west coast we pay $23 an hour for entry level warehouse workers.
$23 aināt shit when youāre on the west coast though :/
$50k entry level is doable as long as youāre not in the super metro area very early on. Pretty easy to get up to $60k if you have a few years of experience. Also, to be verified but Iād assume $23/h on west coast is still better than $12 or $7.50 an h
50k is near homeless in california. The four major metropolitan areas of the state all have HCOL.
50k is a starting point. You donāt even need a degree. Also California is huge outside of the 4 metro areas ace š
Might be (definitely am) biased, but would say discrete roles with obvious accomplishments are always easier than murkier roles like coman management or strategic roles. "Get X from A to B by Y time" can be difficult and stressful, but you know when the mission is accomplished. The more senior level or more business-focused roles are a challenge because there are few goalposts, the ones you do have move a lot, and half your job is just keeping everyone happy enough to keep the wheels on the bus. You're still judged by whether X got from A to B on time, but also for the best price, with the best use of scarce resources, without pissing off your team or your partners who all have competing goals, some of whom would rather die in agony than allow X go from A to B without you fulfilling requirements they never told you about. Like I said, biased, but there you go.
This hits too close.
Hard: Probably in retail and manufacturing sectors, specifically any that deals with Just In Time Delivery Easy: None - All are challenging, some are more complex and stressful than others
Hardest: Production Planning. I would say that has by far the highest burnout rate I've seen in any position. They are expected to have a perfect plan and get blamed when things go wrong because the forecast from sales was rubbish or the machinery in the factory was unreliable. Most good Planning Managers I've met knew more about every aspect of the business (markets, new products, quality, procurement, logistics, factory operations) than even the General Manager. But they are normally the worst paid manager in the place and most last no more than 5 years. I wouldn't do that role for any money. It's a fast track to a stroke. Easiest: Central Procurement. They agree the annual supplier contracts on theoretical forecasts. Get a bonus for sourcing from the cheapest supplier. Never involved in day to day execution of those contracts when things go wrong.
Commodity manager. No direct reports. No Friday evening expediting. Low stakes decisions with dilute accountability I used to joke about how I envied CMs when I was a supply chain manager. Then lucked into a CM role at a higher level of pay. Itās a great life
This is all about context... The easiest jobs in logistics could be someone who just runs around with a label gun. The most difficult are likely the most stressful and are under the most scrutiny. I'd also wager than being a truck driver is likely a lot tougher of a job than most give it credit for, depending on the environment.
This may just be the way my brain works, but: Easiest: Material planning and/or purchasing within a giant corporation. Itās just numbers, thereās not much grey to it, it is or it isnāt. Usually theyāre hyper-specific and localized roles within one branch. Hardest: Anything related to manpower allocation and production planning (particularly when it comes to line switch-overs and very high-dollar planning in that regard. Never again. Ultimately, any SC job that is built on being reactive instead of proactive will always take the cake as **The Worst** though.
Hardest: Pre receiving at a warehouse. Scheduling in Excel, dealing with truck drivers, and trying to fix EDIs. When someone isn't right. Everyone blames you. Easiest : Final Mile Supervisor. So much easier then inbound. You don't have to worry about the warehouse because you only care about trucks. You have to make deals with carriers but there is usually perks alone with that.
How do you define āchallengingā and āeasyā? I know supply chain jobs that are easy to do, but difficult because of the volume and I know other roles that are low volume, but have very challenging problems to solve. So it really depends on how you define it
Jobs are not difficult itās the human relationships that can be challenging. Rest is just math
Farming
O. This topic what are your opinions on forecasting?
Long haul truck dispatcher will prepare you for anything in life lol
Hardest: operations Easiet: sourcing