Acumen Reviews

Pros

You get to work on very interesting projects with very talented people.

Cons

It's hard to maintain the balance between work and your personal life.

Pros

When company was smaller, there was a lot of opportunity to learn from senior programmers.
    You have an opportunity to work with very bright kids from top-notch schools across the country, including harvard, cal, stanford, hopkins, u mich, usc, swarthmore graduates
    Training program exists for new-hires to learn SAS programming
    Nearly everyone is very friendly and willing to help you learn within your department
    Nice health insurance plan, including dental, vision and medical
    Three weeks vacation accrued each year
    If you are lucky you can end up working in an excellent department with very knowlegeable managers that love to teach the tricks of their trade - very helpful and appreciate and reward quality work
    Opportunity to work as many hours as you want, allowing you to prove you can take on a lot of work, if that's your sort of thing, as it is mine.

Cons

Poor communication between departments leads to duplication of work.

HR department is very new. Workers are very weary about the confidentiality of their reports to HR.

In many cases, nepotism has lead to unqualified employees landing managerial positions, leading to incompetent managers in some of the company's departments. If your luck though, you may get an excellent manager, however. Just depends on the department you end up in.

Primarily hires kids fresh out of college, or immigrants needing H1B status at low rates. Because of high-turn over rates, there is constant re-training going on. It would really improve the company if they hired people with more experience who planned to stay with the company long-term.

Many cases of waving H1B carrot in front of those needing it, having them use up their OPT and then
not providing H1B; similarly for promises of raises.

Advice to Senior Management

Start listening to the advice given to you, whether it be from sites like these or preferably from employees themselves. It can only make the company better :)

Pros

Acumen has a lot of potential. The company does very interesting and necessary work for the health field. However, the company's internal structure and practices diminish the morale of the employees and, in turn, effectiveness of the company.

-I believe the people you work will heavily affect how you assess your time at Acumen. My overall experience was pretty good given the right people (fair, professional, intelligent, etc).

Cons

-There are known issues of nepotism and, more pervasively, favoritism that may not always be linked to qualifications and performance.
-HR/Management seems to make an insincere effort at transparency; though the company has recently instituted performance reviews, any information on the promotions of team members are strongly guarded. This hardly elicits trust amongst employees that promotions are actually done in good faith.

Advice to Senior Management

Long-standing practices are difficult to change, but the turnover rate at Acumen strongly indicates that improvements in management need to be made.

Pros

- Benefits package is fully comprehensive
- A good place to start out of college or before graduate school
- Close to SFO International Airport (so you can leave when you quit/get a new job/go to grad school)

Cons

You can tell which employees are "protected" due to their relationships with senior management. The sad thing is that these are the people who are usually not reprimanded for being an incompetent worker and are usually given managing powers. This company is not the place to stay at for more than 1-2 years. Don't get sucked in to them throwing money at you because chances are you'll have to stay longer and their "raise" is just your overtime pay that they never paid you before. Beware.

Advice to Senior Management

Have a company that has more than a degree. Don't try to throw money/promotions at people who are clearly fed up at the company. Fire incompetent workers.

Pros

It is good place to start up

Cons

You will get less money

Advice to Senior Management

They re nice

Pros

People are very down to earth.
Motivated group of people to work with.
Can learn quite a but if you work hard.

Cons

Compensation is not great as compared to other companies.

Advice to Senior Management

Good Management. But can try and lessen the pressure on the employess

Pros

The projects are thought provoking and interesting. A lot of the projects here have a substantial impact in public policy. A lot of opportunities for responsibilities, management for those with just a bachelor's degree.

Cons

While the people are somewhat intelligent, they think they are much, much smarter than reality shows. To summarize, a lot of the people with just BA/BS (which surprisingly are on average more arrogant than the people with PhDs) are smart, but not good enough to cut it in an actual competitive environment (like econ grad school, which is what a lot hope to acheive).

Senior management is an absolute disaster. They claim to be "tough and honest" while preaching a meritocracy, but unfortunately they spend more time scheming, behind people's backs instead of doing things that are just a given in other companies (example: performance evauatons, structure, adressing weaknesses directly). In addition, nepotism is a hugh problem, resulting in a large number of incompetent people in high positions.

Middle management unfortunately picks up a lot of these bad habits (except for the nepotism part). Many managers are dishonest with their workers, which leads to zero growth.

Advice to Senior Management

Grow up and shut up. It's pretty simple. I very good first step is to remove the nepotism problem, since these eyesores exacerbate a work environment that is already less than stellar.

Pros

This is an environment where a recent college graduate can get a lot of responsibility and project management experience very quickly. The work can be high-profile and interesting, and you are given a good amount of responsibility and ownership almost from day 1. There is also ample opportunity to interact with senior management.

Cons

Unfortunately, the projects and level of responsibility are awarded on a seemingly arbitrary basis. Management is rampant with extreme favoritism, and raises, promotions, offices, teams, etc are all doled out based on shady behind-the-scenes shenanigans that aren't subject to any accountability. This coupled with the fact that the company demands every moment of your waking life, and in return all you receive is disrespect and belittlement at the hands of the managing member.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop playing petty politics. Institute an actual performance review system where raises and promotions are transparently linked in some way to performance. Not who you know, or what so-and-so once said about you years ago.

Pros

People are very nice and dedicated

Cons

Work/life balance can be difficult to maintain

Advice to Senior Management

It can be hard for employees to plan their days when meeting times are constantly moved around

Pros

* Interesting projects
* Challenging work
* Intelligent and motivated coworkers

Cons

* Long hours
* High burning rate

Advice to Senior Management

Add a system for performance review