Allyis Reviews

Pros

Allyis supports and invests in its employees more than any other company. I feel empowered in what I do and supplied with the resources to continually improve on my career skills.

GREAT HR: Allyis provides a clear explanation of internal HR and career development programs. These are available and clearly accessible to all employees. Questions are encouraged and the HR team actively reaches out to employees when needed.

LEADING TECH: The technology, services, and work environment foster creative collaboration and employees deliver market leading solutions to its clients/partners. I'm excited to learn something new every day.

BETTER SOLUTIONS: Allyis is a market leader in collaboration and web technology solutions. It is added security to know that the company is headed in a positive and proactive market direction.

Cons

Physical office structure is a bit outdated. There is room for improvement, although technology is excellent and the office is set for preliminary remodeling this fall/winter (2011).
Allyis could improve support programs around contract role positions, although the redeployment program is well established.

Advice to Senior Management

The board and senior management team provide guidance and equal opportunity for all employees. They make pertinent information widely available and host town hall meetings annually to share direction and company ideas. Management could try harder to actively grow market presence of the company brand.

Pros

Allyis is primarily a staffing agency for Microsoft. They do have great ability of attracting top talent due to their marketing efforts and family-related benefits.

Cons

As a company, they lack business acumen, drive or direction. Majority of the senior leadership lacks any business or technology expertise as they are primarily education and marketing. Therefore, their ability to move into a new area or execute on a specific strategy is lacking and has failed many times at a great expense to the company and its employees. They are not able to keep top talent as the company has no clear leadership, advancement opportunities and are quickly losing their footing with Microsoft.

Pros

- Work/Life balanced highly respected
- Great, smart people at all levels

Cons

- Leadership changes and decisions are often confusing to employees

Advice to Senior Management

- none

Pros

- Work/life balance (if you get to work from home)
- Good benefits for contractors
- The majority of people are pleasant and easy to work with
- Rates are competitive

Cons

- I worked on two separate project teams at Allyis. On one I was totally independent and actually consulting, on the other we were treated like entry-level worker bees.
- On both project teams I worked on, there were team members who were competing against each other for approval and rank with the external client. It was very destructive for a consulting team to display that sort of behavior. Middle management was made aware and the perps were talked to, but alas, nothing changed.
- They will keep ill-tempered and abusive clients.

Advice to Senior Management

I had a great deal of respect for executive management at Allyis, but also saw middle managers who were petty, fearful of clients, and micro-managers. I hope senior leadership can make an effort to ensure middle management is treating employees with the respect and fairness that they intend.

Pros

As far as Microsoft contracting companies go, it's hard to beat Allyis for benefits and work-life balance. They've had to scale back benefits and pay some because of the recent recession and Microsoft demands, but they are doing their best to restore full benefits and pay.

Cons

It's a contract company for Microsoft. You are still at the mercy of Microsoft without having the full support of a large company. Your employment cannot be guaranteed because of this, and situations can change quickly and with fairly little warning. For those who have been in contracting for some time, this is nothing new, but it can be jarring for contracting newbies.

Advice to Senior Management

Be more sensitive to your employees around the issues you can affect, but also realistic about those things you can't. Work on actual employee development, not just talking about it. Always watch that the company, which is really not that big, doesn't seem increasingly top heavy with upper management that doesn't have clear roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities. Continue being open and responsive to employee concerns.

Pros

They are very focused on their employees. Very eager to champion the Social Media / Web 2.0 in the region.

Cons

They are in the middle of changing business models. Often noticed that changes moved slowly and had have the consent of all senior organization.

Advice to Senior Management

Going down the right path in becoming thought leaders, but need to invest more in obtaining and keeping subject matter experts.

Pros

*Work life balance
*Honesty, integrity & genuine "goodness" of management
*Employee care & respect at center of everything the company does
*Great people
*Great benefits

Cons

*Breadth and depth of founder 's & senior management experience & background (this has gotten better over last few years)
*Microsoft centric. Business is very Microsoft focused & driven

Advice to Senior Management

*consider expanding board to include external advisors, outside just original founders to contribute their perspective and guidance to the company

Pros

Health Care, Vacation, Benefits, etc
Family Friendly Culture, Great Work/Life Balance
Great Management, Very Smart People, Door is Always Open
Fun Place to work

Cons

None fo far. Overall it's been a great experience.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep doing what you're doing. Being open and honest with employees will get you far.

Pros

Amazing benefits, responsive management, ethical company. Wait, I guess that's not enough words for this site...OK, um, er...well, in the years I've been there we're grown a lot but the senior management team has done I really amazing job of keeping us all feeling connected and appreciated (we have a dedicated employee care & recognition team -- how cool is that?), compensation is good and work/life balance is a core commitment all around -- families are supported and encouraged to attend company events, the environment is laid back but still professional, and you'd really be hard pressed to find a more dedicated, competent group of people to work with -- I feel very lucky.

Cons

None, unless you count the traffic on 405, but that isn't really their fault :-)

Advice to Senior Management

Keep communicating regularly with the employees -- more is better.

Pros

Excellent Benefits package, from the Medical to 401K to PTO - one of the best I've seen in a long time. No wonder why people love to work here.
People at Allyis are upbeat and greet new employees with open arms. They are there you help everyone succeed, they do not hesitate to answer a quesiton when a question is brought up no matter how difficult the question is. The work environment is stressful but the employees stay positive, management is always there to answer any question. There is always someone to help when help is needed, whether it be on shift or a phone call away. Everyone lends a helping hand to all new employees, the training structure is probablly one of the better trainings I've been through, they take each person according to the way that person learns. I've never seen training like that before! It's amazing how much a person can pick something up that is difficult just by training them in a way that they are most comfortable.

Cons

There's not a whole lot of downsides to this company other than the commute which I take to work, but that is something we all have to deal with. The only real downside would be overtime pay, I believe we are exempt and do not get paid the regular overtime rate as non exempt employees.

Advice to Senior Management

We have a great team, anyone who comes to the team will notice that the first day.