Pros

Benefits
Location
College tuition is free
If you make friends you can rise to the top

Cons

Management
No real leadership with new DHL management in place

Advice to Senior Management

Time to have another reorg

Pros

A continuously growing organization that is innovating and taking the leading role on adult education. The challenges are big but the vision is still there, to bring the best platform to support continuous learning on an information driven society.

The working environment is good, and benefits are probably the best thing the company offers to their employees.

Cons

Salaries are not the greatest, yet there are many who would stay just for the benefits.

The city of Phoenix is a bit boring compared to other cosmopolitan larger cities in the USA. If you don't mind the extreme heat on the desert then this place is for you.

Advice to Senior Management

Things are getting better with recent changes taking place.

Pros

If you’re looking for a place to grow then Apollo is the home for you. Working for this company presents your with many different opportunities for advancement. If you want to move on to a different department, campus or company within Apollo you can. Apollo also offers free tuition to any of its educational programs up to a Masters degree and 70% off of their Doctoral programs. 30 - 40 hours of professional development is required with multiple course offerings by their own corporate university. Senior Management has a solid understanding of the education vertical and the company has great stability in this uncertain economic times.

Cons

You won't work here for the Pay

Advice to Senior Management

Develop the talent from within and continue to support training Initiatives for employees

Pros

The wide range of benefits, including comprehensive health coverage and tuition assistance, are great perks. If you show the drive and desire to perform, there are opportunities to advance your career in a multitude of fields. As an employee you are given an unmatched chance to excel both personally and professionally through education and even alter your career path.

Cons

Some career paths may be more difficult to navigate vertically than others and may require you to rethink your career options.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on your junior employees not as rivals, but as future visionaries for the growth and success of the company.

Pros

Apollo Group is recession-proof, pays well and has a wonderful benefits package. They offer a wide array of jobs in many different departments. They also provide employees with the chance to go to school and obtain a degree for free.

The opportunities for promotions and job growth are plentiful at Apollo Group, Inc., and because it is such a large companies, there is opportunity for lateral movement between departments and divisions. If your current job is not satisfactory, you can easily find a job within the company and apply for it without pressure or resentment from management.

They hire family members, and many people work with their spouses, parents, or siblings.

Cons

There is no down side really.

Advice to Senior Management

There needs to be better and more effective communication from senior management to employees, and they need to institute better change management strategies.

Pros

Tuition benefits, team building activities, easy to get approved for time off, possibilities to get 20% raises bi-yearly, job that is not that demanding, and when you go home you do not take the job with you.

Cons

Leadership is a joke. I have been in the organization for three years and I have only been in the room with my director twice. The director position is only two levels higher and is directly responsible for the numbers the employees produce. Management can get away with murder. Mine has infinite time off it seems like. The 20% raises are almost impossible to acquire. They make the standards harder and harder every different evaluation that comes out. Measured on numbers that you can not control. Takes management forever to approve performance reviews

Advice to Senior Management

Besides that fact that all of our senior management is leaving or has left for Grand Canyon State I wonder what is going on. Senior management needs to disclose why all of the organization's leadership is jumping ship. I really believe there is to many employees in the enrollment department. For low performance employees the department is not turning over employees, instead the organization keeps them. The best thing to happen to this company is for a CEO to come in from the outside, experience in the private and public sector. The first thing the CEO will do is cut 30% of enrollment. You the company will still grow and now you keep your best performers. Pay the people that do their jobs.

Pros

Apollo has a large IT organization where there is the opportunity to be exposed to the latest technology. You will find that most of your co-workers are friendly and polite. They foster a team environment where each individual has a distinct role and it can provide a good starting point for those just beginning their career.

Benefits and employee costs are fairly standard, plus they allow you take courses at their associated universities free of charge. It is an organization that does promote advancing your professional skills by attending seminars and other educational opportunities.

Most of the organization supports flexible schedules (i.e., compressed work weeks) and allows a "work from home" option on a regular basis.

Cons

The benefits and downsides vary greatly depending upon your direct management. As a developer, your workload will differ depending upon the project/department to which you are assigned. Some teams have a relatively light workload, giving them ample time to explore professional growth opportunities within the organization.

My personal experience was the expectation to work 10+ hour days on a regular basis, struggling to meet tight deadlines. Because of the tight schedules most of the time I felt like a "code monkey", simply putting together the quickest solution - not necessarily the best solution. Despite the access to new technology, development techniques employed at Apollo seemed to be years behind current standards. Lack of standards and defined best practices was shocking.

Compensation (although consistent with market rates) seems lacking in light of the demands placed upon employees. If one were to calculate an hourly rate using the actual hours spent working, it would actually be far less than market value.

I can honestly say working at Apollo has been the most stressful job I have had in my entire career.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide a more standardized development process and guidelines to the software teams. Evaluation of existing practices and policies by external consultants would probably provide some useful insight on how to improve.

Pros

Employees in good standing can go to school and earn an education.

Cons

Horrible management and questionable ethics. Company is full of nepotism and favoritism. Getting ahead is not about doing a good job but about being in the "in crowd". Local campuses are run by long-time employees with no outside experience at anything but selling education. Its a shame. It wasn't long ago that employees were proud of their jobs at Apollo.

Advice to Senior Management

Quit watering down your brand. It is ruining the company and soon Apollo will be like every other on-line for profit university.