Electronic Data Systems Reviews in Sacramento, CA Area

Pros

Use to be loyal to employees.
Good people to work with.
Good health insurance.
Work from home used to be encouraged.

Cons

Emphasis on solving profit margins through off-shoring and throwing low-priced bodies at projects.
Top-heavy.
Many layers of worthless managers.
Short-sighted pay cuts will drain the company of needed experience, and has drained all goodwill toward the company from the employees.

Advice to Senior Management

You're next.
Customers will see the difference in service, and business will be lost.
When that happens, don't blame your underpaid, inexperienced staff.

Pros

At this point I'm not sure I can articulate any reason that I would consider best. I suppose it still looks respectable on the resume. I do enjoy most of the collegues I have had, but most of the top talent has left (including myself at the end of the month, I wish it was part of the HP Work force reduction so I could receive a severance).

Cons

They are to many to list. Poor leadership, nepotism, not involving the technical architects who actually know how to implement production business early enough in the process. %5 pay cut, then 10% pay cut, it's rediculous.

Advice to Senior Management

It's not your lack luster performers that leave when you cut pay, it's the top talent. This causes a vicious cycle that leads accounts to fail to exceed client expections. Which inevitable leads them to take their business elsewhere.

Pros

The staff! To be able to work with completely competent and skilled coworkers is a treat and makes projects go smoothly because the team knows it's stuff and can deliver as promised. This competence held true for the people on my immediate team and for all the people I came into contact with on other EDS teams. The EDS culture demands that all employees act and behave in a professional manner and as such, "prima donna" behavior was not tolerated and knowing that you didn't have to deal with any difficult personalities at work made coming to work a good thing.

Cons

The bureaucracy and non-risk culture. There were many employees on my account that had been working at EDS for virtually all of their career and as such they were very set in their ways and not open to new ideas or ways of approaching problems. "That's the way we've always done it" was a very prevalent attitude and actually encouraged by management. All the management on my account was promoted from the rank and file, so they didn't know any other ways either. Corporate senior management did not provide adequate support and leadership, in my opinion, to help the company keep up with the technologically changing times and as such, EDS is not a technology leader.

Advice to Senior Management

Decide what you want the company's expertise to be--employees are asked for innovation, but are hamstrung by bureaucratic operational procedures.

Pros

Being invoved with tier one / fortune 500 companies is really good. You have many opportunites to grow your proffesiona; and client facing skills whilw working with a varitey of clients. Great way to really improve your consulting skills working in client facing roles.

Cons

You are expected to work 24x7x365 and no recogniton is given for this since EVERYONE does it. management was very smart to create an enviornment where working less than 60 hours a week makes you a slacker. When given a promotion, meaning a higher job code/class and more responsibilty your are NOT given a raise. Annual merit raises MUST equal infaltion at least.

Advice to Senior Management

Try and live up to your employeee retention goals. Take more time to ensure that leaders are making sure their staff are not working too much. Good leaders should not LET their employes work 24x7x365

Pros

I don't have to relocate. All my family and friends are here.You will not have to be accountable if you don't get your work done on time or correctly. If you don't want to be fired all you have to do is to show up everyday. However if you don't want to go into work all you have to do is callin sick. Since EDS does not have a "sick leave" policy in California there is no set days you have to use and some people call insick more than 20 times a year and they still get all their vacation.

Cons

Group slapping and no accountability for employees who break rules. ie...don't work all the hours they are supposed to.

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of the dead weight and if someone doesn't preform get rid of them. Do not keep finding less and less work for them to keep screwingup.

Pros

I can't think of any right now -- too depressing

Cons

management that is weirded out, discouraging, and an avid consumer of talent...the problem is like any predator, it eats it's young.

Advice to Senior Management

cut the fat -- there is way too much middle management. With the middleware layer comes petty kingdoms, confusing sexual identities, wanton disregard for the people under you and a definitive lack of comms for the troops. I don't want to
hear how Ross or you did it back in the day...I want to know how to do it so I can feed my family.

Pros

If you have a good manager, you can pretty much make your own schedule and be assured that if you need to take care of personal business, you'll be able to. Fortunately, this applies to me. This is the upside to a lower salary, you take your compensation in other ways. We are soon to become HP employees. I believe HP has a better reputation and hopefully we will feel a cultural difference in our daily work lives.

Cons

The absolutely horrible performance review process. Not automatically getting a salary adjustment when taking a different position with more responsibilities.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer...

Pros

EDS is a pretty stable place to work compared to other IT companies in the area. We have layoffs like every other IT company, but if you are willing to work hard and be committed, you're usually pretty safe. EDS overall tends to be loyal to it's employees. EDS is well respected in the industry and is known for solid performance. I have had very positive feedback from potential employers based on having EDS on my resume. EDS is very process driven and is a good place to get down the fundamentals of IT. There are a great bunch of people to work with and you can learn a lot.

Cons

I don't know about the broader EDS. My experience is all at an account level and I am on a separate campus. From my perspective, EDS is not a glamorous place to work. It's all business, pretty buttoned down and change is very slow. Our official company policy is "EDS is a pay for performance company". I do not believe this is true. I have had two promotions and neither one included a pay raise. I went from managing a virtual team to leading a team of 6 developers to managing 35 individuals. I started at a pretty low salary for the amount of responsibility given and neither promotion included a pay raise. I was given higher than average annual increases of 7-9%, but no raise for a promotion. It's a very messed up system. I will have to be in my role for 5-6 years before I make today's current market rate for my position.

Advice to Senior Management

Employee morale is very low. Employees do not feel like Senior management has their best interests in mind. We are not happy with the high compensation of senior management, the huge bonuses they will receive with the HP merger and do not feel liek we are recognized for our contributions. They have definitely been starving the line level management and staff to make the bottom line look good so that the HP merger will go smoothly and they can all walk away with a pile of cash. Meanwhile, we are dying out here on the vine - overworked and underpayed.

Pros

Large scale system work, high impact, high visability project work. Tend towards the more cutting edge of the larger scale systems. High marks for data warehouse.

Cons

Lack of understanding of employee skills and competancies. still haven't moved sufficiantly from legacy systems. Should partner better with some of the larger IT companies out there.

Advice to Senior Management

Use your employees more efficiently. Management consistently did not use the skills of their employees to their maximum ability.

Pros

EDS has a large pool of talented individuals that are willing to share what they know. There are many opportunities within the company across a wide range of functional areas. For employees that push their own development and do not let themselves stagnate in a The work is also very challenging, although sometimes overly demanding. There are opportunities for people with drive and a willingness to work hard.

Cons

Compensation is (has been) an issue at EDS. Depending on circumstances it may take extreme measures to be at a competitive salary (leaving the company, switching organizations within the company, relocation, etc). Poor executive leadership is preventing the company from advancing and has allowed IBM to take over the space that EDS created.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay attention to what the employees have to offer... your greatest resource is people. Their contributions are what make EDS successful.