Intuit – “Looks nice on the surface, but a culture of fear pervades.”

Pros

I learned a great deal during the years I worked for Intuit. The company lets you experiment and learn from mistakes, so you can gain valuable work experience.

The benefits and compensation are very good.

But by far my favorite part about working there is the quality of my coworkers. They are extremely intelligent people!

Cons

Intuit has changed drastically for employees over the last couple of years. It's as if the senior management received an email from the CEO that doing right by employees is no longer necessary. And this change started before the recession (but is now an open secret).

Now Intuit is becoming a tops-down, hierarchical "big" company that treats employees as commodities rather than people. Training has all but disappeared. Coaching is almost gone. And moving into new job assignments (to gain experience) is harder than ever. The new way is to just hire a new one from outside rather than waste your time developing an existing employee. This is a big change from years past.

The politics have always been tough at Intuit, but now senior management disrespects employees with impunity. If you rank lower than the person talking in a meeting, you cannot disagree. A culture of fear pervades the place, and it is a waste of all those intelligent coworkers I mentioned above. To top this off, the latest mantra at Intuit is around innovation, but the new management style will lead to anything but.

And if that's not enough, morale is extremely low, so work is a downer. I can't count the number of employees who have described how they go home at night and cry about work. The stress is not worth the paycheck.

Advice to Senior Management

You've forgotten what made Intuit a great company. You think now you can win by focusing solely on the numbers for shareholders, but you're wrong. Intuit was a great company because it set itself apart as a better place to work, better for people, better for employees. Now Intuit is a great-paying place to work if you can put up with the disrespect from senior management.

In the long-run, Intuit will lose the great talent it took years to attract. And given the company's new values, it seems Intuit wants it that way.