Pros

Nice people and the hours are not killer.

Cons

In my five plus years at Perot I can sum up how I (and most internal people I know) view Perot in one word, average. It’s not a great place to work and it’s not a bad place to work. It’s an average place to work.

I come from an IT consulting background and thought Perot would be in that same vein. I was wrong. That spirit of excellence and doing whatever it takes to get the job done is trumpeted in emails but is not in place now and there is no clear vision on how to get us there in the future. If you are a ‘go-getter’ and were trained to your core in ‘excellence for the customer’ you may find Perot draining and frustrating. I have accepted this since I’m getting close to retirement, but still find it annoying.

I think we do an average-to-good job overall but an excellent job is out of our reach for the time being. Being in the ‘low cost outsourcing provider competition’ does not inherently lend itself to excellence. The phrase ‘you get what you pay for’ has merit.

Technically I think we’re pretty strong but in other areas (especially matrixed ones) there are issues standing in the way of us moving towards excellence. The main reason for this (that I can see) is that each functional area (Tech, QA, Mgmt, BA etc...) is like its own little union. Negative feedback on the quality of work of one of their members is viewed almost as an attack. And even if you give honest feedback there is no guarantee that it will do any good because the functional lead is not required to use it in their resource’s review. Actually if they don’t ask for it you can not give it. And where they is no accountability, there is no excellence.

Anyways, if you want a decent place to work then Perot might be for you. The people are nice and the hours are not killer. But if you have engrained in you that ‘excellence in all you do’ spirit then I would advise caution.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't just talk about excellence, get it done.