Mitchell International Reviews

Pros

Stable company, good benefits and salary

Cons

No professional development opportunities. Very few opportunities for promotions. Annual reviews and raises not based on performance

Advice to Senior Management

Provide professional development opportunities. Have true career paths defined for employees and a result based system for promotions. Change the review and raise process to be performance based, not based on where one is in the salary range. Allow more than one or two in a group to get excellent review ratings--it leads to poor morale within the company when one is judged on a bell curve.

Pros

New employees to Mitchell and those at lower levels great to work with. Recruiting is trying to find people that can make the company great.

Cons

Extremely poor business decision making causes these great employees to degrade, lose motivation and fizzle out. Within a year they begin to exhibit the signs of the more vocal long-time employees with bad habits and many with even worse attitudes.

Bar none the most demoralizing and horrible experience as a people manager I've ever had having to watch as the best in my team falter and tear themselves apart while the sources of that degradation are protected by senior leadership (hence bad decision making). When you employees have given up on themselves it's time for great change and scrutiny.

Advice to Senior Management

Kill old practices, find a way to scrub the poisons from the environment and give you talent a chance to truly live The Mitchell Way.

Pros

It's very hard to talk about the pros of this company when you watched it slide downhill so fast. The work was consistent and many of the other employees were decent people. That's about as far as I can comment. Ten years ago it was a different story.

Cons

Where does one begin? Take a company that was #1, chase out proven professionals and encourage the "popularity contest winners" to take the helm. Watch it slide to #3 (out of 3 competitors). Reward people for doing crappy work, but efficiently, praise those who get their half-assed work accomplished, and reprimand those who take pride in what they do and make life impossible for them. Promote managers who manage from the hip, and let them form a clique, if you're not part of it, you'll never find success.

Advice to Senior Management

Take a closer look at how your departments are really managed. Stop promoting people on popularity and start rewarding those who are not only efficient but take pride in what they do. Poor quality work done in a timely manner should not be acceptable. While I was there, I corrected mistakes and was reprimanded and told to change the correct information back to it's incorrect state. Why? Once it was done, why waste time changing it back? Because EGO's run most of your departments, and when managers do shoddy work they despise those who do quality work. Quit promoting childish people who don't understand the metrics of running a department both efficiently and professionally. When you have a manager or director who treats people as friends instead of employees, you lose quality. But Alex should know that, too bad he had to take it over from someone who left him a mess.

Pros

First level management and below are good people because they haven't been assimilated by the system yet. You'll probably meet a coworker that will end up being a friend for life (or maybe even your wife). The masses are smart and want to do the right thing, they're just being bound by the bureaucracy of big brother Mitchell.
If you come in from the outside you'll likely get a better position and pay than someone that has been there a while.
805 & 52 area has traffic but it isn't that bad even in traffic.

Cons

Cubes are really small, the walls are low and you will have 8 people within 8 feet of you. Managers get an extra big yet still small cube. Everything is open and loud so they have speakers playing static to cover it up.
You need to be a player to get anywhere. Being the nerd that saved the project doesn't go far.
It's not what you know, it is who you know.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees. Your direct reports are only concerned with their careers and will avoid telling you the truth at all costs. Nobody wants to tell you the truth which is why you keep getting blindsided with what is obvious to everybody but leadership. You need people that are willing to say more than "Yes".

Pros

Simple, easy work. You sit in a room listening to the radio while you time stamp and prepare medical bills for scanning.

Cons

As you can imagine, it is very tedious work and a lot depends on the people you are working next to.

Advice to Senior Management

Make the line of command more clear and pay more attention to the little people working in your department. There were a few people who either didn't do their job or tried to bully people despite having no authority.

Pros

Many employees deeply believe in Mitchell and will support the business to their dying breath. Executives enthusiastic and lively.

Cons

Ineffective management loses high performers too quickly and ignores all issues with low performers. Makes collaboration more difficult and increases backstabbing.
Upper mgmt says all the right things to drive a new and innovative culture but actions often contradictory.
"we are a leading technology company" in the same breath as "here's your 7-year old computer to code our newest product on."

Advice to Senior Management

Bring in an efficiency consultant for management and shake it up. Give us good leaders and stop shedding the truly innovative leaders!

Pros

Good work atmosphere.
Good career movement.

Cons

Pay isn't what it should be.

Pros

Excellent work environment, good colleagues that work hard, but still know how to have fun. Decent benefits. Every day is different and that keeps it interesting.

Cons

Management seems to be a bit disconnected from the reality of working out of the field and has some rather unrealistic expectations of their employees.
Pay is somewhat below market, promotions were based on "who you know" as opposed to merit and seniority.
New office building has virtually no privacy, very noisy at times (no longer a cubicle farm). Teams are somewhat understaffed.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your employees; we deal with the customers and know first hand what's working and what isn't. More qualified hires.

Pros

There truly are great people throughout the organazation who genuinely care about the products Mitchell offers. If you are so lucky to fall under the leadership of one of these individuals then Mitchell has the potential to be a good employer.

Cons

Unclear career paths, no direction, organizational nightmare, upward trend in turnover, uneven compensation structure, inability to service the product offerings, HR is a COMPLETE mess.

Advice to Senior Management

Assuming any investment is being made to the well-being of the product or the people, think beyond the next quarter. It's all about longetivity in the market. It's time to sell to someone who is genuinely interested in growing Mitchell to its fullest potential and re-investing in and listening to all of the top talent Mitchell already has. That is if they have not been left to bitter since the failed merger, latest acuisition, focus to an assembly line operation and insurance re-negotiation. If the millions already spent to uncover the problems have been, so far, in jest; maybe it's time to start looking in the mirror

Pros

Most of the people I know are really good people and work very hard.
Benefits are fairly good, but like most companies, they have had to pass on increased medical costs to the employees.

Cons

Many departments are understaffed and therefore, overworked.
You start at a competitive salary, but within a couple years, fall behind market.

Advice to Senior Management

Staff up properly and keep salary ranges competitive