Perot Systems Reviews

Pros

Knowledgeable collegues
Varied work
Great support from team members

Cons

Lack of career progession
Pointless performance review process
Lack of salary increases
Most movement within the company is seen as a sideways step

Advice to Senior Management

Currently there are many associates frustrated at the lack of opportunities to move forward and feel under valued.

Pros

Decent pay
Looks good on your resume

Cons

Constant redundant and counter-productive work
Dell integration has totally destroyed the moral and processes
No pay raises and increased benefit premuims caused salaries to actually be DECREASED

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the ones doing the brunt of the work. They are the ones that know that they changes that are being made are not working and the frustration is building. People are leaving the company as steadily as the economy allows them to find other jobs. Some are even taking pay cuts just to get out.

Pros

- Excellent campus: Cafeteria, no parking issues, proximity to Delhi
- Reputed name.
- Strong culture of operating with integrity
- Importance given to Corporate Social Responsibility
- Strong knowledge management setup

Cons

- Average compensation
- Company has struggled off late. Though things may now change as Dell has taken over Perot Systems
- Lack of high-profile 'superstars' in the company
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Advice to Senior Management

Investing in recruiting high-skilled talent as well as in retaining quality talent.

Pros

I feel the career paths are not well defined at Perot but the opportunities exist if you are looking for them. The company is growing and creating lots of new roles as it evolves. Overall a great place to work with much better benefits after the Dell acquisition.

Cons

Not a lot of transparency on job titles and upper management decision making.

Advice to Senior Management

Overall a good job by management. Sometimes I feel that we push a lot of work offshore even when it doesn't make sense.

Pros

Medical benefits
401K match
Most holidays celebrated
Coworkers the good ones always leave out of frustration
Many locations around the world

Cons

Women not reconized for promotions or upper management
Llittle or no communcation from Management to employees (that atctually do the work)
Demand high performance but no rewards when met. Bonus stucture changes quarterly.
No face to face performance reviews, only emails

Advice to Senior Management

Remember where you started, and how you got to where you are today
When you send out a survey to employees, at least read the results

Pros

Great people
Great work/life balance
Great opportunity/experience
Good benefits: Benefits have significantly improved since the Dell acquisition

Cons

Lack of pay for what you do: you don't get promotions with pay increases, just more responsibility... I'm a senior consultant doing specialist/senior specialist work, but do not get paid what I'm worth, I will get the promotion, but not the pay that comes with it. Performance Review system is horrid... absolutely worthless. Managers are required to rate associates 3, even if they are performing at level 5, due to forced ranking which causes lack of pay increases and bonuses for the associate no matter how loyal you are to the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay your people what they are worth.. they can go to another consulting firm and get paid what they are worth... this is what causes lack of retention.

Pros

Good work-life balance
Competitive Pay
Long term assignments
Strong client relationship with existing accounts

Cons

Weak Senior Management
No performance reviews
No career advancement

Advice to Senior Management

Please review Director's potential and knowledge for managing accounts

Pros

- Work/Live balance
- Acknowledgment of good performance
- Array of industries to work with (Healthcare, Finance, Government, Energy, Telecoms)

Cons

- Large variance of caliber inside the organization, possibly related to network effects
- Health and 401(k) benefits were becoming less attractive, but they might now be different after Dell bought it

Advice to Senior Management

The large pool of commodity MCSE-type developers should be complemented with a strong build-up of experts from the Open Source community to stay competitive in the DC space.

Pros

Coworkers are generally really good
Benefits have gotten better
Bonuses have been given in the last several years to qualified people
In my position the work is different every day

Cons

Management is disconnected from everyone
My location is a lot like highschool, cliques and small groups control a lot.
Information is withheld from people
You must Kiss A** to get anywhere above the senior rep level
The only complaints acted on are taken from the worst employees ie: 'people keep walking past my cubicle' and they actually sent out an email asking people not to walk down the aisle
Pay is not comparable to other local companies. I recently applied for a job at another company and with my experience they offered $2.05 more per hour than I am making after 5+ years with Perot.
Every important announcement is garbled with corporate speak that the average employee doesn't understand.
Supervisors tell you to process something and when it goes wrong throw you under the bus.

Advice to Senior Management

Please Please Please stop and listen to the employees that are below the supervisor level. Just because they are telling you 'oh, I have everything under control' doesn't mean it is. You need to realize that all of the current supervisors are only concerned with keeping their jobs and lie constantly.
Get rid of all the cliques and actually look at each employee's actual work and not the so called reviews given by supervisors that don't care.

Pros

Good emphasis on work/life balance.

Cons

Extremely restrictive hiring practices.
Unfair bonus distribution - first company I've ever worked at where bonuses are not prorated for employees past their probationary period. I was at PSGS for ten months in 2009, and while co-workers who were there on Jan 1. 2009 got a full bonus for the year, I got nothing, simply because I wasn't hired until February 2009 - this, despite an "Excellent" review and many thanks and kudos from the client.
Detached management - the only time I ever hear from my "Technical Area Manager" at Perot is when some mandatory training needs completion or when the manager is required to have a face-to-face with me (as with the "ooops, no bonus" discussion).
Still, my manager has never responded to several requests for a F2F meeting to discuss my PSGS performance evaluation, which did not match the client's evaluation.
The acquisition by Dell seems to have turned the PSGS organization into a mess of hard-to-find benefits information and benefits that are slightly more restrictive and more expensive than earlier PSGS offerings - to get my previous pricing on prescription drugs, I must now mail-order them, creating problems for me and my doctor.

Advice to Senior Management

-Stop basing everything on metrics.
-Have your managers meet with site workers at least once a month, and pick up lunch or something worthwhile. We work very long, tough hours for the client, and see very little in return, especially when it comes to management responsiveness.
-The Dell sale was a huge mistake. Now, instead of selling the organization as a lean, mean, efficient company...well, we just work for Dell. Morale has tanked in the past six months.