Pros

flexible working environment
support from direct line managers
working from home encouraged
high caliber of staff
good benefits package

Cons

poor account management employee relations
no pay rises for 2 years
no communication of divisional direction
no social events for staff

Advice to Senior Management

smile at employees
two-way communication
incentivise performance
promote staff positivity
make management more inclusive
schedule more regular staff social events

Pros

pride in delivering high quality, responsive program management, systems engineering and technical assistance in the acquisition of major systems for our federal clients.

Cons

The technologies are both leading-edge and revolutionary and incorporate powerful relational data management, web-based portal technology, collaborative processing, knowledge distribution, and seamless access to distributed enterprise data.

Advice to Senior Management

Faster, Better, and Cheaper" than any of its competitors in developing, augmenting and integrating information management solutions to address new business requirements and/or in transforming legacy systems into fully interoperable and integrated real-time enterprise systems.

Pros

Professional work environment. Consistently treated with respect and opinions (when solicited) are welcomed. With the acquisition from Dell, things are up in the air, but they are selling the acquisition as a 'growth strategy'.

Cons

Lack of consistent feedback regarding performance.
Annual reviews are little more than going through the motions.
Pay is average, and salaries increases have been frozen for 2009.
Best way to get a good pay raise is to either switch to another position internally or leave the company and come back at a later time.

Advice to Senior Management

Engage your employees more often, listen to feedback, offer opportunities to let employees take more ownership and leadership in their work.
Make the benefits competitive again!

Pros

Reasonable industry presence (healthcare); company has a satisfying number of very smart people.

Cons

Company has lots of smart people, highly qualified to do great things, however roles are almost never aligned with qualifications/credentials.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire new management from leaders in the industry. Distribute key leaders around the country - get out of Plano for a while. Understand what the field is really doing and could do.

Pros

Opportunities to learn and grow. They used to have good benefits but they have been shrinking for past three years.

Cons

Salary increases a minimal; 5% of employees are unsuccessful, 90% are successful, 5% are exceptional. Only the 5% exceptional get meaningful increases. And managers are only allowed to rate a small percentage of their employees as exceptional.

Advice to Senior Management

None

Pros

Benefits are decent, but not amazing.

Cons

Lacks the orginazational structure of the larger IT Consulting firms. Lots of bench time. Most projects are with crappy mid to small size firms that the larger firms passed on. Often times dealing with clients that are incompetent and their lack of performance tends to reflect on the entire consulting team.

Advice to Senior Management

Better clients, better salaries, better organization.

Pros

Flexibility is a major pro. The company management structure allows for flexibility of work. The benefits are as good as if not slightly better than other big IT consulting firms.

Cons

This depends on your immediate manager. The one I worked for was quite incompetent resulting in a large number of employees desiring to leave.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep close contact with the frontline troops, do not get all your input from management. Ross Perot used to do this, but this seems to have been neglected.

Pros

A lot of the people are great, and they tend to give you amazing opportunities

Cons

The salaries are low, and the potential for financial growth is minimal. It is hard when you come in at a low salary hoping for increases, and you don't get them.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure your employees know how much you care. Reward them for the hard work.

Pros

Outward appearance to others, posting of other job openings, number of locations in which an employee can transfer, access to all personal info via Perot portal such as direct deposit info, the ability to access proof of income, etc.

Cons

Mandatory time limits between job changes, poor decision making in times of promotions/job offers, biased procedures depending on who breaks the policies and in general office politics among supervisors and directors. Tasks are often mindless and repetitive.

Advice to Senior Management

Promote on skill and ability, not on emotion. Eliminate the use of multiple policies - including those that affect multiple teams, but especially those implemented differently between co-workers. Treat the entire company as a team. Many regions and sections are simply left out of various programs.

Pros

You could stick your nose into other projects and help out if/when you wanted to. Great place for a generalist to learn different things if you're willing to step outside of your comfort zone.

Cons

"Bag the Big Elephant" mentality. No room for thinking like a small company. They tended to forget a lot of business in the medical community that could have been tapped from forming smaller more agile teams to go after local physician groups.

The day they went public is the day it started going downhill. Ross Jr. is a real-estate developer. He couldn't care less about Perot being a technology company.

Advice to Senior Management

Get employees to buy back the company. Go private again and become the company it was 15 to 20 years ago. Don't be afraid to let your good people strike out and bring business in without the overhead of your over-priced hosting solution in your fat, overfed data center.