Altria Reviews

Pros

Cant think of any at the moment.

Cons

Toxic culture. Favoritism. Clueless people managers. Subjective review process for bonus and merit increases. Promised one thing, delivery nothing even close.

Pros

Good co-workers, job used to give you the ability to come up with opportunities and solve business challenges (key word: used to), DPS/401k, Free Traverse

Cons

Where do we start? 1) Check the stock price the last: 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 year. All down down down. Why? JUUL + Cronos. Our brilliant CEO enjoys lighting cash on fire for fun. 2) Recent Layoffs: - 2012 - 2016 - 2019 With significant layoffs, there are far less opportunities for young employees out of college to advance and progress their career 3) SalesForce treating MMs like robots. No autonomy to identify market specific opportunities and work with the team to solve 4) CEO has created worst culture in my 20 year career. Worse than Mike Szymanczyk. He was cruel, but at least grew shareholder value. 5) Legislation: JUUL/eVapor sales contingent upon 2021 PTMA approval. FDA just announced increased cigarette warning labels on packs covering top 50%.

Pros

Compensation is extremely generous and the benefits are fantastic, the majority of coworkers (especially TSMs) and genuinely wonderful people, decent flexibility around the hours/times you work, if you can find the time and are self-driven you can work on some interesting projects.

Cons

This is going to be long, but to summarize- great place to start your career or move into early in your career, get your MBA for free with their tuition reimbursement, and then get the hell out. Over the last year the workload is becoming crushing- average store count in my area increased by ~60%, company has started using a Salesforce platform and made it mandatory to take pictures in each store to try and track and measure every task completed on a given visit, meaning they expect more work from more stores, yet they have been clear that there would be no increase in compensation in the foreseeable future. (Compensation is still much higher than the market average, but if you're doing more work for the same pay, it's going to rub people the wrong way) POS materials are shipped directly to your house in massive quantities, but mostly with no indication for which accounts they are for or when they need to be placed, so expected to dedicate a garage/spare bedroom just to storing POS, and spending time on evenings or weekends organizing and refreshing your POS so it doesn't get completely out of hand. It's gotten worse recently, typically once a month you may receive around 10-15 boxes roughly 2x2x2' or larger, not including whatever you have to order to replace what you actually need but wasn't force shipped to you. This has been an issue for years but no real progress seems to be made against it. Possibly the biggest issue is the total career stagnation and favoritism. If you come on board as an external hire rather than a intern, you should have zero expectation of getting ever being promoted unless you have a personal connection to someone at headquarters in Richmond. As others have mentioned, the most recent restructure flattened the field management structure and created "leadership development associate" rotation based training position as one of the only ways to get out of the field. There are over 1200 TSMs (until the next "restructure"/layoff), and only ~20 of these LDA positions so you can do the math... plus between the preference for promoting interns with no other work experience to compare the low morale and toxic culture to, and the fact that people who were on the verge of promotion are de facto "first in line" waiting for those positions to open up- don't hold your breath on getting one. Interns or manager's favorites also have special projects doled out to them, transfer requests approved for them when others are not, more face time with 2nd and 3rd line managers, etc. Oh, and then there are the bizarre decisions that come down from on high. Constant calls to "transform our business!" and become "New AGDC!", but they seem stuck on the model of throwing products out in the market to see what sticks, pushing TSMs to shove products onto retailers, only to turn around and pull them out when they flop (Anyone remember Verve?). Constantly claiming to be innovating and streamlining our operational platforms, but there seems to be no clear plan for how that works- everything is spread out across at least five different websites/platforms/applications which are constantly being recreated/dismantled/updated/moved. Not to mention the $13.8 BILLION dollar elephant in the room- the investment in Juul which as of the time of writing this has been written down by almost $9 billion. Senior leadership tries to sell everything they do as part of a brilliant master plan, but they're selling to their sales people who can see through the BS- a bad investment is a bad investment.