Disappointing pay, benefits & management
Pros
● I liked my coworkers and direct supervisor ● Supporting school districts was rewarding work ● work from home was very convenient
Cons
● I was laid off with zero warning and zero severance. ● Salary was less than $50,000 a year. ● 10 PTO days, 3 sick days, 8 paid holidays. According to the employee handbook you’ll be upgraded to 15 days of PTO after seven years. Could be even worse but truly nothing to write home about. ● My health insurance was about $350 per month for pretty basic coverage for just me, no spouse or kids. Provider is United Healthcare. Again, could be even worse, but for me personally this was by far the most expensive health insurance I’ve ever had. ● Performance reviews (which are required to get a raise) are constantly months and months late. I never had a performance review happen anywhere close to when it was promised. Multiple coworkers confirmed this is a chronic issue. ● I received one raise of about 70 cents per hour, which was not enough to keep up with inflation. By the time I was laid off my salary had less purchasing power than it did when I was hired, and I was three months overdue for a performance review. ● I regularly worked more than 40 hours each week but was not paid for any of this extra work until the law changed and they were legally required to either increase my salary or make me an hourly employee. They chose to make me hourly. ● Very high turnover. Management claims the average employee’s tenure is ~10 years but this number is heavily skewed by a handful of employees who have spent their entire career with CIC. By the time I was laid off I was one of the longest serving members of my team, as almost every single person who was there when I started only two years ago had left the company. ● Additional details about getting laid off: a contract which represents a massive chunk of CIC’s business was abruptly canceled. This was obviously very concerning, but leadership struck a reassuring tone in meetings, saying things like, “CIC has been around for a long time,” “we have built relationships with our customers that won’t change,” etc. then about a week later I got an unscheduled zoom call from the COO who did all of the talking while the CSO and CEO stared at me without saying anything. I was told I was being let go with no severance, then about a minute later, I was signed out of everything. Based on peoples’ LinkedIn profiles it looks like a lot of people were laid off with me, including people who had been working there for 10+ years. I understand layoffs were necessary, but zero warning, zero severance and zero chance to say goodbye to my team really sucked. They could have very easily told us the truth ahead of time that layoffs were going to happen, and they could have very easily offered even just a week or two of severance, but they didn’t. Management says all of the same things you’ll hear at any company, “we’re a family,” and all that, but if you had to lay off someone who you really cared about, is this how you would do it?
