Pros
Benefits, job security. They promote from within 99% of the time. Good vacation program. Mostly nice people to work with (with exception of management).
Cons
This place sucks you into their world & tries to 'mold' you into one of them. They have these values that a past president claims to have come up with but in reality he paid a consultant for. And the values are really only 2, not 10. Prudence & Profit. Skip the rest, that's what the execs at lunch talk about. Many good people work there. The issue is the ones who try to do things that make sense are pushed aside & often told they have to work on their attitude or demeanor, or some other lame management jargon. Middle management consist of a large, layered puppet show. No one feels like they can make a decision from middle mgt on down, for fear of being hung out to dry. All decisions inevitably are made by at least an rvp on up. If you have an rvp that supports this program, good luck. There are meetings about meetings about meetings. Then they wonder why their customers (agents) complain about our service. No one is there to pick up the phone or answer an email because they are in a meeting! It is literally a circus. As for how people are treated, you can be doing as good or better a job than the next person, but if ONE person in upper management decides that they have an issue with you, throw in the towel. And all it takes is one little thing to cause that, you are black listed. It goes the other way too. If one of them sees you at the grocery store, strikes up a conversation, decides they like you, you are all of a sudden on the 'fast track' & can do no wrong, even though you may not be the right person for the job. There is favoritism & nepotism running rampant. There was a book by a past ceo co-written called 'Take the Stairs'. That guy was the son-in-law of a past ceo. Stairs? Escalator is a better name for the book. After it came out, everyone received a copy & it was 'recommended' that we all read it. How could one stomach it if they knew the story of the dynasty? No thanks. The one thing many of us working there always thought was that we, being a prudent & frugal as we are, did not pay anyone, all the way to the top, like an Enron exec was paid. I always guessed that a top exec would make around $500k-$2m depending on the bonus structure (for those of you who do not work there, this may sound very low, but if you do, it makes sense). Well, not the case. The past ceo I referred to made, in one year (2008) $14M. Yes people, Fourteen million dollars. Make your own judgement about taking the stairs.
