Pros

Good pay, great benefits, training opportunities, and of a (somewhat) good bonus system called PIP

Cons

I had extremely high hopes for Navy Federal and made many life-altering commitments to accept this job. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out for me, and I’d like to use this opportunity to tell you why. Please don’t take what I’m writing as complaining or being negative, as that’s actually the furthest thing from the truth. I’m writing this because I care. I’m writing this as constructive criticism and I’m putting it all out there, as honestly as I can, to help Navy Federal become a better place. I truly care about many of the friends and coworkers I left behind. Many of these people will remain in my life for years to come and it’s with the best interest of the organization that I write this. What I mention below is going to paint ISD (the Navy Federal Information Services Department) with a large brush. While there are exceptions to the list below, the vast majority of what I’m saying applies to ISD leadership across the board. ISD has ineffective leadership The leadership in ISD is either missing, rendered ineffective, or completely misguided. At every step of the way ISD management can only be considered amateur. At no time is there any confidence that the management does any sort of planning, has any enterprise technical standards or goals, or does anything other than react to complaints of the business. Preemptively working with the business to identify their needs ahead of time in a strategic manner must be done in order to gain the confidence, support, and respect of the business. The trends that are being followed are just that -- those of followers, not leaders. There is no innovative, out of the box, or otherwise creative thinking going on. Barring all that, there is no technical, logical, or practical thinking or leadership being done in any way that results in effective procedure, policy, or process. No one in executive ISD leadership has had the role they are in at a previous company, nor have they held that position in a company remotely our size. This is evident by their action and inaction and the overall ineffectiveness of ISD as a whole. Many of the BRMs are able to salvage the complete failure of their bosses by working directly with the business units, however, the technical debt that ISD has incurred over the years has built up to almost an unsustainable amount as a result of failed management. This technical debt manifests itself in both overworked IT staff and a complete loss of faith in ISD by many business units. ISD has no vision The introduction of NextSteps/ITIL has brought about a mindset of siloed empires built on top of Service Owners, Service Managers, and Resource Managers. This top-heavy, expensive suite of middle management does nothing to increase collaboration and ownership of the final product delivered by ISD, but instead encourages a myopic and otherwise small worldview of the IT services we provide. This mindset has compartmentalized the IT infrastructure to the point where a sense of ownership and problem solving has all but disappeared from the organization, with teams reluctant and unsure how to step across boundaries and borders to see end-to-end improvement of delivered IT services. The introduction of “OneISD” is in itself also fool hearted, as not only does it segregate ISD from the rest of the Credit Union (shouldn’t we be “OneNavyFederal”?) but it is impossible to attain without the current culture of silos and finger pointing being replaced. While the hope of a collaborative team of IT professionals who all work toward a common goal is admirable and the right direction, without a plan on how to implement said goal and a budget to do yet another organizational restructuring, it’s as naive as attempting to build a house without blueprints. Such things do not just happen on their own, but one must become the change they wish to see. An organization that is designed as independent parts does not simply mesh without realigning and restructuring the parts in place. Retaliation in the workplace When an employee becomes targeted by management, they are often held to a different standard as long as the eye of management is focused upon them. I’ve seen on several occasions an employee that has been unjustly the target of management oversight to the point where the employee must either take the abuse, go to Employee Relations with hope that ER can be of assistance, or must leave the company. The targeted employee in these cases has become the focus because of either questioning a policy, underperforming due to lack of training/being hired for a different skill set, or because someone in a position over the manager has expressed a dislike for that employee. In all cases, the added focus was not done in a fair and just manner. Management used its position to intimidate the employee rather than hold a mature and professional dialogue with the employee in an attempt to understand the employee’s position and come to a joint resolution. A class system and cronyism in action Managers are treated as a separate and higher class than regular employees. Not only are they given assigned parking spaces (when parking isn’t even an issue, such as Milton), they are given perks such as free baseball tickets, better equipment not offered to regular employees, access to organizational information that is relevant to all employees, and above all the joys of “Manager’s discretion” in regards to policy. This translates directly to inconsistent treatment of employees across the various teams of ISD, some of which enjoy perks that others do not. These managers regularly participate in cronyism, covering for and protecting each other to retain their positions of power and control that they hold most dear. Internal promotions and job opportunities are not given to existing members of the team as a chance for growth, but instead given to managers from other groups, or people they know will “toe the line”, even though those people aren’t the best fit for improvement in the organization. As the great George S. Patton once said, If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking. Those who think alike are held in higher regard than those who have actually solved these problems before and may offer a fresh or different approach. Managers are incapable of measuring quality I have seen over and over again that ISD managers lack the ability to determine a quality employee over an employee who is mediocre or brings little value to the organization. What matters to ISD managers is not the technical ability of the engineer, how hard the engineer works, or what kind of support and leadership that engineer provides to other members of the team, but instead if the engineer is in his or her seat exactly on time and if they put in extra hours. I’ve had this conversation with managers and they WANT to see people putting in extra hours. As an engineer, if I have to work a lot of extra hours, that means I’m bad at my job. If I can’t preemptively fix a problem before it happens the second or third time, then I’m not a very good engineer. This mentality is insanity, as problems for which an engineer is called can mean a service interruption which has a very real impact to the business and our members. Automation or some sort of process should be in place that prevents me, as an engineer, from being called at 1am to resolve the issue. Systems will always experience failures, but if you are routinely putting in 5-10 extra hours in unplanned work each week, then you and your manager need to do some serious reevaluation of what it is being done on the team. Staff level employees also have their time micromanaged as if they were hourly. Comp time is not given out freely for extra time worked. Myself and other engineers have had to work over 40 hours in a week and still take leave for time we missed due to sickness or appointments. Disagreement is considered dissention If an employee disagrees with a policy set in place by management, even if this disagreement is done in a professional and respectful manner, that disagreement is not considered constructive criticism or a matter of opinion, but is considered dissention and that employee is then labeled a troublemaker and disgruntled. Open and honest conversation, which is organic and needed for any organization to grow, is frowned upon. Too often the stick is used and not the carrot. Employees should be incentivized and encouraged to ask questions and do a better job, instead they are just beaten back and told to fall in line, even when that line leads right off the cliff. A culture of complacency Management and leadership is not actually concerned about improving the services ISD provides, but instead they’re concerned about playing political games, furthering their individual careers, and participating in acts of self-promotion while retaining and building their empire. I spent countless hours helping my teammates so that our group as a whole could provide better service, and I was told by my management not to help those poor performing employees, that those teammates needed to fail, even if it was to the detriment of the team. A failure in ISD is a failure to the business and a failure to the Credit Union as a whole. That mentality is unacceptable, especially in our “leadership”. Furthermore, because accurate reviews are not given out at PAR time, employees learn quickly that it doesn’t matter how hard they work, who is getting the Exceeds Expectations review has for the most part already been decided, so anything they do above and beyond is wasted effort and wasted stress on their part. The review system is broken ISD employees are not allowed to get fair reviews because there is a quota on the number of Exceeds Expectations that can be given out at review time. Many employees who deserve better reviews are given Meets Expectations so that the chosen select few will receive their Exceeds Expectations. This is all because the review is tied to PIP, and because of this, ISD management is literally taking thousands and tens of thousands of dollars away from deserving employees and giving it to their favorite employees. I received the worst review of my professional career here, simply because of a broken review system. The same manager who gave me this mediocre review selected me Service Manager a year later, after I left his team and he wanted me back. Clearly I must have exceeded expectations, though my PAR and my PIP did not reflect that at all. PIP is broken The financial gap between a Meets Expectation and an Exceeds Expectation is far too great, especially for the 80-82 grade level where I was situated. If you want to give employees bonuses, give them bonuses that are not PIP. PIP should be equally shared among everyone in the Credit Union who is eligible, much like things are done at USAA. Higher performing employees can and should receive another bonus that is not PIP, but by freeing the review system from PIP, employees will be eligible to receive fair and accurate reviews. The quota system that is currently in place is disingenuous at best and thievery at worst. Compensation is broken As previously noted, because of the broken review system, I only received a Meeting Expectations on my first PAR. Nearly a year later, when I was selected for Service Manager, because of my low PAR, I was only offered a 5% pay increase for what would equate to a ten-fold increase in responsibility. This pay increase actually still kept me lower paid than some of the lower-performing team members that would be reporting to me. I regretfully had to turn down the position, not solely because of the money, but because I would have been in a position where change and improvement would have been pushed against me by my ISD leadership and the quality of my life would have been reduced dramatically. I was not going to sacrifice my home life for a company that was not capable of appreciating my skillset or making the changes necessary to improve quality of service. Telework and Compressed Work Schedule Telework is always a touchy subject. I will simply state that Navy Federal should not make claims that telework is an option when it is not available on a recurring basis. I was told by my hiring manager that telework was indeed an option for me, as other members of the team at the time were working from home up to two days a week and we had full-time telework employees. This manager knew full well that I was not allowed to telework at GPO, but I was still sold that “benefit” at the time of hiring. Furthermore, telework is an important Service Continuity issue. In my role at a previous organization, we lost our data center and access to our office building due to terrorist attacks that came through the postal system. From that point on it was clear and evident that being able to perform one’s job remotely was imperative to keeping the business running. It became a requirement going forward that everyone in IT be able to perform their job remotely. Employees were given the necessary equipment to do remote work and it was mandated that they work remotely at least one day a month to keep their equipment up to date and the process fresh in their mind. At Navy Federal, compressed work schedules are implemented in a way that employees who work 4-10s cannot take either Friday or Monday off. Since Fridays and Mondays are typically slower days, I can only assume that this is done for political reasons, to discourage CWS, or as a way to “prevent” those employees who have the ability to take CWS from having three day weekends. Unprofessional work environment (GPO) The desk and work environment at GPO is insulting and unprofessional for an IT organization. Not only is there not enough space for two engineers to collaborate at one workstation, the noisy contact center style desks do not allow confidential or secure conversations to take place. Additionally the background noise makes it almost impossible to hear and be an active participant in Adobe Connect sessions at your desk without either learning monk-like powers of focus and concentration or putting a finger in your open ear. Additionally those next to you trying to have work conversations do so right at your desk during conference calls, preventing you from hearing what’s on the phone no matter how hard you try. Listeners at the other end of the conference call hear the loud background noise from your deskmates conversations. We are not contact center employees. We need to collaborate and that requires an environment that’s conducive to collaboration.