Pros
- Recruitment was great and made me feel valued and remembered
- Onboarding was informative and the process was clearly fine-tuned
- My Revel support manager and direct manager cared about my success
- HR was extremely responsive with my occasional inquiries as a new hire and seemed personally invested in equipping me with the tools and resources I needed
Cons
- Up front you experience the Revel culture; in actuality it's mostly Infogain (this is my experience as a contracted hire; it may differ for direct hires acting as official Revel staff supporting its consultants).
I was aware that Revel was under the ownership of Infogain, but representation of the culture felt somewhat like an unintentional bait-and-switch, with Revel being the face of operations, then Infogain being the actual day-to-day experience. Infogain is clearly very organized, informative, and communicative, but it wasn't the culture I thought I would be a part of. My support contacts were from the Revel office, which I greatly appreciated, it just wasn't what I experienced on the daily, which was disappointing.
- Pointless timecards and sluggish tools
Even as a salaried consultant, I was required to submit a weekly timecard in a very clunky tool that was both functionally inconsistent and not intuitive. We were also expected to submit our time in advance when the end of the month interrupted the end of the week. I've worked with other consulting agencies in the past and never had to deal with this, either as a salaried consultant or even when submitting timecards as an hourly associate. Requesting time off also felt like a chore and turnaround time for approvals was inconsistent.
- Too much learning added to the recipe for burnout
There were also constant learning requirements, demanding hours of investment, which I never had time for and which caused a great deal of added stress to an already demanding role. While I appreciate the vast access I had to various learning resources, the intense *requirement* of choosing from the list of programs felt stifling. (This was in addition to the usual annual Microsoft security trainings and Infogain's tech security and periodic AI trainings they had us taking to keep up with their ability to market themselves a certain way.) ...I really do understand and value the importance of learning and training, but it becomes a real problem when having to decide between "learning a new skill" and completing an important deliverable. Being fully committed to doing my very best and meeting expectations, I did most of my learning after regular working hours.
- Unfair compensation with apparently no room for adjusting in the new statement of work?
This may be specific to my situation and the intense organization I was working for, but it is important to share:
After being given one job description and believing the pay to be decently fair, I discovered within a very short time that the role was changing and changing fast. When it became evident what I was dealing with, I and my manager described the ways it had drastically changed, and how well I was pivoting and stepping up to what was needed, but that more support would be required soon.
After a few months of no change except a continued increase of responsibility, I asked for an appropriate increase in pay. (I know the budget cycle full well and asked before anything would be set in stone for the upcoming fiscal year.) Instead of any immediate attempt to review my work together to determine what adjustments should be made, I was told that scope creep is a thing and we could see how that might be better prevented, but that compensation probably would not be up for discussion for another year. This gave me pause, and I still wonder whether this was the way Revel usually operates, or whether it was simply a fear of losing this specific client manager (who never did listen to us about the changing demands of the role). Eventually I was able to review the extent of my work with Revel to prove how thinly stretched I was, but by then it was too late for any chance of changing my statement of work.
I am a smart, incredibly organized, and determined employee, committed to outstanding work wherever I go. I held out nearly six months longer than I should have due to the need for work and the absence of opportunities in this unfortunate job market. Ultimately I left things far better than I found them, and am proud of all I accomplished, but for the sake of my health I do wish I had left much, much sooner.