RainKing Employee Reviews about "research department"

Pros

Good out of college opportunity and work environment. The company is made up primarily of college graduates. Compensation is fair for someone who is just entering the work force and has limited experience. RainKing also provides a health insurance plan and 401k option with a 50% match. In the research department the bonus structure is based on individual performance and delivered quarterly. Other bonuses include a iPad raffle and end of the quarter lunch. Work hours are flexible and after you put in your time a work from home option becomes available. Although they do not have sick days RainKing does provide PTO. The work culture is casual (shirt, pants, shoes or sandals) and employees participate in happy hour events at least once a month. Once you prove that you are an asset to the company your manager will typically leave you to do your work. As long as you get your work done they are not too concerned with what ever else you do or how long your break is. From what I have seen, it is extremely difficult to get fired from this company. Former employees that have been fired were struggling to meet their goals constantly for over a year before termination. With that said, the management staff do give plenty of heads up and are willing to work with their employees to fix the problem before it becomes a question of termination.

Cons

First off I want to address some of the prior posts I have seen here. Bill Kapner, does not run this company like a dictator. He is an entrupnar at heart, building company is his hobby and money is a byproduct. He runs it like a business driven to make profit. Prior to RainKing he had a company called Big Doug with a similar structure. After the company reached a net worth of 25 million, he sold it. He intends to do the same here. Within the last two years he has made several changes including bringing in a new director to oversee the research department. Since this persons arrival, the database and work out put has increased dramatically while the number of research employees has decreased. It is not a stretch to believe that Bill Kapnar is looking to sell sooner rather than later. With that I think who ever buys the company will make RainKing a more structured environment and remove some of the luxuries that employees enjoy. Other ominous signs stem from new research practices. The company is developing an online network of contractors to build their database for a flat rate fee per assignment. It has proven to be very successful and with that I think the number of employees within the research department will dwindle even further as management determines more cost effective ways to build and manage their database. Some posts claim that the work is out sourced to India. This is true. A lot of the bean counting work and structured tasks have been outsourced to an India based company. Again, as time goes on I am sure management will figure out away to utilize cheaper labor to build and maintain their database. In my personal experience I have come to the conclusion this is not a company to build a career, at least not within the research department. Many of the skills I have gained at RainKing are typically not applicable to other company's within a research industry nor is their much growth potential with a career in research. Advancements are few and far in between. The highest I have seen people get advanced is to a senior level researcher. With that fancy title employees get a slight bump in pay. After that opportunities to advance are nearly nonexistent. Day to day work is boring. The tasks are repetitive and motivation to overachieve is low. Management has made several reforms to their weekly bonus structure and their latest change does little to reflect individual efforts let alone team performance.

Pros

Flexibility on the job and with working from home

Cons

Low pay management clearly doesn't care about the research department they're just too easy to fill and perform simple dumb work lot of inter office relationships