Micromanagement, culture of blame, and poorly-defined goals all trump the free bagels and fruit.
Pros
The people are excellent, and there is a sense of camaraderie that lasts beyond your time at Register.com. There are smart people who are willing to help each other solve problems, and are genuinely nice people. There is enthusiastic planning involved in the social functions, although they tend to plan events for family groups instead of the young professionals that make up most of their workforce. Register.com is very family-friendly, but does attempts to not be so at the expense of the employees without families. Fans of karaoke, 5k runs and baseball will do well working there! Free bagels and fresh fruit on Tuesdays! Free sodas all the time! Located between Port Authority and Penn Station, Register is an easy commute from anywhere in the tristate area.
Cons
Register.com hires external people for major projects and higher level positions and only promote people internally as a last resort, often without training or appropriate mentoring. If a person "steps up" to fill a void in the company they are seldom appreciated for the effort, and the review process makes it likely they'll take a hit on their bonus for stepping up. The goals process changes every year, and the highest level of recognition can only be achieved by those who spend their time kissing a lot of ass. If questions on what it takes to reach that goal marker the answer is usually "the bar is set very high" instead of a practical improvement that could be made. Strong workers are given unrealistic deadlines, constantly shifting goals and faced with arrogance from management. The culture of blame is out of control and the first step in a crisis seems to be "who is getting fired for this?" instead of "how can we fix this?" Project leaders only want to be accountable when projects succeed and it causes a great deal of confusion as small decisions are passed all the way up to upper management for approval. There was a growing "class distinction", especially between management and the worker bees. They disregard technical and professional experience in favor of people who went to "better" schools.
