SirsiDynix Employee Reviews about "high deductible"

Pros

Great People to work with, who care about the library Industry and have long tenure in the library industry. Supportive owners who know how valuable it is to retain and keep happy customers Leadership who knows about the library industry.

Cons

High deductible Insurance Policy but offset with HSA. Bring back per diem to the travel policy

Pros

atmosphere, team, manager, growth & potential, fellow employees willingness to help and teach, HR team, fun activities, YIMees

Cons

health insurance with high deductible, feels like voice isn't always heard, more recognition from VP or Execs would be nice

Pros

Engineering management genuinely cares about the people that work there. They will give you opportunities to improve if you end up struggling. They also are very good to work with you around family life, illness, etc. The engineering department is making very serious efforts to modernize and automate to give the developers more time to create and to ensure product quality, something that has been badly needed. Upward progress has recently been clearly defined and there is a path now for promotions and what the expectations are for advancement. They are trying very hard to come up with perks to help with retention when funds aren't available for at market rates for engineers. Remote options, very flexible schedules, etc.

Cons

Pay - you'll see this on almost every review. I have lost too many good co-workers due to low pay and it is painful. Engineers working at a level 4 or 5 can leave Sirsi to go to a company across the street, or even to a company in the same parking lot, to work at a level 1 or 2 and make 15k-20k more a year. Sirsi's customer base isn't retail - they have a very limited set of customers, so it is understandable, but retention is horrible because of it. Tenure based promotions rather than skill based - you can be an absolute rock star but unless you've 'put in your time' you won't get a promotion. This isn't to say they don't reward good efforts, bonuses are a thing, if small, and you can get promoted ahead of schedule in some cases, but it is rare. Retention - there are some trickle down issues with the retention problems. There aren't enough engineers on staff to make it easy to remove under-performing employees. They do try hard to give struggling employees better opportunities to succeed - they'll move people to different teams if there are personality issues or if someone happens to be better at a different aspect of programming than others (front end vs back end, etc). That is great - but often, poor performing employees stick around for a very long time, then end up with lots of product knowledge that makes them even harder to remove. Too much vaporware - we still have a tendency to sell products that don't actually exist and then scramble to build it out afterwards. This is very painful for the engineers who would have loved to have had time to build out a solid product that produced the desired result, but often this vaporware is tied into contracts with customers and has a set release date with penalties if not delivered...that almost always ends as you would expect. The health benefits are really about the worst I've had to deal with in 15 years of employment. Very high deductible plans, next to zero matching contributions for the HSAs that are supposed to help offset the costs. Lots of co-insurance.

Pros

I have seen over the past few years a renewed commitment to customer satisfaction. Especially for our Horizon customer base. The people I work with are dedicated at producing the best products and providing legendary customer service. Time and time again I see my colleagues work above and beyond to help libraries. The Executive Team understands the needs of the library industry. I Hope to be with SirsiDynix for many years to come.

Cons

High deductible health insurance , but SD does match HSA contributions.

Pros

- Fantastic work environment, great breakrooms, relaxation rooms, gym in building, fun events and parties. - Excellent advancement opportunities - Great benefits, 401k w/matching, HSA Matching, Adoption Assistance, etc. - Family friendly - Willing to take chances on good candidates - Wonderful Managers, very professional **see Cons I seriously love working here, the only reason I put any cons is for full disclosure.

Cons

- Health Insurance is High Deductible/HSA - Actual pay is not as high as other companies, however the fringe benefits make this a bit more of a meh than a con - Performance Reviews are arbitrary and inconsistent - Lack of professional development for employees, advanced training and skills improvement **Some managers are clueless and lack leadership skills

Pros

Sirsi has an amazing life/work balance culture. Taking time off, working from home when needed, leaving a bit early and making up time later are things you almost don't even need to ask for as long as the work gets done. Middle management sincerely cares about their team members. The culture here is to try and do everything you can to help employees succeed rather than getting rid of any employee that isn't performing perfectly. This approach has drawbacks too as you can see in other reviews. Some departments offer full time remote positions allowing you to relocate just about anywhere if needed. I have to disagree quite strongly with the previous reviewer who was trying to place the blame for the slow development time of some products on 'remote workers'. I actually work on the team that makes the product that the reviewer mentions and remote workers have nothing to do with the release time (the team has a single remote employee), nor does it have anything to do with under performing engineers. I do share that reviewer's concerns about the end result however and I'll mention that in the cons below.

Cons

One of ongoing issues we have at Sirsi is that we sell a couple of very old products based on outdated technology that take a very long time to roll out to customers each release. Sales really likes to try and push the limits of those products and promises the world to the customers to win business and as such, the dev teams have to constantly add new features to these old products rather than working on new, more modern applications and technologies. Combine that with the very long time it takes to get our customers to update to the new technology and you end up with a never ending stream of 'must have' features that keep getting added to the end of a release cycle...which results in the 2 year long issues the previous reviewer mentioned. This can be insanely frustrating when you just want to get bugs fixed and features added and pushed out to customers quickly. It is important to note that there are only a few apps that we produce that are like that; we have a full suite of apps that are cloud based apps that have releases every two months, hence the 'agile development' label. These cloud apps make up about 90% of development staff as well. Sirsi is privately owned by investors and I don't know how else to say this - our current owners are horrific. They have no idea how tech companies work and they are pushing as hard as they can to cut any expenses to push up our 'revenue' to make us attractive to sell so they can get their money and get out. This is incredibly painful as they've cut off nearly all funds for replacing employees that leave, allowing raises and promotions, training employees, research and development, and several other critical items needed for a healthy company. Sirsi's culture of trying to save and improve employees rather than letting them go when there are performance issues has some drawbacks - you end up with several dead weight employees who are just at the edge of getting fired for several years. Eventually these employees do indeed get let go but it can take years. We also end up with lots of mediocre employees who aren't bad enough to be fired. The pay here is pretty low for the tech sector in the area. Sirsi has a hard time keeping up with the pay increase in the tech sector simply because of their customer base - there are only so many libraries out there and those libraries have a very limited budget. It isn't really an excuse, but this sector has razor thin margins. You won't be paid at top rate here, ever. You won't be totally underpaid either, the pay isn't horrible, but isn't good either. Advancement opportunities are a bit limited depending on your department and the current owners, . The health benefits are very mediocre, hovering on terrible. High deductible only plans with an HSA and a fairly small match.