Teacher Retirement System of Texas Reviews

Pros

Great agile teams, really make you feel like youre working towards a unified goal. Great benefits. Very well structured.

Cons

Must move, expensive housing, less than top pay.

Pros

TRS is the quasi-state agency to work for in TX. The culture is healthy with many areas of improvement for an aspiring employee to tackle with vigor. There is a lot of respect for family, and most leaders at TRS honor employees familial needs. It's sort of gov't, but sort of not. Salary is pretty decent when weighed against the workload expectation - not many companies offer pension these days! You can certainly make more at a private company, but your personal time won't be honored as much. Lots of opportunity to develop employees within the organization + advance their career trajectory at TRS ... can count on good leadership to invest in you if you seek it out and do the work Most people that work at TRS are happy and productive - that is pretty rare these days! People tend to remain with the organization for a long time.

Cons

No 401k matching; Salary for non-mgmt positions isn't very competitive for those wanting to live in Austin, TX; it's government work (slow/red tape/bureaucracy) unless you are on the investment side [which is a totally different animal].

Pros

Easy, ok pay, no drama

Cons

Big wigs , attitudes, holier than thou

Pros

Worked for about 1.5 years, mainly during COVID we had remote work so that was nice and the company gives lots of time off

Cons

Management was petty and would not approve time off based on how much you had left, made weird awkward meetings for no reason 1-1 and talked badly about other employees with other employees

Pros

State Benefits, plenty of days off including all major holidays plus more.

Cons

If you are in the call center, the call volume could be high and strict metrics.

Pros

The investment management division has a good culture and work life balance. It's a mostly stable work environment.

Cons

Little opportunity for career growth. There are a few teams with 'problem' leaders. Be careful about accepting a role on a team that has had high turnover, especially at a senior level.

Pros

-Health insurance is paid for and it’s amazing. It covers a lot. It’s very rare if you need to pay anything out of pocket, and if you do, it’s not that much. -Compensatory time instead of overtime pay. If you work over 40 hours for the week, you will get comp time at a rate of 1.5. I loved this because I could take more paid days off. They’re extremely understaffed and require you to work several hours extra so you’ll end up earning a lot of comp time without trying. -State holidays days off. You get a bunch of random days off. -You don’t have to “take home work” (although you work from home). Because it’s a call center, once you finish your last call for the day, you can log off of the computer and not have keep working on emails etc. after work hours.

Cons

-Members/customers are extremely rude. Most are angry by the time you get to the call because they’ve been waiting on the phone for hours since TRS is severely understaffed. You will get cussed at and called every name in the book before you can even introduce yourself. Members are calling about their retirement money/checks so it’s understandable that they get concerned, but most don’t have a positive opinion of TRS and will take it out on you. It’s extremely draining and dehumanizing. Managers are usually busy taking other escalated calls so you will have to put up with the angry customer for several minutes before being able to transfer the call to the manager. And no, you can not hang up on them because you will get in trouble. You just have to take it. -No variety in job duties. Every day is the same. You answer calls all day, and it’s usually the same questions. It’s very repetitive and boring. If you’re lucky, you can be trained on emails but it’s just answering the same repetitive questions. -Back to back calls. You are on calls all day, back to back, with the exception of two 15 minute brakes that are pre scheduled for you. There is no gap in between calls so make sure to make notes on the account before the call ends. As soon as one call ends, you start another. You don’t even have time to breathe in between calls. There were several times were angry members would hang up the phone so the system would automatically throw me into the next call, giving you no time to mentally process the horrible and racist things members call you. The call que usually has over 100 people waiting to speak to a counselor, so it doesn’t really ever slow down. It’s extremely rare if there’s no calls on the que so you do get a breather in between calls. -Little opportunity for growth, especially within the counseling department. TRS has a policy that only applies to Benefit Counselors. You can not apply for another department or position for 18 months. I guess they implemented this as a way to keep counselors because their turnover rate is so bad for this position. TRS itself is not a bad agency to work for, but the Benefit Counselor position is horrible and most of the counselors want to switch to another department. Sucks that they have this policy because the 18 month wait is too long to put up with this position. This position is not challenging in the fact that it does not promote you to learn new skills. The only skill you practice is customer service. If you want to grow your skill set and you’re a fast learner, this position is not for you. It gets boring fast. -Sometimes difficult to get days off. They have a system where you can select your days off on a calendar ahead of time, which is sort of nice because you don’t have to personally ask anyone for a day off since the system will just grant it to you. This system is nice but it requires you to plan your days off months in advance. The latest you can try to ask for a day off through the calendar is a month, sometimes a month and a few days. So if you decide that you want a day off in the next 2 weeks, good luck getting that day off. You will have to ask your manager who will then need to ask their manager. It gets complicated and takes a while to be approved. So you really need to plan your days off well in advanced. It sucks if you’re a spontaneous person and like to sometimes plan things the month off. Kinda sucks too because you have so many compensatory hours to use from all the overtime they make you work. -Mandatory overtime. There is so much mandatory overtime because they are so understaffed. You often have to work mandatory overtime before your shift, during your lunch, and after your shift. You’re promised an 1 hour lunch break when you start but you rarely ever get that because they almost always require you to work 30 minutes OT during lunch. If you had an appointment after work, good luck trying to get to it on time because you’re sometimes randomly required to work OT after your shift too or a customer kept you on the phone too long. There will be times were a member keeps you on the phone until 7:30 even though the call center closed at 6; and no, you cannot hang up on them. -Little autonomy. You get no say on when you can take your break or your lunch. It’s all prescheduled for you. And you have to follow that schedule as best as you can or else it will hurt your metrics. If your break is scheduled the first hour of your shift, you better take it even if you don’t really need it yet. If you’re lunch is scheduled until 1:30pm but you’re hungry at 11am, good luck because you can’t really eat during the call either because you’re doing most of the talking. Your whole day is already dictated for you. -Metrics. It’s a call center so they keep tract of everything and grade/score/rank you. If you take an unscheduled break to go to the restroom it will hurt your ratings. You will also get people messaging you when you take an unscheduled break.

Pros

Fantastic people to work with in serving an incredible mission.

Cons

On the lower quartile of bonus structure relative to peers.

Pros

None that I can think of

Cons

Micromanagement and favoritism are rampant. You are treated like an indentured servant.

Pros

TRS is a great place to work.

Cons

As with Govt. orgs, somewhat bureaucratic.