Pros
Great products, good benefits, smart motivated employees and huge amounts of potential. This is a company that has the ability to do very well in spite of the poor economy.
Cons
The company is currently very disjointed due to the numerous aqusitions. There is a lot of uneccessary beauracreacy because it seems senior managment feels they must watch everything. I'm guessing that this is because they do not feel they "know" the employees in those companies they have aquired in the same way they know emloyees they have hired and developed themselves. There are many unnecessary policies. Things like travel policies that require employees take flights with numerous stops often arriving extremely late at night. A number of emplyoees have expressed concern for their personal health and safety having to travel under such guidelines. This seems unreasonable all for the sake of a$150.00. Paul Ricci himself must approve each and every new hire even if it is a replacement hire for someone who has resigned. VP's must sign off on any travel that does not meet the stringent travel policies. There are layers of policies and approvals for every little item which does not give the business units much abiity to be creative, proactive or nimble. So many policies are one size fits all with no room for mangement to make adjustements fitting the circumstances. Middle managers are not empowered any more than their staff. This makes them appear to be ineffective and useless. Managers are expected to enforce policies and processes that they had no input to. Managers are not informed of upcomming changes in a manner that allows them to prepare for employee reactions or questions. Because of this communication style the company grapevine runs rampant. As a manger I am constantly questioned about rumors etc. that I have not received information about even though the rumors often turn out to be true. Clearly there are employees who are divulging information before it should be released to front line staff. The company did not give any raises in January which is their normal review and raise cycle. There is no approved budget given to department heads and their managers - this makes it very difficult for the various areas to judge how they are doing and contributes to the high stress level that many have previously commented on.