Many things..where do I start?..below are some of the most obvious cons at IM
- One of the cheapest Fortune 100 company around, love to talk about how much cash they have on hand and what kind of business they should go out and acquire but at the same time, will layoff people, cut promotion, freeze wages and hiring the moment the market is softer than they expect. With all that cash on hand, you would think they will actually invest in their people. Instead, they will outsource everything they can, from ops, tech support, recruiting..etc. I understand if the company is losing money then cutback must be made but when the company is making money and you're still cutting back, that's just a slap to the employee morale. Stop trying to please Wall street investors, the reason IM stock is going nowhere because distribution isn't an exciting or fast growing business, stop trying to be the next Baidu.com, this is a mid-cap slow growth stock at best.
-The company is so cheap they basically told the employee to bring in food (as potluck) to celebrate the company's 30th anniversary. That's right, no company wise catering, bring your own food to celebrate their success.
-The last couple of years, they have been cutting back on labor cost, so guess what? Capped vacation hours, cut back on 401k matching. mandatory forced furlough during Christmas and fewer and fewer off site (and when we do have one, it's something really cheap). Health benefit is getting more and more expensive, yet we only get a very small credit per paycheck to offset the cost. For me with one dependent I have to pay over $100+ each check for health insurance alone.
-Changed their bonus structure to benefit upper management. We used to get a decent percentage of our annual wages X performance target but last year IM dropped it by half but they raised the performance target to make it look like you can get more money. Unfortunately the math doesn't add up, the drop basically equals to way less even if the company overachieve. This is bad, but to add insult to injury, when they chopped it by half they only did so for non-managers. For managers and upper management, they still get old percentage.
-Lack of decision making freedom at the lower level, even middle managers often lack the final decision making authority. At the end, this company is all about authoritative control from top down. Even though you think you have the right idea and experience to defend your decision, at the end it doesn't matter. Upper management will not respect your decision and will overrule you on it to suit their needs. Most of the time, we're busy bending backward catering to sales,resellers and vendors. Marketing, Ops and different departments essentially just function as "Yes Sir" to sales regardless of how ridiculous the request maybe, afterward, sales just need to bring in the bacon, they don't have to clean up the mess.
-Favoritism to the max. You will see that in your own department, from peer doing less work than you, coming in late all the time or calling in sick at the drop of a dime, to seeing people getting promoted without the qualification. If you know the right people or are like by certain someone at upper management, you can skip steps in getting promoted (Going from a Marketing manager I to Vendor business manager..etc) However, if you don't play into the politics, even if you have the know how and the experience, it will be a slow process to even move one step. When you do, you will discover how small the merit increase is, low single digit percentage to the next grade? Seriously? Other companies do that just on the yearly review. They will dangle that little piece of carrot with a magnifying class in front, once you get to it, you'll realize how small the carrot really is.
- Big income gap between non-managers to upper management (Director levels and above). This is not really specify to Ingram but they are not doing anything to make it better either. They know wages and compensation is an issue from the company survey yet fail to address it years after years. Look at the salary range on here and you'll see a difference between marketing manager and a Director. Also, job titles are mis-leading. Marketing manager is no more than a marketing rep at other companies and their pay certainly do not reflect the income of a Marketing Manager, same goes for their accountant..etc.
-Stop with the silly internal slogan..."Get to Yes!" Do you really mean Get to Yes when sales request for something and Yes to profit? Sales will love to throw that slogan at you when they want something done their way regardless of how ridiculous it is. Don't you guys remember the whole "Do whatever it takes" tag line...for us old timer, we all remember how well that worked out...Instead how about "Get to Yes" in investing in your workers, or "Get to Yes" on profit sharing, "Get to Yes" on becoming more democratic in decision making process at the lower level....
