Pros
I honestly cannot think of a single pro. This is absolutely the worst place I have ever worked. I suspect the overall rotten atmosphere is caused by the origins of the company. That is, NTT Data in Japan, the parent company, decided it wanted to be a major player in the global IT market. To do so, it had to become active in the US market. Consequently, it went on a buying spree in the US purchasing several US companies of various sizes and cultures. Initially, each acquisition was allowed to function more or less autonomously. But then one day, all were thrown together into a single unified company. The cultures of the individual companies were destroyed overnight and were replaced by an uncaring, pass the buck culture. Operationally, employee support processes ceased to work. It was a mess and it has not improved much over the course of 2-3 years. In short, this company is less than the sum of its parts which is a reflection on upper management and is truly sad
Cons
- Be sure to ask the recruiters about the bench policy! (I doubt they volunteer this. It applies to everyone, even salaried employees.) Basically, if you're hired for a project that ends, you have approximately 2 weeks to be assigned to a new project or you will be placed on unpaid leave for a while; forced to draw down any vacation; and eventually be terminated after only a very few weeks. I suspect this policy is a product of the body shop mentality of the company. - If you resign from NTT Data, they will not pay out accrued vacation. This says a lot about their approach to employees. That is, employees are a cost to be minimized as opposed to a resource to cultivate. - The company seems to be successful at talking over IT operations of clients; sending much of the work offshore as they replace the former US employees; and then keeping the operations running. On the other hand, the company appears totally incapable of successfully running projects that have to come up with something new such as a custom application for a client. The project management is terrible. - Once projects get into trouble, employees are urged to work untold hours with empty promises of "We'll make this up to you later." Also, executives may show up to try to find solutions to the problems but the executives speak only to project managers. They do not ask those in the trenches about problems. I know of several projects that were essentially abandoned after 1-2 years of effort being expended with little or no results. What is worse, NTT managers fail to even attempt to learn from their mistakes. They just move on to another project and commit the same mistakes. (Prospective clients: BEWARE! ) - Support for many H/R issues and operational items (time sheet management, PTO balance maintenance, etc) is done offshore.. The offshore support staff is consistently missing in action, It can take weeks or even months to resolve the simplest of issues. Onshore management does not appear to be able to improve the situation and appear resigned to tolerating it. Onshore management has literally said "That's just the way it is, We have no influence over these people." - The company pretends to be a employee friendly. By this I mean there are always two policies - the stated policy and the real policy. For example, the company loves to talk about the importance of employee career planning and the importance of the annual appraisal process. This stated but essentially fictitious process/policy has major flaws First, the items employees list in a so-called career plan will almost certainly be ignored. The appraisal process is pretty much a joke. While it might play a minor role in determining the meager raise, it is on all other counts meaningless. Managers seem more inclined to treat these processes as annoyances to get out of the way as quickly as possible with as little real thought as possible. This is the real policy/process.
