Pros
Benefits are above average, starting pay is decent for the industry, micro-managing is discouraged (at least it was in my department). Contractors/temporary employees seem to be treated well and temporary workers are paid for the holidays they had off. The office buildings and facilities are beautiful in the Bothell, WA location. There are plenty of nearby nature trails to enjoy.
Cons
Yearly raises are small and it is difficult to move up or around in the company, as internal job transfers tend to be rewarded via favoritism and not through merit. There are too many time-consuming, pointless meetings and reports. However, the biggest issue of all is the chaotic environment: too many politics, bloated egos and often ineffective management. The company culture thrives on “putting out fires,” rather than being proactive and planning ahead accordingly. Lower-to-middle-level supervisors are often too afraid to discipline difficult employees. Good employees are then expected to pick up the slack for their poor-performing peers and the work-life balance can be non-existent (it is very difficult to be fired here and abysmal employees take full advantage of this). The higher-level managers have often acquired their jobs through nepotism and not because they earned it. Many of them do not add any value to the company and they are a huge waste of payroll and morale... Moreover, there is a lot of unnecessary, blatant disrespect and un-professionalism that occurs among the departments. Most of this stems from the fact that there is too little understanding or consensus over what each department is/is not responsible for and the various departments are beset with both an“us versus them” and a “the sky is falling” mentality. Finally, corporate keeps approving high-volume programs with increasingly short deadlines without bothering to do any research as to whether or not the company has the infrastructure to support this increased volume of work within the promised shortened lead-time (newsflash – it often does not). Not surprisingly, this cutthroat, thankless culture has resulted in a loss of many exceptionally talented employees over the years… If you are an honest, hard-working employee, you had better develop a backbone quickly or you will 1) be “rewarded” by drowning in too much thankless work and 2) get dragged into the pettiness, drama and politics that management seems to thrive on.
