Management admits there is no room for growth; the only time you have the ability to move up is when someone retires, dies, or gets fired. Since the senior management is not concerned with grooming their subordinates for ascension up the ladder, they then decide to hire predominantly from outside because as they see it "nobody internally is ready for promotion". Even then, probably 90% of the time the position is not backfilled but absolved and the workload unevenly distributed to the remaining staff with no increase in compensation, and rarely is there any recognition or acknowledgement of the added workload aside from the "make it happen or else" attitude.
Management has little to no idea what consequences it has when committing the same resources to several projects all with competing deadlines, leaving multiple projects failing due to stretched thin and overloaded resources. They have Project Managers but they fail to listen to what they say. Forget about hiring new people to help, it's difficult enough as it is just to backfill an existing position. Attrition is an all-too common keyword around here.
Perception is that all management cares about is making their annual bonuses (which are based, in contract, off the parent company AutoZone's annual EBIT, not off our own - so there is no consequence for these managers when ALLDATA does not meet their financial obligations). The only recourse for failed EBIT is to strip the lower level employees (grade 14 and below) of any appreciation and or potential for merit increases beyond a ridiculously low standard, even if their departments exceeded their FY objectives. This is usually done to pay back AutoZone for any amount missed on the EBIT.
Did I mention that only grade 15 and above are eligible for bonus? Yet there are plenty of grade 13-14 supervisors who are the backbone of this company, and get shafted year after year. There used to be sick time as well, AutoZone removed it three CEOs ago in order to raise the value of their stock. Though with California passing the sick time state law AutoZone will be forced to address this again. I wouldn't be surprised if they removed the sick time from our vacation/PTO to cover this.
Parent company openly idolizes the Wal*Mart business ethics/practices regarding employee treatment, benefits and compensation. If it weren't for California employment laws, we probably wouldn't even get half of what we currently get as far as benefits and compensation. We don't receive any type of COLA, only annual merit increases typically capped at 2-3% which is offset by the annual increase in benefits cost, typically in the 10-15% range. So even though on paper it shows that you make more, you in reality bring home less year after year. It's only possible to get more than 3% if you can "exceed expectations" which is openly excused by upper management as impossible due to the parent company - who denies the allegations. Also, your annual merit increase is decided well in advance of the annual review process, so even if you have exceeded and can prove it on paper your manager and their manager have already decided upon what your increase will be and set it in stone - so why even bother putting in any effort on the self review? Oh right, somebody in AutoZone might read it and heaven forbid you don't have a good effort, then you'll get to hear about it.
This used to be such a great place to work, but it's done nothing but decline over the last 10 years. Time for a change, and fair warning to anyone joining this team going forward.
