Pros
Great coworkers Comfortable atmosphere "Casual Friday" dress
Cons
There is a LOT of attrition going on in IT right now, for a variety of reasons. Pay is not terribly competitive. Budgets have been frozen on many projects and enhancements since the second half of last year. ATD uses outdated waterfall processes that guarantee every big project will be over time and over budget. I've seen many good coworkers get chewed up by this. I've seen some crazy, runaway scope creep here. For the past decade, IT has had a re-org almost every 18 months, yet the same rigid adherence to outdated processes remains. They can't seem to figure out what the problem is. They just hired a new CIO; don't know yet if she will be bold enough to transform IT to a 100% agile shop, or just patch it and keep going like her predecessors. Leadership is always bringing in consulting companies to call the shots. Sometimes it ends disastrously. Training? What training? Very hard for rank and file employees to get any training here, while some in management get to travel to as many training events and conferences as they like. IT briefly had subscriptions for an online training site that everyone had access to; that mysteriously went away with the excuse "No one uses it." Actually, lots of folks were using it, daily. Work/life balance is just ok. CEO has stated multiple times in town halls that he is against working from home, even though people are constantly asking about it. Managers will allow it on request, but it's generally frowned upon. It creates a very uneven environment where some folks use it a lot, and others don't get to do it at all. Why not jeans everyday? This is Huntersville, not downtown Charlotte. There is a preference to hire from outside rather than promote from within. The CEO is trying to build a "People first!" culture, but I don't know what he means by that. ATD is heavily reliant on debt financing. A recent downgrade of their credit by Moody's led to 100 people being laid off. As I understand, some of those jobs are being opened right back, so it may have been for show. People first! ATD is in a very rough place right now, but I think things will get better for them in a couple of years. Even in good times, however, it's just an ok place to work.
