Poor compensation and outsourcing problems
Pros
Other reviews have consistently noted poor life/work balance at Benchmark, however as a Software Engineer based out of Arizona mine was incredible. Benchmark was non-intrusive to my personal life and always respected my time off. The health benefits were excellent. I was provided with a company wide health reimbursement account which reimbursed 94% of my insurance deductible and covered all prescriptions 100%. No matter what happened, my annual out of pocket expenses could never be more than $414, prescriptions included.
Cons
Let's get down to brass tacks: they won't pay you what you're worth, and they certainly won't give you a raise, nor a promotion. I was hired for $67k in Sep 2019 in Tempe, AZ, which was fair, but 2 years later in Dec 2021 my salary was still $67k. Adjusted for inflation: that's $61,600 in 2019. I never received an annual review from my manager. My teammates had the same problem. We suspect this was no accident, but rather to avoid any talk of raises. A teammate directly asked for a raise 2 months ago, and was told they'd be gotten back to. Never happened. A business analyst asked for a raise. They got 1%. All 3 of us had been with the company for over 2 years. When I quit for a new job with a better salary plus stock options, they counter offered at 90% plus more PTO. That's insulting. My manager justifies this by saying market research shows I'm not worth any more than that due to my experience level. Market research?? I have an offer letter, you nitwit. They believe it's cheaper to let go of an experienced dev who understands the legacy code, and replace him with a fresh out of bootcamp dev. Seems foolish, but I'm no bean counter. I also never received an exit interview. Probably because they don't want to hear the next part. Production is on fire. Everyday. It's insane how many IT requests the clients are filing these days. That's because Benchmark can't stop outsourcing work to cut-rate vendors like IntraEdge and Hurix. I weep for the codebase. These vendors provide Benchmark with cheap devs in India by the dozen, and you get what you pay for. Many work tickets are still open after 6 months. Forget programming! We literally have to teach these "devs" how to use a web browser! And the work that eventually gets merged... it wouldn't even rate a D+ from a community college. Production is swallowed in flames.
