What's the cheapest way we can keep employees from leaving en masse?
Pros
As with anywhere, your experience will vary depending on your department and manager. You're going to be working alongside some great people, and it's not so bad if you can maintain a sense of humor about all the absurdity you'll see. Charleston, SC, isn't the worst place to live. Greenville is also a cool little high country town. Benefitfocus seems to hire a lot of software engineers recently out of college (they're cheap!), and for those young people it can be a great place to get started on a career...
Cons
...But Benefitfocus seems to have a hard time holding on to the more experienced employees, and it's not hard to see why. High stress, low rewards. The churn rate is high with the long hours many employees are putting in every release cycle. Yearly employee reviews have been consolidated to one month, so every year now there's Firing Season. The company throws peanuts at the employees to keep them placated. Things like vegetable trays once per week, a free lunch once per month, and cheap sodas. The actual benefits (insurance, vacation time, 401k matching) are solidly mediocre in the software industry. Experienced employees are no longer 24-year-olds without families, so those things matter more than cheap sodas. The Charleston office is on Daniel Island, which is great if you're wealthy enough to live there. As a rank-and-file employee, you will be forced to drive on I-526, so no options for bike commuting! Rush hour traffic across the Don Holt bridge is a crap shoot. A few more points: outsourcing, cowbells, open floor plan workspaces, upper management drama, and the Finance Department rules the land.
