So it's been a while since I worked there and, frankly, it's been a time I'd rather not remember. But its a public service that, should you be considering employment there, you should do your "Due Diligence" and put some understanding under your belt before making a decision. Please note, this is not a short read. a TL;DR will be at the end, but context is always nice
Overall the experience was incredibly poor, even by a new-to-corporate-work newbie standard like I had. It really did go beyond the common issues that people could expect to face in an office setting to the point where people I knew and spoke to about this mostly had the same response of "That's not normal".
That list of issues starts with the one thing they will openly talk about in interviews: Busy season. This one they are at least honest about. For a solid 3 months of the year (August, September, and October) the company sees a massive influx in business as government financial calendars come to a close and agencies put in last minute orders for anything they can spend money on. This is a massive portion of the company's overall revenue and is considered their most important time frame. This also means that employees are needed for far longer as the period stretches on, coming to a climax on September 30th when any and all employees must be working, with no exceptions outside medical or family emergencies, and must stay until dismissed by department heads, usually at some Zero Dark Thirty the next morning. This does not matter if the 30th is a Saturday or Sunday. You are expected to be there. You are also expected to work well into the night on regular weekdays and are scheduled weekends to be at the office or working (remote options may have changed). So for a solid 3 months, you can expect little to no outside life to be available to you. You will miss things that happen around you and you do not get a choice.
Vacations are allowed, of course. Its just a matter of timing. Two vacations are offered by the company on their dime: an annual sales goal vacation and a 4-year anniversary vacation. Both of these are traps in their own sense. The sales goal vacation is only given as an incentive to the sales teams to meet/exceed a certain goal, usually not hit until the busy season. And if you do not work in a sales position, none of what you do is going to have an effect on the outcome. So that vacation is entirely in the hands of someone else who you hope is motivated enough to go. The anniversary vacation is is given to anyone who makes a 4 year mark of employment. Most of the higher ups in the company have had multiples of these as they will be the only ones to hang around long enough to earn it. The odds of you making it to 4 years is exceedingly low as the work environment is actively toxic and pushes people through it's system on a conveyer belt. So its a nice little carrot to dangle in front of you, and if you get to it is probably a wonderful time. But the issue is that none of that is guaranteed, and you are more likely to never meet those goals.
Their less talked about issues pertains to the management positions. None of them really feel that in touch with the people under them. And the higher up you go, the less grounded in reality they seem. Our department almost went on strike over the way we were being treated and the fact that we were under such alarming pressure and expectations that most people were suffering pretty severe anxiety and depression. The Management was at a loss on what we wanted so held a forum to discuss our behavior and what we wanted from management. I'm not sure what came of that as I left not long after. I will give credit where it is due. They tried. But the overall cause is even though management were, supposedly, good at what they do, they were not fit to be in charge of people, let alone deal with employee unrest and dissatisfaction.
This actually leads to a larger issue that shocked waaay too many people: they don't have an HR Department. A lot of employee relations are handled by people who have zero understanding of how to handle those situations, mostly because they are the other party involved in conflict and are often playing the victim card. If a company doesn't believe that it needs and HR department, that should be a fairly major red flag. HR departments are trained professionals who are prepared and specialize in mediating conflicts that were a common sight. But when the only other person mediating a meeting is another management member there is a sense that anything you, as the person filing the complaint, is going to be at a loss since you are effectively complaining to someone who has a vested interest in the other side since they are often closely tied to each other. There is a bias in that, even if they wouldn't want to admit it, or don't believe it exists.
Management also has a incredibly large gap in their pay over those who work under them. Yes, management does make more money than the people who they supervise in ANY setting, but when your immediate boss is talking about new houses, vacations, new cars, expensive outings and events, and overall not worrying about their financial status while their subordinates are making what is not considered a living wage in Northern Virginia, there seems to be a problem. Systemic through Corporate America as it may be, its one to keep in mind when they say they offer "competitive pay". This is considered justified in that when busy season starts, people are paid bonuses and offered motivational prizes to do more work. That work usually being more valuable to the company than the compensation provided. Actually to a point where a Lawsuit was recently settled regarding overtime pay being with held from sales representatives. At one point I had done the math, and given overtime pay would have been far more money than the bonuses I was given, as I was OFTEN working overtime with my base hours per week being around 50.
All of these factors put together make for a shockingly toxic and painful meatgrinder of a work environment. All of this put into perspective shows cause and effect for their high turn over rates. We dealt with a revolving door of sales people and a new roster of co-workers every 6 months or so. Constant flux in people in a work space is terrible for employee moral, as it creates a sense of detachment to the people around you and an apathy to your work. What's the point of doing anything for these people if they aren't going to be around? it felt like we were training someone new every few months and having to explain the same steps to new faces that we knew would eventually just leave.
So the TL;DR -
-Toxic work environment with no HR to mediate it
-Unhealthy and demanding work hours which are only made worse during 3 months of every year
-False promises of vacations that you are unlikely to see
-Management vs Employee pay gap that makes people feel vastly under appreciated while already being criminally underpaid
