CoBank as a company is pretty good, however, the I.T. department is a mess!
Dysfunction:
There have been blatant sexism issues. If you are a women in IT you could be treated differently than your male counter parts. The people that do this, have been there for years and they are protected by leadership.
Everything is silo'd. There are 5+ areas that all maintain groups of people. Every group is very protective of their "turf", and in many cases the groups don't work with each other and don't appear to like each other, so getting anything done is at least a 2-4 week process because of meetings and general bickering. There have been meetings that have devolved into berating sessions. Even though management has sent an e-mail dictating meeting etiquette the behavior continues.
There is an on call rotation that varies by team. Some teams have very little issues and other teams get called multiple times a week (all hours of the night). When you suggest fixes, so that these issue will get resolved nothing gets done as the excuse is "it doesn't happen that often". Production issues should never happen! There is some sort of "Hero Complex" that these leaders have about it. The general thought is that they enjoy being able to fix these issues that happen in production (nightly)! This should be unacceptable at the upper management level, but it is allowed to continue which is beyond any logic or reason.
There is absolutely NO accountability in the different areas in I.T. - Nothing is ever a FAILURE!
Very little actual development gets done at CoBank. Most of the actual coding tasks get assigned to contractors. Contractors come and go and the developers there are left to support those applications. There are a few development projects that you could be a part of, but for the most part, contractors are used heavily.
The department is working on a bank wide solution to bring them into the 21st century, however, there are doubts that it will gain traction because it will be too much of a change for the company to endure. Many times good ideas get dropped because management changes their minds. The prevailing thought is that contractors will take the lead on that and the CoBank developers will have to support and fix the issues that the contractors created.
Department Management:
The leadership of the department are very out of touch, They have a "buy vs build" mentality. However, the business requires customization. Therefore the department throughout the bank is viewed as being unable to help them because they don't have enough real developers to deliver the applications the business needs and wants. Even the real developers there can't produce anything as they are so hamstrung by the processes that they have to follow. It is generally thought that CoBank makes so much money that they don't have to innovate. If you suggest more modern solutions to problems they are having, management is hesitant to change anything.
Summary:
People stick around because they are looking to retire, they want a stable job where you are not held accountable, or they want to become part of management . If that is what you are looking to do, then CoBank is the right place for you.
You can look at this review as just another disgruntled employee, but this a peak into what it is like at CoBank in IT. It is up to you if you wish to believe it or not, but you have been warned!
