1. Company has gone from frugal, to cheap, to stingy over the past few years. It’s no longer about the employees and all about cutting costs and making more money for Connect. See examples below:
A. Company equipment is seriously lacking. Expect a 10-15 year old brick laptop that is a hunk of junk to use to remote into a virtual environment. Don't expect fast good equipment or any sort of reimbursement for your internet.
B. Will not cover spouse/partner on insurance if there are any other options
C. The building is old and cheap. The interior has been remodeled, but the exterior and getting in makes you wonder why it's still standing.
D. Company list of holidays has been removed from the employee handbook. And in 2020 year holidays that fell on the weekend were no longer given as a paid holiday. Although, they did get some angry employees because we didn't get a 4th of July holiday, so they are apparently generously giving everyone a holiday for Christmas 2021.
E. Do not offer any sort of 401k match and they made a change so now if you have 401k, you have to split the cost of the 401k account management with all the other employees who have a 401k, the company no longer pays that either.
G. The vacation policy has changed so many times over the past few years and every year it gets worse. If you plan to leave, make sure you use as much of your vacation as possible because you never know when the policy will change to where you get paid out at all. As of writing this review it was 5 days of payout but the employee handbook also vaguely stated they are not required to pay out vacation except in certain states so it’s possible that will change.
2. Benefits suck. They finally opened up open enrollment mid-December 2020 on a Friday and employees had till that Monday night to enroll. (Yes literally like 4 days and 2 of them were the weekend.) And they increased the price of benefits from free to hundreds of dollars. With such short notice many employees didn’t have enough notice to find other insurance alternatives in the 2 weeks before the plan change. They introduced an HSA account, but while most companies will give you money for it, they actually don’t give you anything for it and you have to pay the monthly fee for your HSA. So if you want the decent plan for your family, make sure you plan on a 10K pay cut to pay for it. If you want the cheap plan, make sure you plan on a 6-8K pay cut.
3. If they do give you opportunities, it will be without a pay raise or a title change and you should be grateful for the learning opportunities you are being given. Many employees have gone 2+ years without a cost of living raise, or longer.
5. Company culture has gone downhill. The environment has gone from a cohesive team to a toxic work environment over the past few years. It's the God-like developers and the grunts. Developers spend their time complaining about how terrible other non-developers are and how superior they are to them. Seems sad because while developers do help support the company, the customer-facing employees also have an important job and shouldn't be made fun of or mistreated.
6. Time micro-management. You must log at least 8 hours or more per day and 40 hours a week. If you are a minute short of 40 hours, you'll need to take Vacation time. There is no flexibility. Every bit of your time has to be tracked and billed to somewhere, even meetings. Internal initiatives are a NO because they do not bring in money. Expect billable items only. There are no early days out or time for company fun. If you want to leave early, you either take vacation time, or you work extra time to make up for it.
5. Lack of reviews and feedback. You will be told you're doing great in your monthly one on one each month, but then when you ask about your annual raise, you'll suddenly be told you've done a terrible job and are lucky to have a job at all. Expect a lot of runaround when you ask about reviews and raises. You'll be told to ask HR who will tell you to ask your manager and they'll tell you to ask HR, and eventually, neither one will bother to respond.
6. There is no mentoring. You're told to ask for help from your coworkers, but when you ask, you're treated rudely and told to go figure it out. Or even better, told to go ask your manager for permission to ask your coworker for help because they have more important things to do. Asking certain developers for help meant being treated very condescendingly and in many instances being ripped a new one for asking questions. Many developers have quit because of the poor behavior/treatment of certain developers.
