Pros
Benefits are decent and you start with 3 weeks of vacation time plus holidays / sick time. Learning opportunities for new graduates who have no corporate experience, especially if they want to learn how business worked 40 years ago. Nothing changes or moves quickly here, so if your goal is comfort and routine this is the company for you. If you're a middle aged white man you're in luck - those are the only people we hire for executive roles. Unless you're in HR or part of the recent vanity title promotions for women who have worked here for decade that didn't matter until the optics became a problem.
Cons
The C-Suite and Executive teams are weaponizing the great resignation. With almost 300 jobs open, they are spending time and money to take legal action against employees who stay in the industry, but leave Connection. Most if not all of these people were denied promotions, pay raises or career development despite being some of the best talent we had. After being here for years and building relationships with vendors, people who only make $60k are afraid to leave and get hit with a personal lawsuit. We give no reason for people to stay, then punish them when they leave. When the above is what you focus on, things like actual career pathing, education, diversity and inclusion are far from your priorities. As a result there is next to no diversity in executive teams and up. I wonder sometimes if Tim McGrath knows that women have the right to vote yet or that they aren't just secretaries anymore. Nothing changes or moves quickly here, the company lives and dies by the opinion of sales leaders who haven't worked anywhere but Connection for 30 years and have never been held accountable to change. I won't even start on the failure of an ERP system that makes it harder for everyone to do their job. Product Management and Marketing have become icky jobs to have here. When sales isn't able to move SKUs, product and marketing are asked to garner more dollars from their partners to recoup top line revenue and call it marketing investments. They'll be trained on how to keep a straight face when asking partners for $75,000, telling them their lack of investment is why their sales are down 25% quarter after quarter. And when that $75,000 has no ROI they'll again be trained to tell a partner why its their fault not Connection's. Partners who work with sales out of the system probably get better results with a $100 lunch with a sales manager. And last but not least, there is no investment in technology. It is why I think they aren't embracing remote work, because they won't invest in the tools and technology to make it work efficiently.
