Old school company trying to modernize under semi-competent leadership - Anonymous employee AAA Northeast Employee Review

Compensation is on the low end of the spectrum. The physical environment is subpar, with the offices housed in an old discount clothing store building down by the railroad tracks and the highway. It has very few windows, overcrowded work areas, and spotty temperature control. Be prepared to be undermined, mis-led, and kept in the dark about stuff that matters while being disrespected and/or ignored unless you have a VP title or higher. The CEO who took over AAA Northeast at the beginning of 2018 is clearly in over his head and uses a measure-once-cut-twice management style. He often says one thing but really means another ("No rush" = "I expect it immediately") which is pointless and causes problems. He has simplistic understandings of the functions reporting to him, but that doesn’t stop him from micro-managing to get what he wants, which is frequently counter to better thinking from the actual subject matter experts. The company has been replacing and/or adding several key business infrastructure pieces, but bought almost all of them without writing business requirements beforehand. How did they know they were buying the right stuff without having well-defined requirements? They didn't. And every single one of these implementations has been an exercise in catching up, making changes on the fly, discovering conflicts between departments that will use it, and finding out that something doesn't really work the way they thought it did. The ripple effects of this incompetence are felt in almost every area, and an IT department that is particularly poorly-led makes it worse. There are also many older, senior employees who have spent decades at the company, and there are both entrenched interests and narrow experience that stand in the way of real change. There have been specific instances where long-time employees have demonstrated gross incompetence around central aspects of their jobs, but been kept on, while newer, reform-minded “boat-rockers” have been terminated. AAA Northeast claims to want to modernize, but doesn’t appear to understand that that means more than buying new technology and talking a good game. Employees are often treated disrespectfully for offering suggestions that would bring the company better into alignment with current best practices, but similar suggestions from outside consultants are considered good as gold. Senior leadership operates in bad faith, doesn’t really know what it’s doing, provides vague direction without really leading, and micro-manages whenever it can.