Pros
You will work with some very smart developers and learn some great things depending on which team you get placed. The work life balance is fine and working downtown Boise is a double edge sword. If you like Java this is the place for you. The all employee meeting was amazing it really let you know how much the company does not care about you as an employee. They literally said "if you have a problem, look inside yourself to bring solutions to the problem and be happy" Then went on to say its ok to leave the company because it was none of their first jobs either.
Cons
You are not going to get paid what you are worth within the valley period. Clearwater has lost many great employees because once the employee refines any skills or gains any experience, firms in Boise will pay 20%-30% more to work for them. Clearwater's response will be "Great, here is the door thanks for working for us". This leads to a huge loss of knowledge on how systems work or should work and daily processes not working or getting completed. It will happen on more than one occasion you are going to learn something new about the system because none of original Software programmers will be on the team. This ends up with wasted resources trying to figure out how the system is “Supposed to work” vs how it actually does. There is lots of wasted man hours with useless programs that were created in house instead of using real programs, like visual studio. You will be working with in house created tools that don’t function the way they were designed because nobody who was there to design it is still on that team, or even with the company anymore. The company is extremely cheap with its resources, which is ironic because when Clearwater signs a huge deal (AIG) or gets bought out, they don’t reward the employees with a bonus or anything. Don’t expect the company to show any loyalty towards you, it is one of the many reasons that you will see the extreme turnover every year (25%-30%). If you can remember that you are not a unique snowflake and that the company is going to pay what they think is best, then you will be great! There is also a lot of infighting about which team should own what company process and so instead of trying to move along and fix problems teams will just say not my problem leaving you and your team to do their job. The best are the motivational emails about morale “BE A LOBSTER” it doesn’t make any sense then either I promise. All in all you will get to learn a ton because there is work to be done and almost everyone is within their first year or two. Situations to gain extremely valuable experience about technology or firms that Clearwater works with are prevelent and can be great learning tools. This is all unless you are a software developer. But you do get free coffee and can easily learn enough within two-three years to go make 30% more with another firm that’s not on fire all the time. So you have that going for you, which is nice.
