Pros
The health/vision/retirement benefits are some of the best in the industry. The Employee Stock Purchase plan with 50% company match is probably the best in the industry. The facilities at the San Mateo Headquarters are new and the gymnasium are clean and very well maintained. During down times the company issued a paycut instead of laying people off. This was received well by the employees.
Cons
Franklin has an industry reputation for overworking their employees; especially on the technology side. 9-10 hour workdays and work on weekends are commonplace and not only until recently have there been efforts to compensate employees for their extra hours. Pay scale is not commensurate to hours spent working. Workers are encouraged to work long hours because they are given extra "credit" in their performance reviews for willingness to work long hours and weekends. This is the culture that breeds an unsustainable pace of work that leads to frequent employee burnout and employee turnover. Employee concerns about being overworked have not been fully addressed and typically misdirected by management. Example: Employees will complain of long hours..and in response...management elects to give coffee card bonuses to compensate employees for their long hours. They are not compelled at ALL to try and alleviate the long hours but to create misdirection and expect little coffee cards will pacify employees. The reason for this is because Management is SOLEY concerned of the bottom line and interested in achieving their project goals and receiving their own individual accolades (and bonuses) for project completion at the expense of the overall mental/physical health of their employees. There is a HUGE gap of communication regarding this. Example: A manager was recently profilied at the company and it listed his/her many accomplishments and projects that he/she was involved in. In reality, most of the projects he/she had no direct relation to, but was quick to take the credit. He/She did not mention at all..the team of employees that worked w/him/her. This is NOT an isolated incident of one manager, but an example of many. Because of examples like this and others, there is a strong distrust between managers and employees. The management teams meet privately too much and appear not as open to employees regarding many things about the organization. There is also a severe lack of training/character evaluation of managers as well. There are managers who are socially/emotionally immature and are unable to manage their own behavior, let alone providing guidance for others. There definitely exists a glass ceiling that prohibits many workers from becoming managers. Only managers that tow the company line of overworking their staff are retained and hired up as managers.