Pros
It's-Its in the vending machine.
Cons
When you enter Golden 1 headquarters, you regress to a bygone era where days are governed by a rigid—and stifling—workplace hierarchy that snuffs out good ideas. You will be subjected to micromanagement, outdated recruiting and retention methods, irresponsible policies on employee health and welfare, and physical works spaces that spread germs and fear and hamper productivity. In my professional career I have primarily worked for employers that recruited and valued smart, capable and willing employees. When it came to creating a product, titles didn’t really matter much in the end. All employees on a team were encouraged to bring their ideas to the table and all ideas were met with similar if not equal consideration. But, that’s what's missing at Golden 1: trust. It's missing from the top down. Heck, employees can’t even be trusted to wash their hands in the employee restrooms; they must be reminded to do so by a robotic voice that’s synced with the opening of the restroom door. Sometimes, if you’re unlucky, you’ll hear the reminder three, four, even five times before you’ve finished your bathroom business! What you do not encounter at Golden 1: the free flow of ideas and conversations between the individuals who are most responsible for executing the ideas. Those conversations happen clandestinely between other people in other meetings. By the time a “concept” trickles down to the team directly responsible for executing it, it’s so poorly understood and translated (and translated differently depending on who you talk to) that it is all but doomed to fail. Nevertheless, be expected to intuit correctly what it is the “client” wants. Oh, wait, nobody knows who the client is at Golden 1. It's a term that is understood in most companies that serve clients, but it's a very vague concept at Golden 1. Creatives: Stay away. This is not a place to stretch and utilize your creative talents. Finally, I need to talk about the potlucks. The place is fixated on them. Expect to receive an all-staff email about best practices during flu season followed by an email strongly encouraging employees to participate in the next potluck. And binge eating contests (really, there are timed contests to see who can shovel down the most food) followed by “biggest loser” challenges? Good grief. Irresponsible, unhealthy and laughably out of sync with the times. Bizarre and woefully unprogressive atmosphere that runs on fearful energy. Avoid.
