Pros
A lot of negative reviews here, but I believe that Patelco is an excellent place to work. If you’re anything like me, you look for certain qualities and—let’s face it—perks when selecting a company to work for. Patelco’s unique offerings include: *The ability to consistently achieve mediocrity while being overworked and undervalued *The chance to work under the leadership of criminals and half-wits (search Patelco on cutimes.com!) *The opportunity to always make wrong decisions—say yes and you will be told you should have said no, and say no and you will be told you should have said yes! You can never win! *The guidance and decision making abilities of a seriously dysfunctional senior leadership team, not to mention a wonderfully overbearing board of directors and a vindictive Chairman of the Board *A consistent company-wide philosophy of starting, and then stopping, and then completely disregarding strategic initiatives, thereby wasting time and misusing valuable resources *The opportunity to watch undeserving people with made-up management titles play hide and seek with their co-worker spouses *A marketing department full of poetic stoners, who—on the rare day they decide to come to the office—are always working hard at writing their novels or making coffee rather than actually pushing Patelco’s products If the above appeals in any way to you, and it should, consider Patelco a real home run!
Cons
The only bad thing about working here is that what goes around, comes around. The previous criminal’s—ugh, I mean CEO’s—era started in 2009, and he and his acolytes made sure to clean house and eliminate as many “legacy” employees as they could. Typical business strategy, so fair enough, but the new batch of execs attempted to leave their stamp on Patelco, at the expense of….you guessed it, Patelco. During this time, Patelco shifted from a member and community focused organization into one that was striving to be a bank, without actually admitting it. The old philosophies and mission were thrown out. Oh how times were good for the new regime and terrible for the old! You could be as selfish as you wanted, like the Prince of Home Loans or the Emperor in Collections, and if what you were doing was good for you and you only, it was celebrated—negative impact be damned. Choo choo, the self-serving sales train is leaving, and if you can’t get on board, thanks for your hard work but don’t let the door slam hit you while we kick you off the caboose. But when that CEO was ousted and thrown under the bus by the Board last year, yet another new era began with the current CEO, and the people who did the ousting were now the ones being ousted. The senior team brought in by the ousted CEO has all been forced to leave one by one, suffering humiliation and exposure along the way, and their hires—what’s left of them—cower in fear as the new CEO’s regime rises. The strangest thing about Patelco’s “new” philosophy is that it is basically the original philosophy—to focus on the membership and bring value to products, essentially returning Patelco to what it was in its pre-“bank” days. Fair enough, but don’t forget that most everyone who was in tune with this new-old mission was kicked to the curb. So it is yet another uphill climb to get back to where Patelco was just 4 years prior. The new blood is blissfully ignorant of what came before, and times are now good for the new CEO’s team—but once the Chairman of the Board decides to sack the current CEO, the cycle will begin again and the people who support the current direction will be in the hot seat. Therein lies the rub. But like I said, GREAT place to work.
