Pros
- In general, you work with great people. - You learn a lot - Compensation is more than fair - You have many opportunities to travel - There are opportunities to expand and grow your skill set, mostly within the FAST way of doing things
Cons
- Long hours for certain parts of the project (like 20 percent+ for months at a time) - While you get experience doing lots of different things, your experience is limited, because you often have to use different tools at each site. So you'll figure it out just enough to get the job done, but never really master it, and then not use it again for years. The only tools that are always consistent from site to site are Microsoft products and the FASTCORE system. - Moving from site to site can be hard. Not just the moving aspect (which is never easy), but the differences in the agency, leadership, and team make it feel almost like a new job every time. - There are mixed messages from leadership. One partner says "give them the minimal viable product" while another says "They may not always be right, but they're always the client", which comes across as "give the client what they want." - It feels nearly impossible to get the top two evaluation scores. Even if you do everything asked, try to find ways to grow and contribute, and get excellent feedback from peers and PM, you just can't reach the top levels. This is incredibly demotivating. And with the new pay structure, it means that raises will be low, potentially for years until you can reach the next pay band. - They say that they are trying to promote a work life balance by capping paid overtime, but they aren't doing anything else to change. If you want the same amount of work done, we either need more resources or longer timelines. Instead, the only advice is to control scope. This is great in theory, but when you are contractually obligated to do something and the agency doesn't provide resources, there's not a good way to control scope. They also don't provide any training on how to do it. - There is no focus on professional growth. They include LinkedIn learning and say that you can use 2 hours per month of paid time to use it, as long as it's a course that the PM has approved. Well, there are only a couple months in a rollout where we have enough time to use it, and the PM is always so busy that they don't have time to recommend anything. - Most training is done internally from company staff. But it tends to be the same ideas over and over. It's hard to get new ideas or a fresh perspective when we just rehash everything year after year, and nothing really changes.
