Your name is Reek. Don't complain and just work.
Pros
- Some of the people. You will meet people who put the bare minimum of work and still have the audacity to complain. But once in a while you will meet gems that try their best to change the middle-ages inspired workflows used by the company. These gems are what keeps the company afloat. - No need for ambition. You can arrive at 6:30am, sleep until ~8:00am and leave at 3:00pm. This is a trick utilized heavily by those that have been there a while. - Relaxed environment. Some associates might feel pressure to provide results, but management is clueless as to what is a good result. In reality you could just hold off on working until the very end and say there is a blocker that makes it impossible to complete. So don't feel any kind of pressure, its not necessary. - Hilarious phone meetings. If you have a shred of knowledge on the area you are in, you will have a blast in the phone meetings. You will hear statements and ideas that make zero sense, and the best part is muting yourself and laughing out loud.
Cons
- Management driven innovation. In other words, no innovation at all. The management team is a product of the Future Leaders Program, which means graduates straight out of school with a business bachelors with zero idea on how software engineering works call all the shots. By this I mean project code design, architecture and implementation. If you are a software engineer, be prepared to hear (and commit to) work in the most computationally illiterate ideas. This is the only place where adding more failure points is the ideal solution. More overhead? SCHEDULE IT ASAP. - Slow paced. One given time I spent 6 days doing absolutely nothing waiting for management to fix an administrative issue with a work ticket. Those 6 days were enough to make me learn all about the United State's space program. - More meetings than the POTUS. If you don't have 20 meetings a week, you are not involved in anything. But that is OK, because 80% of the meetings are with the same people tackling the same points. And when the weekend arrives, everyone gets amnesia and you have the pleasure of repeating the exact same mindless discussion again. - Very few worthwhile co-workers (the gems). The rest of them are either too proud to see their lack of knowledge, or they spend their time sucking up to those that have delusions of grandeur. Those that are worthwhile are saints and the Pope should recognize them for their patience and desire to improve the overall situation in the company. Then again, I'm sure the Pope is not a Geico customer. Still, I admit its fun to see everyone suck up to the one perpetual person that commits mistakes every day. - Unqualified management. This goes with one of the points above, but managers with no technical knowledge. I also must admit, it is fun to see developers undermine managers in front of everyone. - Don't have a dissenting opinion with the rest of your co-workers, or they will have a plan to get you kicked out. Basically fall in line or get out (not too difficult since all you have to do is show up and shut up). - Have an idea? Let an analyst know so they can schedule a meeting to discuss scheduling an in depth discussion to then schedule design and time estimates. Then, after this is done, a meeting discussing when implementation can begin will be scheduled. Average time from idea to implementation is around 17 months, or in Geico's interpretation: agile software development methodologies for agile problems in need of agile solutions. - Lacking benefits compared with the industry. 401k with no traditional matching. Only when you have been at Geico for at least 1 year and its March, you will then get some profit sharing. And its only then that they contribute to your 401k by taking the first couple of dollars from your profit share and depositing them for you into your 401k. But not so quick, that money is not really yours until you have been 6 years in the company. You can make more money by working the same amount of time in the McDonalds close by. - Health insurance is sub-par. Pray you don't get sick because it will hurt your dependability rating and with the insurance they provide you will surely die (so you better get that life insurance just in case, which is neat). - Only 6 holidays a year, but with 4 floating holidays so that employees don't complain. But you should not complain because work days are only 7.75 hours. There is a trick the more seasoned employees use and its to arrive at 6:30am to leave at 3:00pm. The bulk of people arrive at 9:00am, so you get 2.5 hours of paid peace and quiet (some of them work, others sleep, others probably work on some side jobs during this time).