If you want to make money and further your career, don't work at Granite.
Pros
- Met a ton of great people, mostly everyone who works there is very cool. Younger demographic so it was easy for me to make friends quickly. - Intramural sports were fun, bowling every Tuesday at Boston Bowl in the winter was a great time. - Charitable donations are obviously good, but half the reason why they do it for the tax write offs. "No debt" must be nice when you can chalk up a big percentage of your expenses to charity.
Cons
- Upper management is incompetent. They're living in the past/ don't actually care about their employees' well being...just the bottom line. - A bottom line which I firmly believe they fudge #'s on hard. As a person who's seen how bad the service and products are within Granite, it's honestly shocking they make any money at all. If there wasn't a government regulated law that kept them in business they'd be gone in a heartbeat. - Everyone is micromanaged like it's elementary school. No freedom to express your thoughts or opinions on how to make your team more efficient and better...if you're not UM then your pretty much don't have a say. - A preposterous sales culture which makes all other employees feel expendable and inferior. Everything is catered to the salesmen, who themselves are absolute fools with no real idea of the products or how anything else in the company works besides cold calling for deals. It's a shame they make so much $ when half of the work is done by the other 85% of the company. - Pay is extremely low. I obviously knew this when I got hired. but I expected to gain an annual raise of some percentage or a significant raise when promoted. Not only did I not get the full raise when I switched from one department to another...they used that as the reason why I wouldn't get paid the same as the rest of the team...because I already worked there and made less money. Had to almost beg to get compensated just as fairly as everyone else and even after I proved myself to be a great worker it was still like pulling teeth. Crazy town to not pay someone the same as the rest of the team because you were already from the company and not off the street. - The parking/bathroom situations are awful. Two things that you would think you wouldn't have to worry about...not at Granite. If you don't get to work 10-20 early it's almost impossible to find a spot. Going to the bathroom is literally a figuratively a crap shoot. 4 stalls per floor that are always packed and most of the time you're waiting in line to do your business. There were times I would have to walk across to the other building to use a bathroom. Just miserable. - Overall vibe of the building is so abysmal and hopeless...you can tell most of the workers hate their job and are either looking to leave or just don't even care anymore. - And to go along with that, the small minority of workers who are brainwashed by the CEO and the company are almost unbearable to be around and talk to. The Monday morning meeting is a sham where the CEO goes up and reads off a power point for 45 minutes fondling the salesmen and reading promotions that could easily just be sent out in an email. - The rift between sales and the rest of the company is virtually palpable, with sales acting like the cool jocks and the rest of the employees are treated like nerds who they copy homework off of and cheat on the test to get good grades. The CEO is the Varsity QB/prom king that everyone bows down too...regardless of how absurd the request is or what the time limits are, if he says he wants it done it doesn't matter. - One of my supervisors got mad at me because I called him when he said the members or our team needed to "communicate more" and "get up and talk to people", when he sat behind his desk and sent people catty emails all day micromanaging every little thing you did. He then said to me later that if I wanted to move up in the company I would need to "not be friends with people on my team", as it would cause problems and lead to favoritism. I was flabbergasted when he said that to me...essentially saying that I need to me a snitch and be his mole for everyone on the team if they're not doing their work or whatever. Insane logic across the board. - 4 of the 5 direct sups I hqd didnt not have the employees' backs whatsoever...they were only concerned with making the CEO happy and keeping him off their own backs. Total keyboard warriors...they made sure they had everything in writing so they could always trace back to something if they needed to snitch on you. But in real life when you needed to ask them a question or deal with a situation they were always flustered and the least personable people of all time, an awful leadership example. The exact opposite of how I would manage my employees, it created a enormous divide where the employees essentially stopped caring and resented UM everyday. - The physical building itself was disgusting, don't think the carpet had been replaced or even vacuumed for over 10 years. Filthy, a 1.25 B company should have its employees is suitable working conditions. - Unless you'e in sales and suck up to the already established guys who have been there for years, there's no reason to try and get more than one promotion. Increases in pay are very low, and like I said it's like pulling teeth to even get there if you're not one of the chosen favorites. - The not being able to work from home or have schedule flexibility is terrible. Can't work through lunch, total stickler's on PTO and your punch ins and outs. Two of my former co workers were supposed to fly from Logan in Boston at 7pm on a Monday night...they asked if they could come in at 730 am so they could leave at 430 pm to make sure they caught the flight, pretty reasonable request. Instead it became this big ordeal for no reason at all because they "didn't see why it was necessary to leave before 5"...only just to go on a business trip you're sending us on during rush hour in one of the most congested and over-populated cities in the nation. Zero common sense from the sups, like robotic thoughts without one inkling of a original thought in their heads.
