JCPenney reviews

With the declining corporate culture, frequent layoffs, reorganizations and reactionary environment, good people are feeling the oppressive weight of the challenges of the retail industry. A company that once care about its people has been forced to become more interested in the bottom line. Communication lines within the organization have suffered.

You experience at JCP will be directly related to which group you work in. The .com team is virtually a separate entity and does what they want in the development cycle. Working with them is very difficult if you are not a part of their team. All most internal systems are integrated with .com, so the projects are very cumbersome to work through and complete. The review process is designed to assure most people are not rated high enough to get a raise. The focus during reviews is to focus on even the slightest perceived mistake to rate you lower than expected. Once that info is added, it is virtually impossible to get it changed, even with employee input. Directors and upper management is so busy that they have no direct view into what the line level employees are actually doing. Legacy IT systems are so customized that it almost impossible to update or replace them. The staff that supported these systems is gone, so there are no domain experts to assist. Because of the large debt burden on the company ($4b+), there have been ongoing layoffs. Every few weeks for the last year, we heard of people being laid off in various departments. 6000 people left in early retirement so that is more knowledge walking out. There is no on-boarding once you make it to your group. You are expected to be an SME in systems you have never had exposure to, with no training, or even a basic overview.