Beginning w/pay, MassMutual will leverage a bonus against offering a fair/competitive salary. Half the bonus, however, is at the whim of your manager and senior management, the other half from company performance (not too good in this economy). Everyone is reviewed at the same time, so senior management and middle managers can reduce your rating to leave more funds in the pool for themselves (or there favorites). Human resource implies, to perspective employees, that the bonus is a great perk, so, since the candidate needs the job, they generally buy in hook line and sinker, which leads to disappointment when they figure this out. Thus the -5 salary rating. There is little respect for the employees, i.e. business problems arise and senior management begins the blame 'witch hunt'. When pointed out to a VP the response was, I'm not looking to blame someone, I just want to know who screwed up! There are so many lifer's with 20 - 30 years service, if you have less than 5 yrs don't even think of suggesting change or feeling a part of the teams. -5 for respect. The benefits are average or slightly less (excluding the bonus because of the first remarks). Job security is there only if your a member of the old-timers club, so -2. Work/life balance is one of the worst aspects, a -5. This is due to general fear of the employees and middle managers, emphasized by the practice of publically emphasizing the importance of work/life balance but not practiced. Blackberry's are running 7/24/365. I saw an employee admonished for suggesting the battery might have gone dead. Everyone's in 'on-call' systems. But if they can't reach someone they just start calling any name they have. When I left people didn't want to have after-hour event's or celebrations because they were just exhausted. In this environment career growth is stiffled, only 4 job zones, 1 and 2 are hourly non-exempt, 3 is your average employee, 4 is either senior individual contributor or manager w/staff. Then AVP, VP. People hit the bottlenecks to promotion quickly. As far as location, check Springfield MA ratings on the internet, there is no direct access to the headquarters via highway. You drive through awful neighborhoods on non-maintained roads (Springfield is broke). Coworker competince is average, but not what you want to bet your bonus on, a few rare stand-outs, but they don't seem to stay. The work environment: sorry but the Springfield headquarters is old (really old), and you feel like you walked into a time warp to 1952. If the rooms are not visible to the public they are filthy, 10 - 20 yr old rugs mismatched furniture out of the 60's etc. The 'renovated' areas have the smallest cubicles I've seen in fortune 500 companies. Manager's get larger cubes but no privacy to meet with staff. Biggest meeting area is the cafeteria because conference rooms are few and it is requested that you put in for one 3 days advance of the meeting.
