NIC reviews

- No real training opportunities other than the yearly conferences, which are really just excuses for the directors and vps to get drunk on the company dime. - Mgt is constantly trying to mine the ideas for new initiatives from employees but then take credit for them. - the operations staff is a joke. Read the other reviews here-the incompetence in endemic throughout NIC and the state portals. Kids with no experience in management or technology are promoted way too quickly to high level positions and they have no idea what they are doing. The VPs look for big talkers with short skirts and swarmy smiles to promote. It is hard to go to work everyday and work your butt off when the people running each portal have less combined experience than you do, and it shows. - if a low level nobody who works for a state agency doesn't like you for any reason, you will be fired-the company does not support their employees and will get rid of anybody. This is no joke, look at a state employee that we have a project with wrong, you will be fired. - the Operations mgt staff are only it in for bonuses. They demand employees work overtime to make some arbitrary deadline while they sit on a beach somewhere and consider themselves working because they looked at their phone sometime on their vacation. - the people who do the real work-the devs and designers treated like dirt across the board. A few get lifted up into management positions, but they are generally very young and very "yes maam!" folks. Unless you are willing to eat dirt everyday and work unlimited overtime, you will not move up in the dev/designer roles. - the project managers across the board in the company are completely worthless-they have no idea what they are talking about, how to articulate anything to do with technology, how to manage projects-nothing. I spent too much of my time filling in the gaps of the PMs I worked with-you cant just hire friendly people who look cute and expect them to be good at everything. - senior exec mgt are non-technical, pure soft skills people. It is insane that a technology company is run by people who can barely use their phones.These people expect the portals to have double digit growth every year, which is pretty near impossible. The stress of all that is on the backs of the dev/designers, and the GMs and Vps and Execs reap all of the awards. - and on the subject of awards... what nonsense. The portals are all obsessed with winning the Best of the Web every year, which is a purely made up nonesense award that is only won by states that fly the award leadership in and wine and dine them. Everyone in the company knows these awards are nonsense yet they force the portals to redesign every year, perfectly good sites are dismantled year after year, just to try to win more awards. This company likes to pretend that they have user experience experts on board, but they do not. Changing the UX of a state site year after year, not for the advantage of users but to try to impress a small group of people who dole out awards, is anti-UX behavior.

When I started at NIC I had the opportunity to go to a company wide conference and meet other employees in other states. I felt blessed to be apart of the community and make those connections. Because of those connections, I was given interesting projects to work on, some in other states. The CEO would always tell those that attended the conference that he wanted to meet them personally. NIC has grown over the last few years and this attitude towards employees has changed. NIC has threatened to take away the conference because of the lack of value, high price tag and “too many people were showing up.” By doing this they have taken away a huge networking tool for the company. The quality of the projects are not always great, nor does NIC assign talented individuals that have the background to do the best work. If you look at any IOS or Android App in either one of those stores that NIC has developed the ratings are terrible. There are a few exceptions of course, but NIC does not invest in hiring the best or promoting the best results. There are several projects that I worked on that have just been shoved out the door that are definitely not the best work. Poor project management, development, quality assurance and design are at fault. Management does not seem to care about these results and is checked out during the development process. Freedom and trust was missing from our Wisconsin portal. Early on employees had the ability to choose their own schedule, work from home occasionally, and also had time to do professional continuing training on the side of their workload. All of that is gone with a strict 8am-5pm schedule. No exceptions. Management needs to realize that individuals need this freedom and it is invading their family and personal time. Requests for supplies, conferences and time off are usually ignored or not approved. You will usually have to email your supervisor several times to finally get an answer. Or you’ll just give up and live with what you have. If you work there for under 3 years the vacation and personal time you get off is basically nothing, further challenging the personal lives of employees. Project assignments can be stressful and combine that with no/little time off employees are miserable. There is one bank for grievance time and sick pay, no additional days for that time that is needed when losing a family member, sick kids, etc. If you take a position at NIC your work-life balance is 100% work. Some projects require weekends and nights - no comp time is given for this time making some weeks well over 40 hours. This extra time is also not acknowledged by management or appreciated. Pay is well below average, yearly raises are very small no matter how much extra work and responsibilities you take on. Little to no opportunities to move up the ladder. Because good work isn’t rewarded employees do not work to their full potential, and even slack off 90% of the day. There are some absolutely toxic people in the office that NIC has not let go even though they are fully aware of those employees and how they act towards others and their teams.