REI Systems reviews

REI is a static and reactive company where very little has changed overall in the past 5+ years. Being static in IT for that long is a death sentence. Unless REI makes a concerted effort to drastically change, it will not be around a decade or two from now. There is an ugly culture that dominates this company wherein honesty is not valued and employees are not trusted and it stems from the top down. You can see evidence of this in the previous review ("The People's Company"). Notions like "If you are unhappy here, you'll be unhappy anywhere!" and "There are very few cons, but I don't even want to talk about them." are tossed around, even from C-level executives. That is dishonest at best and manipulative propaganda at worst. It's great to be positive about the future - it's horrible to be obstinately blind to your flaws and to lie to yourself and to your employees. Avoiding tough truths and halfheartedly searching for short-term solutions to the company's problems are surefire ways to stagnate and fail in the long-term. REI was a company of ~500 employees when I joined. It was a company of ~500 employees when I left over five years later, but not for lack of trying to grow. The company has been spinning its wheels and it has been going nowhere because there is simply no solid foundation to build upon. There is no real growth opportunity to be found there, either as a whole for the business or for the individuals therein, unless REI's management is able to bring about some very disruptive changes company-wide. While there are some isolated teams which are technologically competent and up-to-date, they hardly represent the company as a whole. There are some very talented people here and there, but they are nearly always incorrectly utilized and mistreated. You'll often see that the most competent person on a team is also the most junior (both in title and experience) member of that team and that should never happen - that marks a critical failure in resource management. The company also has many of the pieces it needs for success, but it frankly has no idea how to use them. REI is a purely reactionary company that has proven that it simply cannot plan for the future. I strongly suggest avoiding this company and looking elsewhere for employment if you are an IT professional. Is it absolutely the worst place in the world to work? No, but given the other options available in the DC area, there is no reason to settle for a sub-par, struggling company. If you do choose to join and are good or great at what you do, you are in for a world of stress and frustration.

-People who have been around a while are either there to keep their visa, which management knows, or they are friends or family of management. New people are treated like pariahs and given little or no instructions, and then treated like they are incompetent. -The "Best Place to Work" thing should be taken with a grain of salt. They hide that the list only covers the D.C. metro area, only showing the more broad "Best Place to Work" badge. If you look at any other Top Workplace lists in D.C., nearly all of them are government positions. The Washington Post only counted non-government companies, which shrinks the survey size significantly in that area. REI also got beat by Capitol One (look at their Glassdoor ratings..) the corporate entity that owns Sweetwater Tavern and other chain restaurants, and George Washington's Mount Vernon! If the survey shows that more people would rather work at a tourist trap, answering the same inane questions and dealing with bored schoolkids on a field trip, that's telling... Also on the list is Deltek, which made BizJournal's list of WORST companies to work for. -HR is a joke. You'll get no response for looong stretches of time while you're interviewing and if you have issues with management, nothing will get done and you open yourself up for retaliation. Managers are horrible, manipulative and abusive. If you talk to a higher manager about issues you've had with your direct manager, you just end up with two managers who have it out for you. -No room for growth -Old outdated platforms and technologies -I have no way of definitively proving it, but positive reviews on Glassdoor sound like HR seeding high ratings. They all talk about a great work/life balance, but that's a lie. All neutral and negative reviews all highlight a horrible work/life balance and I constantly got calls and emails well past midnight. 40 hours is the bare minimum they expect you to work. They also seem to know that Glassdoor sorts by "popularity" by default, so they only comment on positive reviews or negative ones where nothing of substance is said.