Pros
- Pay for Performance: the harder you work, especially in brokerage operations, means more money because of the uncapped commission, but initially it is really hard to do, and accounts are assigned by luck of the draw, not ability or tenure. A brand new account manager can land a large, lucrative account just by lucky timing, instead of handing it off to any of the tenured employees with the bandwidth and maturity to handle and grow it. - Charlotte office has decent vibes. Sometimes you get leftover food from the executives.
Cons
- Forced RTO after the last acquisition made A LOT of lives more difficult after enjoying years of hybrid work, having built the last five years of their life around that. Charlotte traffic is horrendous, and forcing employees who were hired during the remote period back into an office that is over an hour away is unhinged. - NO INTRANET, for a company this big and this global, the fact that no one will cough up the cash for an intranet is BEYOND comprehension. You cannot find information anywhere. Down a rabbit hole of SharePoint sites and endless "we are migrating this information to this different place", unless you know one of the gatekeepers, you can search endlessly for hours to find basic information like travel and expense policies. - Onsite benefits. Some offices have cafeterias, spas, shops, and gyms on-site that may be fully subsidised; meanwhile, the corporate HQ has one treadmill available in a focus room on the executives-only floor, and employees aren't allowed to use the cafeteria in the adjacent building. Powdered coffee. Spent all that money on an ugly renovation instead of paying your people or creating dedicated plug-and-play workstations in the focus rooms. - Office configuration. Each time they "renovate" the office, they take away the useful spaces like offices and focus rooms, and put in big ugly "tech-enabled conference" rooms that no one uses, and frankly don't work. You can never get the WIFI to connect. Entirely open floor design, aside from senior leaders and brown-nosers. You cannot hear yourself think on the floor, but you will be yelled at for not being "available" because you're wearing headphones to concentrate. There is no winning. - Teams are clique-y. Character Assassination is a real problem; if you make the wrong leader mad, EVERYONE will think you are unmanageable. I watched it happen twice to excellent colleagues who were quiet-fired. - No Bonuses. You will be told there will be bonuses. This is a lie. A favored few will receive some kind of "other" bonus. Commission is the only money you can trust if you know how to find it, calculate it, and stay on top of your billing. - RIFs, RIFs, RIFs everywhere. There have been like a dozen RIFs in the past two years. You are not safe. Not even the Corporate Barbie and Prince Charming-Beloved-by-All, were spared. It seemed like a point to cut a few really well-loved, high-performing people, as if just to prove that they could and would.
