A Little Shaky with Albertson's Influence
Pros
Depending on your manager - lots of flexibility in terms of telecommuting, time off and managing your own time. Currently, there are a lot of great benefits - good health care program, onsite gym (which is free, beautiful and modern!), onsite health clinic and pharmacy, 2 cafes with cheap and nutritious choices every day, employee discounts (10% on private label brands), lots of employee resource groups and support, etc. Standard vacation time, floating holidays, regular holidays and the like, but you can negotiate for more vacation if your boss likes you. For the Bay Area, pay is good - but not amazing. Most positions get the lower end of the market rate, from what I've heard. Depending on your boss, they will listen to your goals and ambitions, and let you really own your job, while helping you get to where you want to be.
Cons
Since the company merged with Albertsons, I'm seeing a decline in these perks mentioned above. I've heard Albertsons thinks us Safeway employees are "spoiled" and therefore cutting these extras out (goodbye employee store!), and the general feeling is the quality of our stores and employees will reduce with this takeover. In the Bay Area, with competition as it is, this is a bad move, since any one of these employees can pretty easily pick up and move to a company where these benefits are standard (and there are plenty!). These issues might balance out once things settle down, but I think it's going to take several years. Middle management (Director levels mainly, but also some VPs) are very eager to show their worth to their higher ups. Cliques are sometimes formed, and there have been times I've overheard Directors badmouthing their own staff. A lot of that should be cut out, if employees are to have any respect for management. A lot of that middle management doesn't do all that much anyway, aside from schmooze with vendors and senior management, so I'd guess they are insecure and want to prove that they're worthy of their fat pay checks.
