TEKsystems reviews

1. Office politics are KING. You could do a perfect job as BOA, or analyst, or what have you, but you will never be as highly regarded as the peer (who could be awful at their actual job) who has networked/built relationships the best. 2. The salaries are below market average for the DC area. As a grunt, you will make about $37k. As a first level manager (MOS, one step up from being a grunt), you will make about $40k. A second level manager, SMOS, makes about $45k. An RC makes about $50-55k plus stock options. 3. It is a very stressful place to work if you're an introvert. You will constantly be told that you need to go out to lunch more, "take down your walls," and go chat with people in the middle of the day. There are a lot of unspoken social rules, so if you are someone who prefers a task/goal focused job, this will not be a good fit. 4. Benefits are awful and you only get 2 weeks vacation for the first 5 years you're there. 5. At the end of the day, the devotion to the Core Values is cult-like and upper management is an old boy's club. You are completely dispensable if someone important enough doesn't like you. 6. Promotions are very hard won. I think they expect so much from their employees in terms of working unpaid over time, kissing butt, and having "carefrontation" with everyone that it's rare an actual human being could impress them. They hire managers from the outside so often because it's easier to be hopeful and gamble on someone you don't know. For in house people chosen for promotion, they go through a vetting process that lasts 6-12 months wherein the person is expected to prove their worth by doing their job plus the job of a manager without a pay increase or title change.

Work life balance: You are officially required to work your 40 hours, but it is made very clear that if you want to succeed, you had better put in more like 60 hours/week. Which would be sort of ok, if it was for some time, but even senior recruiters with several years in the company are putting in 60 hour work weeks. These are used as role models to show how hard work pays off, instead of rewarding them. Do not mistake me, I have no problem working myself ragged, but not while on top of it consistently putting in 50% more hours (which are not paid OT). This is not a 9-5 job, no matter how they say you are free to go after your 8 hours. Company culture: The people in the office that were straight out of, or a few years out of, college will not complain about the work hours, and these are the people that seems to end up staying with the company. The company has a very frat boy vibe to it, and if you are not that, you are not part of the cool crowd. If you don't fit the mold, you are pushed out. As a professional with several years work experience before joining TEK, I found it trying to be told how to dress and act to be professional, while being hit in the back of my head by a nerf ball. Working with contractors: You are encouraged to nickel and dime every single contractor you put to work. This is, of course, where the money is made, but being assigned to reqs for higher level IT professionals making lots of money per hour, and having already negotiated them down, I found it petty when my AM would ask me to squeeze another buck-oh-five out of them. Even more so with a candidate making 15/hr, as they need this $ even more. Somewhere along the line, we lose track of the fact that these are people we are working with. While the camaraderie between recruiters was great (you're in the trenches together, after all), at the same time you knew that only a select few would hesitate to snatch your candidate from under your nose if they could make a few bucks off them. "You snooze, you loose" along with "work hard, party hard" sums it up.