Infuriating culture of deceit, secrecy, and finger pointing; IT begs for scraps from the master's table.
Pros
If you happened to go to college with someone in upper management, you'll do very well for yourself here. Connections mean everything in this company. The company is well respected in insurance circles, with arguably one of the better claim services in the industry. They really look after their customers.
Cons
Sadly, they don't take especially good care of their employees. Doubly so for IT personnel. The culture of nepotism is such that people who are wholly unqualified for positions of seniority are promoted, usually to their own level of incompetence, thanks to a kindly word from a friend with influence. In a technical organization, this is a heinous oversight. We have utterly incompetent team leads, service managers, resource managers, and architects running the asylum. Of course, if you're the slightest bit vocal about these incompetencies, you're a troublemaker and will find yourself swiftly sidelined. Communication within the company suffers from an overriding need for secrecy on even the slightest matters. There is absolutely zero transparency; senior management are well aware of just how incompetent their policies are, but are powerless to do anything about it - the policies and processes that exist would require a herculean effort to uproot and redo. Money is wasted at an alarming rate because management are paralyzed with indecision. Technology has never been one of Cincinnati's strong points; it's estimated we lag five to eight years behind most other similarly-sized insurance companies. There's been a recent attempt at introducing up-to-date technologies and agile methods, but project management isn't up to the task. The future of entire IT departments are uncertain, as the company has gotten on the outsourcing bandwagon - again, several years behind the rest of the industry. There's very much an "Us vs Them" attitude in IT; we're constantly butting heads with the various business units over patently unrealistic timelines. Their answer should be put to Gregorian chant music: "Release it on schedule and work on a hot-fix."
