Pros
+ Nice HQ, mostly free drinks (soda, dasani water), free parking. + Good pay for not accomplishing anything
Cons
There’s an old saying that you can’t polish a turd, yet Coca-Cola has proven that you can mix one with water & sugar, put it in a shiny red can, spend millions in marketing and earn a handy profit. This model has served Coca-Cola well for decades but the world has wised up on how unhealthy their beverages are. The business continues to struggle, and rightfully so. Mind you, they diversified but have failed to make a sizable dent in other beverages categories, nearly all of which are unprofitable and of poor quality vs. competition. You see, Coca-Cola isn’t good at making quality products, they’re really good at marketing poor ones and best when they’re loaded with calories. Their only success has been a couple acquisitions that they didn’t destroy inside a couple years and raising their product’s price. Their latest strategy is to sell smaller sizes for more money. For any business, it’s never a healthy indicator to have consumers desire less of your product. Such a strategy will catch up soon and the ship will list drastically and turn downward. Work life is good with a nice HQ and good benefits; it’s one of the few companies that still offers a pension. You’ll like it if you can get over the destructive societal impacts you would be complicit to such as direct contributing to the annual deaths of thousands from diabetes, heart disease, and other obesity related illnesses. Couple that with hundreds of millions of bottles and cans in landfills, incredible & unchecked carbon emissions from freight, working here really requires a dismissive quality to your impact on the world. Now, they’ll try to convince you everything is ok by brainwashing you through “Ambassador” training. There you’ll learn all of the “alternative facts” that they have funded through for-profit scientists and physicians willing to forego their integrity for dollars. Then when local governments wise up and look to legislate taxes to assuage consumers to healthier alternatives they pour tons of marketing dollars with their ‘alternative facts” to defeat it at the ballot. Then they’ll talk about all the good they do in the community from employing thousands, to assisting in disaster relief. Admirable, yes, but that’s also from the playbook of every drug cartel since Pablo Escobar. Philanthropy despite how beneficial, should not excuse one's ongoing sins. This is especially true given how sizable their debt is to society. Given all of that, the best people of Coca-Cola have left or are planning to leave. What’s left is a completely inept management team that has no idea what to do but to fund more marketing spend. This phenomenon has led to the departure of what I consider some of the greatest minds to ever grace North Avenue. This includes our best senior executives to the most promising millennials who all fought to make the right changes but couldn’t overcome a bloated organization’s dithering. That said, if you don’t want to accomplish anything and can endure the awful leadership and HR uselessness this is the place for you. You’ll accomplish little besides powerpoint or an internal presentation as the bureaucratic layers of the system and ‘who owns what conflict’ will destroy anything promising through risk averse debate. I’m planning on leaving early next year to collect my bonus and move on to another company that I’ve already laid the groundwork for. I’ve worked terribly hard this year but thinking back I don’t think I accomplished anything. Just lots of powerpoint and presenting… sigh.
