Biggest complaint is that you are totally dependent on your Supervisor to determine your fate as to whether you stay after 6 months or are terminated within 3-4 months. If your Supervisor decides he/she does not like you for any reason, it becomes a standard routine to write you up for every petty issue or mistake, with termination highly certain. The politics at UTSW is very ugly and worse than the corporate world. During my probationary period I was treated as if I was a Contractor more than an Employee. The group I was in was the Pediatrics Dept, and take my advice and avoid this department at every angle! This is the only group that is highly dysfunctional in terms of how management treats their staff, and all of the managers are tightly connected to the HR department, so if you ever have a grievance or valid complaint while on probation you can expect no support from HR and it will actually make things worse as it did for me. Promotions are based on years of experience rather than actual skills and accomplishments. Very minimal pay raises provided if any at all. The Admin from my department had not received a pay raise in 8 years! The Pediatrics department has had 12 terminations in the last 12 months, so if you don’t fit the mold you’ll be quickly gone with NO recourse. When terminated as a Probationary Employee you cannot appeal the decision. On my way out I was told HR would include a 3rd-party independent person in the review of my case and response document in my defense, but that was totally false and they never bothered to consider my written response so I was terminated before the 90-day point. Despite many accomplishments and successes on the job, my Supervisor nit-picked everything regularly and I was written up for taking a Sick Day when I needed one. Their Job Descriptions are way too vague, and allows too large a window for “Other Projects as Assigned”. In my case I was terminated for making common mistakes any new employee will make that were based on tasks not specified anywhere in my Job Description while learning the job the hard way, without any documentation and with a Supervisor that would only meet with me one hour per week. When I was terminated my Supervisor was promoted to a higher level despite her poor communication skills both verbally and in writing. When I asked for details in writing about projects I was working on my Supervisor always replied that if she had to put things in writing she might as well do everything herself. Finally, this place is really just an Adult Day Care Center, and good people are regularly micro-managed by boneheads who intimidate and criticize rather than facilitate your adjustment during probation or help you be successful on the job. The good people get smart and quickly transfer to another department after their 6-month stint. People were assigned to tasks outside of the scope of their jobs, such as being assigned as the temporary Manager of a group until someone qualified is actually hired in the position. IT folks are abused daily by over-demanding and uneducated users, and are not given the resources they need to do their jobs properly (most work out of a closet). If you can work within a box and like being criticized for tasks you are assigned to outside of your job scope, this is for you.
