Pros
These are highly specific to my personal experience: - Flexible hours without micro management - Good benefits - Minimal travel requirements - Trust and autonomy - Understanding and approachable upper management - A dedicated core staff
Kontras
- Dominated by an under-qualified, opportunistic sales force with a leadership mentality bent on short-term gain (median age, approx 25 years) - Product backed by an equally under-qualified and over-worked service staff (median age, approx 25 years) - Board leadership with near-complete lack of understanding of (or interest in) a longer-term strategy to grow the company organically via the basic concepts of good managers (Board median age greater than 64 years) - A repeated tendency for rapid, short-term growth-by-acquisition followed by long-term "disease" in in terms of associate and client retention. - Extremely over-worked, under-experienced, and unaccountable middle management made up of "promotees" from scant offerings supplied by the remains of the non-management workforce. - Extreme lack of institutional knowledge caused by continued turnover, loss of veteran associates, and failure to respect the power of training and documentation. - Severe lack of communication at all levels and almost no accountability of upper management. - Near-complete lack of upper-management follow through on the employee-engagement program ... zero budget allocated to employee-committee-proposed 2012 action items - Lack of budget towards infrastructure in favor of largely unnecessary travel expenditures and grossly liberal board/executive payouts ... a very cheap date.
