Pros
I enjoyed my time with Iris. I've been separated for the company for a while now and feel that I've allowed enough time to give a thoughtful and fair review. First off, I would like to thank Iris for giving me the opportunity to get my feet wet in the litigation support field. I was hired with no experience or formal education in ediscovery. Iris is a great entry level company in the field. When I started, it seemed like the advancement options were limitless. There wasn't really any job that was unobtainable, provided that you had the work ethic and showed the ability to pickup new skills. It was nice seeing the hard work that I put into the company help build it to be one of the leading vendors in the industry. I really felt a sense of accomplishment when I was working.
Cons
When I left, there was little upside to Iris. After multiple changes in management structure (on paper only), the culture only got worse. I do not fault the mid-level (department) management. They worked harder than any other employees. It's my honest opinion that if these guys wised up enough to see the other opportunities and left, the entire company would collapse. The main issue was the senior management. They were so disconnected with what was actually happening in day to day operations that it was sickening. Almost every day we would see senior management show up, typically 1-2 hours after our shift started, and watch them leave, at least an hour, before we did. It was incredibly demoralizing. The entire culture of the "New" Iris was toxic. Turn over was worse than any job that I had ever held. The worse part was that when someone left, no one was hired to replace them. The burden was shifted to the leads and the department managers. Shifts were 10 hours (1 hour lunch break) for salaried leadership and 9 hours for hourly employees. Not only were the scheduled hours long, I always felt that it was mandatory to stay at least another 1-2 hours past my shift. This was described as "Typical" in the industry. Since I've moved on to another company, I can see that this was clearly false. Granted, this could just be the company that I work for now, but they've found a way to be successful without working their salaried employees to death. Compensation was clearly below industry standards as well. I will say that it was very good when compared to other jobs available with no experience. Holidays were typically full staffed. Again, another "industry standard". FTO was nearly impossible to get approved. There were several times when I put in for FTO to be denied it because I had already taken a vacation that year. When I left the company, I had over 100 hours of FTO that I was unable to use. This leads back to the understaffed issues. No properly managed company should be crippled because someone is taking time off.