Pros
This is a good paying job for the Boise area at $11 USD per hour. The company hires flex pool employees based off of their resumes, work experience and education, which makes it possible for both high school graduates and college students to be hired. The company is flexible in its scheduling which allows college students to work part time for Lionbridge while still being able to attend classes. When the company initiates any type of layoffs, the best performing employees are retained regardless of seniority. Even full time employees may be laid off if a flex pool employee is providing more value to the company.
Cons
A test engineer performs black box testing and earns $11 USD per hour. A test lead is responsible for managing a project, supervising personnel, and developing a relationship with the client. The test lead earns $11 USD per hour despite the additional duties. Many of the lower management encourage test engineers to accept the test lead position by promising that it will eventually lead to a full time position with the company. This is simply not true. Because there is absolutely no compensation for stepping up and becoming a test lead, the managers make false promises to lure test engineers into the position. Anything goes just as long as the position is filled and the upper management is happy. Many of the project managers (i.e. part of upper management) do not know how to do their jobs correctly. They agree to provide testing to a client when we are not capable of performing that testing. Many of them have never worked on any part of their projects, so they have no first hand experience with the items being tested. More often than not, they do not know what is going on with their own projects. Because of these factors, a majority of their administrative duties are relegated to the test leads. The morale in the Boise lab is horrendous. Any attempt to improve morale has to go through upper management. The company performs an analysis of how many client non billable hours the activity would create, then rejects the activity because it would cost the company too much money. Any alternate ideas are rejected for a variety of condescending reasons, if the upper management bothers to respond to the ideas at all. It is ridiculously hard for a flex pool employee to become a full time employee. Despite monthly meetings where our upper management shows us how much money we are making, they continue to tell us that the margins do not support the hiring of any full time employees at this time. For every 3 or 4 full time employees that leave the company, only 1 full time position opens up. This position is almost always filled by another full time employee that gets promoted, and then their previous position is never opened up. Since there are no raises for flex pool employees, the only hope to make more money is through advancement. The flex pool employees often find themselves working for free. The company perpetuates the idea that in order to become full time, you have to give 110 percent. This often means working more than 40 hours a week while only being paid for a 40 hour week. The only compensation for working over 40 hours a week is that the unbilled time may be taken off the next week as paid time, but this only happens if the upper management agrees. Additionally, if the company requires you to come in on a holiday, you do not receive overtime or bonus pay. Lionbridge has shifted its view of what an employee means to the company since they were recognized as the world's number one outsourced testing provider by the Black Book of Outsourcing in February 2007. The idea that an employee is a valuable investment and critical to the success of the company has been replaced with the motto that employees are a dime a dozen. Any attempt to leverage a full time position on the basis that you have worked harder than anyone else is immediately dismissed by upper management with the words "we can always find someone else to replace you." There are no benefits at all for flex employees. Despite numerous complaints to the upper management, even the HR department, we are constantly told that they cannot find any health insurance to cover the flex employees. Considering that the temp agencies in the area provide some type of health insurance (even dental and eye insurance most of the time), how is it that Lionbridge cannot find some kind of health insurance for the flex employees? Additionally, there is no paid time off, paid holidays, vacation time, or any other minimal benefits you would expect working for any other company.
