Pros
- Knowledgeable and skilled co-workers
- Casual office environment
- Good pay
Cons
- Benefits are not worth even mentioning, except for perhaps the basic life insurance. You will pay more in medical insurance premiums than you will get paid out due to all of the exceptions. Most clinics give better prices for cash payment than the actual amount you pay for coinsurance + premiums over the course of the year. And there is no 401k matching.
- For non-administrative roles, pay is based on billable hours to the client. If the client decides that it is excessive, then they may refuse to pay the company, and you might get docked those hours of pay. If the client doesn't like how long you take on something, you may get your contract pulled, potentially leading to an immediate layoff.
- Management frequently underquotes customers, creating pressure to perform work in a certain amount of billable time, despite the necessity of additional review.
- Often they do not push back on clients for unreasonable expectations, or when processes are added in excess of the agreed upon statement of work.
- The internal documentation process is tedious, and sometimes can take up to 25% of the total time spent on a task. Yet the projected turn-times do not factor that in sufficiently, forcing reviewers to often work unpaid for at least some of that time, or risk reprimand for excessive billing.
- There is no budget for overhead. If something is not directly billable to a client's PO, then you usually often have to do it "off-the-books", even if it ends up fixing major issues and saving both the company and client thousands of dollars.
- Unstable business model relies heavily on the good graces of the client, and lack of competition from competing firms.
- VERY high turnover rate due to the demand of high-standards, but a lack of support or understanding to employees when problems arise.