Pros
Emphasis on healthy work/life balance
The Apex merit/recognition award system is leaps and bounds above the 9 other companies I have been employed since I left working on my family's farm and joined the workforce 18 years ago. Whether a job was minor jobs during college or a role integral to furthering my career, none of the 9 companies had a merit award system as good as Peraton (if they even had one at all).
Personally, my supervisor and the entirety of the team I am on have far exceeded any other lead, manager, project manager, etc., that I've ever worked with and under. I've been on teams where there were a portion of the team was as good to work with as the people here at Peraton, but never the entirety of the team.
There's a better culture here of being able to give recognition to peers, leaders, and subordinates that doesn't exist in most other companies these days.
Peraton is also far more accommodating than others with bereavement leave. Only one other company I've worked for offered that. The rest didn't care, and if a person had to take sudden and unexpected time off due to a family emergency/death of even immediate family members, they got demerits for it, became ineligible for a raise during annual performance reviews and comp planning, if they were lucky. Some companies would unilaterally terminate employment (even employees who were "stars of the team").
Working remotely. For me personally when my position and my team were shifted being in an office to remote, and then the remote thing became permanent, that increased my efficiency and effectiveness at accomplishing goals and had more freedom to work on side-projects to beyond the core scope of responsibilities for my role to improve processes, update documentation and perfected verbiage to be easier for users to digest, as well as implementing a more friendly format standard for instructions our team commonly has to provide to users as to ensure that they read ALL the instructions, and to increase a higher success rate of following instructions thoroughly and to the letter.
PLUS, I get recognition and appreciation for all that I do to improve efficiency and effectiveness of my team, and the contracts we support here. I've worked on similar side projects like the ones I have here, but instead of recognition and appreciation, they just piled more on to me until I was far past the point of exhaustion and burnout.
The "intangibles" here add much more value to our employment, which other employers simply don't, can't, or won't compete with.
Cons
Well, even though the Apex merit rewards are nice perks, they don't fully balance out the income disparity of government contractors vs most of the private sector companies. I have a livable income here that allows me to afford a small handful of nice things and be financially comfortable/stable for a modest life.
As federal contractors, I think the we should have all federal holidays off. When the government isn't working, then we should have that same privilege. We were all forced to get the COVID vaccine like the military and veterans, but weren't given the option to choose which vaccine like direct government employees (especially the military) had the liberty of. Which isn't the fault of Peraton, but since I had Long COVID after catching it in April 2020, the Moderna vaccine ended up putting my Long COVID on steroids, leading to major injuries.
In 2024 when the injuries happened, Peraton had better insurance benefit enrollment options, than the new insurance companies offered to Peraton employees for coverage in 2025.
For one thing, the new insurance unilaterally decided that physical and mental health issues and injuries that I had prior suddenly no longer exist and they refuse to cover the medication for PTSD that I've had struggled with for 17 years, as well as the physical therapy and pain management from my dislocated and shattered right humerus, inoperable left shoulder blade fracture, and the major compression fractures in my spine that happened just last year (2024) at the beginning of June.
Plus there's also confusion on whether or not I still had last years benefit coverage from September of 24 through to the end of the year. Some of my doctors said that I was covered, other doctors at different facilities said that I wasn't. My 1095-C showed an end to insurance coverage starting in September of 2024, even though premiums were still deducted from my pay. This alone has created confusion about the amount of medical debt that I may or may not have. The hospital and UC Health that performed the surgery on my humerus and back sends me a letter about how much I owe them once a month and that amount has varied from as low as $368.00 and as high as $41,783.00. Neither the Peraton benefits department nor my doctors can tell me what happened and why this is occurring. BCBS won't work with me on it since I am no longer enrolled with them as of the beginning of 2025, and Surest United HC has sent me multiple letters telling me that my injuries and PTSD do not exist and they will not cover any treatment or medication for either of those things. Which also includes refusing to cover any follow-up appointments with orthopedic, neurosurgeons, and physical therapy to monitor and follow my healing progress. I'm hoping that the legal services benefit I enrolled in can sort this out for me and it not be a conflict of interest. Otherwise, I'll be bankrupted overnight if UC Health/Parkview Hospital decided to forcibly collect the entire amount that they think I owe (i.e. up to over $40,000.00) all at once. No letter from BCBS, no letter from Peraton, no letter from ANY of my doctors about a lack of health insurance coverage prior to or immediately after my health insurance benefits were supposedly instantly cut off after August of 2024.
So, the biggest cons are:
1. The pay being significantly below the industry standard/average for IT positions.
2. Atrocious and virtually pointless insurance benefits due to how much the Out of Pocket expense is for health insurance, the cap for the dental insurance is laughable (so people have to hope, pray, and cross their fingers that they don't need more than one dental procedure done in a year; for people like me with severe TMJ and have lost teeth due to shattering them by grinding and clinching in my sleep AND had to delay the dental work done I was going to have done in 2024 before my injuries when the dental insurance benefit was still much better than what we have now. However, when trying to get back to taking care of my dental needs, I can get two procedures done before I'm paying several thousands of dollars to get anything else done. Cutting corners to save a couple bucks by changing insurance providers has only served to hurt and overburden employees. We have all this extra money deducted from our pay, and still have to dump a large fraction of our net pay in medical costs that ultimately makes enrolling in the insurance coverage negligible and prevents employees from being consistently financially comfortable and stable should any major or emergency medical needs are required. That only leads to an overstressed workforce, which all studies have shown results in a drop/decrease in performance due to the mental stress of life outside of work.
For the employees of Peraton to accomplish our mantra of "Do The Can't Be Done" then Peraton must also "Do The Can't Be Done" for the individuals that Peraton employs.
