Pros
Carestream. A company that once had so much potential, so much opportunity, is continuing its long painful decline into non-existence. There really isn’t much positive to talk about here. The paychecks still clear, the benefits are ok and the parking lot is full of empty spaces. Other than that, there really isn’t much to point to as a reason to stay here or come here.
Cons
Here, we could write a novel or at least a business school case study on how not to run a business, beginning first with leadership. Imagine a ship with a good crew, solid engines, and a decent hull. Now imagine that ship going around in circles. No direction. No leadership. No vision. No strategy. That is Carestream. The blame clearly begins with leadership at the most senior levels. Since the purchase from Kodak, the organization hasn’t had any kind of significant growth. There was the big initial push to grow the business to 20 billion dollars, but without a vision and a plan, this initial enthusiasm quickly quieted. Recently, there was a misguided effort to build a strategy based on competencies. After millions of dollars and the departure of a number of well respected leaders, this debacle was finally mercifully ended. The lack of leadership permeates the organization, nowhere more so than our wonderful HR organization. Here, HR stands for Horribly Repressive. Right now, we are undergoing our annual re-enactment of the movie “The Purge”. This is the where we conduct calibration sessions to identify who gets what rating. See, at Carestream, you could achieve all of your goals and still be rated one of the lowest ratings. Then, you will either get partial or no bonus. Plus, now you are one foot out the door and another on a banana peel. As a result of this discredited and Machiavellian method, over 5000 people have exited the organization either voluntarily or involuntarily over the last 8 years. Good people. Talented people. Pretty impressive for a 7500 person company. HR is led by a Chief Human Resources Officer with zero HR experience. None. She doesn’t know solid HR talent and treats her people (and everyone else) terribly. As the result, the best and brightest have left in droves. Walk by her office and you can hear her screaming at some poor unlucky soul. People who come into HR quickly assess the situation and the culture and quickly make the decision to leave. Everyone here knows if you have a problem or concern talk to your spouse, friends, neighbors, pastor, just don’t talk to HR. Otherwise you will be on the outside looking in. Our IT organization has been beaten up pretty bad on Glassdoor, but all the reviews are accurate. After all, we are using Lotus Notes. Who uses Lotus Notes? Our culture. You have read about it in the previous reviews. They don’t do it justice. It is torture. Each Sunday you will feel this overwhelming dread about coming to work. You will lose sleep and when Monday comes around you will feel miserable, like a part of you just died. Every week. Week after week. The culture is well known in the area and one of the major reasons people don’t want to work here. People are unhappy. People are threatened with their job on a daily basis. People are afraid to express their views, otherwise they will be part of the 5000 no longer here. Backstabbing, politics and gossip are the rule of the day. This is a culture where the disillusioned and the disenfranchised are led by the dysfunctional and despotic. Lots of D letter words there. Here is another that best describes our culture: Dystopian. I could continue to paint the picture for you, but this should be enough to illustrate what it is like here. Of course, you can always accept a position here and see for yourself. If you do, be sure to stop by. I’ll be the talking to a headhunter or one counting my days to retirement. Come to think of it, that is most of us.