Pros
Outside of tangible things like our cars, 401k match, vacation time and ability to work a flexible schedule, there a few and far between. While applying and interviewing outside of the organization recently, I unfortunately learned how good our vacation and 401K programs are.
Cons
Every day there's a new announcement of new international assignment BAT people coming over to the US. While diversity of thought is needed, it's caused a log jam of current talent to sit and rot away. What's the point of going through the succession process, sacrifice your personal life to have a chance at future promotions, just to be put on ice because the talent pipeline is blocked by BAT international assignment employees? Work load has been manageable through all of this, despite the top decision makers trying to find new ways to screw something. Leadership above the AVPs clearly lack real world reality of the work place. Trade Marketing consistently finds a way to succeed despite every internal mistake that's made. Tenured Division Managers lead to half the problems that exists in the field. They continue to coach their teams in a way that puts a focus on little things that bog TMs down, and pull their abilities away from doing activities that actually can grow the business. All this does is lead to a rift between the selling teams and the field there is no "One Team all In" philosophy here anymore. Pricing is wrong on one random non focus sku? you get an email like it's the end of the world and the chain is burning down. You sell in an aggressive self funded deal or a big win on new space? Crickets from TMs and DMs. If you question a TMs ability to a DM or God forbid you try to get a TM held accountable for their decisions that negatively effect a chain? You become the Pariah because we have to protect TMs feelings at all costs. All this does is continue to drive a wedge between the selling team and the TMs/DMs. For the people who blame SDRs and AVPs, know that they have little control over what's going on anymore. When AVPs come to visit, I've never once heard a DM be honest and express the frustration TMs feel, it's always something along the lines of "There's definitely a lot going on, but i think everyone is managin ok"... How do you expect change if everyone is being a "yes man" and not being honest? There's a lot of new upper management making decisions in the field, but they're being driven to react to international assignees who make decisions off of metrics alone and don't take into account the state of the US market or economy. Most SDRs and AVPs are just as frustrated as we are, they just have to tow a company line.
