Pros
WARNING... if you are not going for a sales job, and you hear the word 'scorecard'...run! I'll start with the positives. The people who work here are fantastic. And motivated. For a limited time. Work hours are great (generally 9-5 for most staff)...really good work/life balance!
Cons
Now to the cons. This place is a revolving door. Motivation is very low. It's a huge shame because this is a super successful company, but operates like a struggling startup. The belief is that people are very replaceable and show no appreciation. You may not report to the founder, but hes the one who grade your report cards, even though he doesn't see you or speak to you. I wrote that warning in the beginning because what happens when you get an offer is they take away a huge chunk of your base salary from your prior job, and make a huge portion of your overall salary commission based. This was a very odd structure for me, since this is not a sales job...and I have been in my field for about 10 years. In my offer negotiation, I tried to get clarification on what this means, and what I could expect in terms of earnings. The response was very vague. Funny enough, I tried to get clarification over email, so that I had a paper trail...but he wouldn't have that and asked me to call. I have the recording of the conversation. Twenty four minutes of beating around the bush. I had asked for past numbers, just so I can get an understanding of my earning potential and he said 'you think I'm going to share this with you before you start working here?' I said yes, in cases like this, employers have you sign a non-disclosure agreement so they can see numbers, especially when a huge part of their pay structure is dependent upon it. He said no! "It's about trust. It's all about confidence, who you are what you can bring" When asked about what my department goals, he said "i cannot tell you in details, we will establish this." He said: 50% of your bonus equals good, so you know this is something you can get...we consider it 'just acceptable'... so if you want to play on the safe side, assume you'd get 50% of the bonus potential. And let me tell you, we don't keep people who are just acceptable...we don't need that. Then he made it seem like I'm not confident in myself if I wouldn't assume I'd make over 50% of the bonus potential. Now fast forward to over a year later... I got less than 50% of my bonus potential. The numbers I hit were RECORD BREAKING for the time I was there. I performed excellent, despite getting kicked down and ripped off.All managers shared their stories with each other, since we were all in the same boat. They use this scorecard as a way to control costs..and no matter how great you are, they already know how much you're going to get paid out. The major problem with this structure is that it completely kills motivation. And worse, if you happen to do really well and the numbers are not arguable, they change the rules. How many times people have had their scorecard parameters changed and made more challenging is just crazy. ALll department managers are just puppets, because we don't even have the power to give our talented, deserving employees what they really deserve. They start understanding this and they too get demotivated, knowing their own boss has no control and no matter how hard they work... theey will still be compensated as 'ok.' It's not a real bonus when its part of your livelihood! When you cut a persons base salary drastically, and then tell them they're just ok when they're hitting record numbers.... it's just unacceptable. It sucks, because FlatRate is a huge name and an amazing company from the customer standpoint. They charge an arm and a leg...much more expensive than most other moving companies, and yet the employees dont' get a cut... don't even let me get started on the poor movers who do the laborious work. Only 10 days PTO, and very limited paid holidays.
