Plenty of opportunities. . . until there weren't.
Pros
I joined the company during its massive expansion when the housing bubble burst. Because I excelled above my peers - and also, partly, because I was in the right place at the right time - my career took off.
Cons
As time went on, the company became so mired in politics and bureaucracy that it was next to impossible to effect any real change. When I started working there, the entire company embraced creativity and fully believed in recognizing people for outstanding work - and they put their money behind that culture. At the end, I was paying out of pocket to reward my staff for exceeding expectations. Managers lived in constant fear of employees resigning or, heaven forbid, having to be fired. They tightened staffing action control so high up the executive management chain that it very nearly took an act of God to make a change. If I inherited a poorly - or, in some cases, disastrously - performing employee, I would be stuck taking unnecessary disciplinary steps repeatedly while waiting 60 to 90 days for the busy executive of the week to give me permission to terminate their employment. Once a position was vacated, I'd have to wait another three months to get permission to start searching for a replacement - even when executive management routinely called for managers to justify their current staffing levels. Finding a good candidate to fill a vacant slot was the easy part. Once I chose someone, I'd have to ask for approval to hire them and justify the salary I wanted to pay them. THAT review invariably took a minimum of six months. For new hires coming on board through a staffing agency, I could work with that. When I made the decision to hire them, I'd tell them up front that the red tape would take a certain amount of time to be cut. The majority of my temp-to-hire employees were content to wait. But an unemployed job seeker looking for direct hire? Forget about it. Executive management complained to us routinely about why we didn't bother to interview referrals and cold calls. And when we told them, loudly and often, that no one who is currently unemployed is going to wait six months to get low-balled for an entry level job, our responses fell on deaf ears. Lastly, when the company went through a period of mass layoffs, they handled the entire process horribly. As a manager, I knew which employees in each of my business units were getting the axe months in advance, because I'd had to choose those people. While many of us in management practically begged the execs to let us tell those employees ahead of time so they could get a jump start on finding a new job, we were told, very forcefully, that if we tried it we'd be the next ones out the door. Instead, they waited until the day of the layoff, walked around the floor cubicle by cubicle, singling people out and telling them to go to an empty suite downstairs. None of them knew what was up, and while they were given small severance packages, the way they were told they were being let go was absolutely heartless.
