Pros
It was great until it wan't. Excellent benefits, some really wonderful coworkers, a few good managers, room for growth, and you often have the ability to move around within the company to explore other career paths if you're interested. It's not heroic work, but most days you can find the meaningful contribution in the work you do. Fun team building activities are available throughout the year and they're supported by the highest levels of leadership who also participate. Pre-pandemic Halloween decorating contests were legendary! The return of the Christmas party was a good move. Made some lifelong friends. The early years were by far the best years.
Cons
ATI doesn't pay their people anywhere close to what they're worth. And they didn't give out raises to most people in the first year of the pandemic with the excuse that even though they were quite profitable, they needed to stay competitive with all the companies hit hard by the country shutting down. They have some really toxic managers and leaders who will grind you to dust. The workload is unrelenting. They're forever operating lean, meaning they will overload their people when someone leaves by dividing that person's workload rather hiring a replacement. And the extra work you get never gets offloaded again even after they've hired new people. Same thing happens during growth. They would rather overload their staff than risk hiring someone new who might not be fully loaded right away. They present it as good business sense like they're walking that fine line to keep their rates competitive. Most everyone is a salaried employee, but that "salaried" interpretation is entirely one-sided and only ever works to ATI's advantage. Always more than 40 hours without overtime because you're salaried, but never ever less than 40. They say they offer flex but you don't get that flex time as a one for one. You can likely work extra hours and use flex for a doctor's appointment so you don't have to take PTO, but you can't flex for an afternoon off even if you've worked 5-10 extra hours. And during the busy season, you'll be worked even harder. There is honestly no such thing as a 40 hour week in the last few months of the Government Fiscal Year. If your own workload isn't enough to keep you busy for more than 8 hours a day you'll be loaned to another manager who'll give you whatever their staff can't handle. During the early days of the pandemic they made a big show with trainings that were focused on time management and identifying burnout. It seemed helpful and caring at first. This was on top of their weekly training tidbits on productivity and time management. This also seems helpful for professional growth and development, but to me it was just thinly-veiled contempt for a workforce they weren't wringing tightly enough. ATI's culture is based on employee exploitation wrapped in a rah-rah-go-team-we-appreciate-everything-you-do-swag-blanket.
