Pros
- flexible hours; often get to be out of office to meet clients and work from outside - good exposure to build up resume/portfolio since projects are all government ones - location of office fairly central - work starts at 10am - the only true redeeming factor about this place is its people. no politics, no backstabbing, just everyone suffering together and holding onto each other. I was sad to leave the people behind because everyone has been so friendly and approachable, not to mention kind. - OT cab claims are reimbursed
Cons
- everyone is overworked here due to the lack of structure and resources (i.e. planning in this place is non-existent), especially PMs. For demanding projects, expect to work over weekends consistently. - no communication between management and the others; inefficient processes introduced such as costing approval having to undergo three layers of approvals - Management does not work well with differing opinions and will cut ties if one disagrees with them (not that it happened to me personally, but I have seen it myself) - Speaking of handling different opinions, Denise is prepared to throw PM folks under the bus as long as customers/users have the slightest complaints about us; James is surprisingly more protective of the people in the company against users (who aren't always angels). - for demanding projects, very little support is provided even when you dearly need resources to make it work. And yet, the agency keeps trying for new projects despite having no more quality resources to dedicate to them. And they wonder why clients complain about service... When everyone is so stretched how can they provide timely and good service? If anyone from the government is reading this somehow, please trust me on this. Whatever that is promised will never be a reality. Clients have directly told me that "my agency overpromised and undercharged". The second-hand embarrassment was too real lol. - speaking of demanding projects and resources, guess who was almost made to serve two gigantic accounts! Yours truly was almost sent to a certain death. No one cares if you can handle it. As long as there is a PE to help, they consider it a resource issue solved. - management has a very weird way of looking at things. When it comes to cutting cost, apparently they looked only at whether your probation has been confirmed. You could be a terrible PE with probation confirmation and they wouldn't think of laying you off in the middle of a pandemic. Whereas capable PEs without the confirmation would have their names up for discussion on whether to retain or retrench. I was not going to give them that chance of discussing whether to retain me or not. So I made the decision for them and quit. You're welcome, Denise! No PE will ever be as considerate as I.