- Company is ridiculously cheap - I mean, ridiculously. My project manager told me what she makes and it is literally half of what I am making working for the government entity they're leasing me to. Akima's own benefits are terrible - I really feel for the office personnel - and the only reason I don't have the same terrible benefits is because the entity I work for forces Akima, via contract, to provide decent benefits. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure the health care plan would consist of a bottle of Airborne.
- The people I work with in my city's home office are sweet but absolutely clueless. Because managing staffers is their job, I would think they would know about basics of government contract staff management like overtime, vacation pay, holiday pay, etc. They generally can't answer even my simplest questions like "how should I account for my time if X happens" and tell me to ask my manager - who doesn't know how to do things the way Akima does them, because she doesn't work for Akima! I don't really know beans about HR or contract management but I've had to school them several times when they were about to either violate my employee rights or the FAR (Federal Acquisitions Regulations).
- Terrible, terrible accrual of vacation and sick time. We get like 6 hours a month of vacation and asking to use it always generates a lot of huffy emails and subtle hints that you really shouldn't be taking time off. If you take a sick day on either side of a federal holiday they want you to produce a doctor's note. Really? Treating people like adults is definitely not the Akima way. Witness today's news.
- The most annoying thing is the weird combination of total whip-cracking micromanagement of contractors coupled with a total lack of knowledge of how they are supposed to do their job. It makes for a lot, lot, lot of frustration.
Take it from me: avoid Akima and Akima Infrastructure Resources. My partner works for a different contractor at my same site and he has better benefits and about fifteen times less hassle. They let him work from home at least one day a week, they have company outings that the company pays for, and best of all, his project managers know what they're talking about. He's having a much better time than I am working basically the same job.
