What there was an option for rating a company zero stars...
Pros
There are really very few positives. I would sooner have bowel cancer than work with Drake ever again.
Cons
Genuinely, it's difficult to even consider where I should start. As a management consultant with many, many years behind me I can honestly say that I have never seen an organisation so poorly managed, so poorly resourced and with such an ingrained culture of misery and schoolyard politics than I witnessed daily for five years at Drake. You may ask, "but why would you stay with a company you so hated for five whole years?" and that would be reasonable. The answer is most likely Stockholm Syndrome - when victims of kidnappings develop feelings for their captor, but then again, it could also be the fact that we were all so beaten down that sheer inertia kept me in place. The pay is terrible, let's get that one out of the way straight off. Actually, terrible would be a compliment to their pay structure - working at Drake is tantamount to middle class slavery. There are bonus structures in place: MBI (we called it the "Mythical Bonus Incentive") and PFP (which we called "Pay for Pollock"), don't expect to receive either of these - god knows I never saw anyone receive one anyway. The chances for advancement are nil, unless of course you are a preternaturally attractive blonde woman under 30 and then the world is your oyster (you'll still be paid terribly though - sorry!). There was always a lot of talk of technology. Technology this, technology that - my laptop was five years old when I started. It was the same laptop I returned to them on my last day five years later. No word of a lie, it ran Windows 98. The "leadership team" is a self serving entity. They, as a clique, prepare statements for the octogenarian billionaire who owns the place that tell him exactly what he wants to hear while singling out individual workplace nemesis as 'non-performers' to lay blame on. The leadership team exists purely to ensure their own existence. This is the same in every Drake country, I worked in three of them, trust me. There is a culture of cruelty within Drake. I once witnessed the then managing director in Toronto dismiss staff over loudspeaker - it was Christmas Eve. People were routinely threatened and belittle... It was not an uncommon occurrence to set people up for failure. This simple question has to be asked: Why is an organisation that hasn't turned a profit in close to a decade still trading? What does it offer other than an opportunity for adults to play 'work' the way that children play 'house'?