Pros
- Reasonable vacation and carry over plan. - Generous University holidays including most federal holidays, the day after thanksgiving, Christmas Eve through New Years day. - Pending your role, exposure to various tools and technologies, and lots of potential to learn to take to your next role. - While lower than market, base pay can be respectable. - Solid 403b match at 6%. 11% when five year mark is hit. - Pending your manager, no questions asked mentality and support when it comes to family matters.
Cons
University specific cons: - Healthcare benefits are very expensive. Especially for family plans. - The University does not support flexible remote working arrangements due to notion that students need to see the employees to support the University’s mission. In order to prevent an even larger exodus, departments had to keep their remote work plans secret from University leadership. - There are no significant pay raises and/or bonuses past your hire date. Even if you are a top performer, it is very unlikely that you will see anything past a 3% base salary increase per year. IT Department specific cons: - There is no growth potential. In many areas, the leaders/managers have been there for 15+ years. Even if you are a successful employee, the only chance for a promotion involves a lifer leaving. - There is no accountability. An employee can get away with not replying to emails or voicemails, missing deadlines/time-frame they committed to. When asked or confronted about it, there will be excuse after excuse. Certain managers will constantly and continuously defend this behavior and make you feel like the bad guy after following up after a month of no replies. - Related to the above, IT is filled with personalities that have been there for too long. If you are new employee, you will soon realize that half your job is tip toeing around how someone may ‘feel’ about how you write an email. You will realize that anytime you want something new done, it will need to be ‘fought’ (not discussed) at the AVP or higher level. Very few team members are actually empowered by their manager to affect change. - There is no strategic plan or prioritization within the department. The strategic plan for IT was a muddled up list of tasks without any SMART goals. This has contributed to the disfunction and conflict within the organization. - The lack of innovation and change from new CIO has forced an exodus of good managers and lead employees to leave. Of those full time vacancies, he has not filled a single one over the last year+. If this is part of some grand slow moving plan, it has only led to overworked employees and lower morale. IT employees waited almost two years for a new leader and are struggling worse than before. If change happens, the damage has already been done and the good and reliable employees will continue to leave. While more than well aware of all the above items since he started, the new CIO has done nothing to fix them. Leaving the University and students worse off.