Pros
- Freebies, Parties, Random prizes/gifts - Free snacks/candy/coffee - Mostly relaxed environment. - Mostly friendly coworkers - Work/Life balance. Hyland is great about family emergencies, flex days, PTO, etc. Can't really complain here at all. If you stay long enough, 8yrs or so, you get a 1 month "sabbatical" ... because, that's apparently a thing.
Cons
- Subpar salaries and titles. Unless you know a manager well, expect to be offered 10-25% below market value and a title that is 1 or 2 steps below your qualifications elsewhere. - No opportunities for advancement. Expect to stay more or less where you are first assigned for 3-5 years. Expect to move up or down one seniority level after 5-10 years, possibly due to job reclassifications. Expect to feel the need to move on after 1-2 years, tops. Expect very minimal raises each year. - Somewhat boring work. Document storage and retrieval. Form Processing. Necessary, consistent, but very blah. - Favoritism / nepotism gone wild. If you have an "in" with a manager: you're free to take credit and eventual ownership of others' work while contributing very little, if anything to the project yourself; you're likely to get a slightly larger portion of the meager bonus and yearly raise pool; you'll eventually slip into one of the hundreds of mid-level "management" type positions. If you don't have an in, expect to contribute the bulk of the work and receive absolutely nothing for the effort. - Far too many mid-level "management" positions. It's hard to determine who is actually in charge at Hyland and once you do figure it out, you're left wondering how and why they were ever promoted. Incompetence is rampant and the fear of the unknown keeps innovation and significant progress well at bay. Team leads and more senior folks almost always opt for the status quo, in roughly equal parts due to fear of not understanding the technology, fear of calling attention to themselves, and fear of losing the tenuous grasp they have on their seniority. - Communication and coordination between teams is nonexistent. On numerous occasions my team had completed or nearly completed a lengthy project, only to find that one or more other teams had been working concurrently on the exact same thing. I think this is mainly growing pains for Hyland, trying to shift from a startup-type culture into more of a typical corporate culture. Everyone ... and no one is "in charge", so teams typically work in silos. - Culture / Benefits / Perks going downhill. Since I started at Hyland, the amount and quality of employee perks has seemed to rapidly go downhill. Benefits have stayed somewhat consistent, but were never great. To the company's credit, they are still trying hard to maintain the "fun company to work for" persona. The yearly Christmas party is a bit awkward, but fun. As the company has grown, it has become increasingly difficult to trade a slightly subpar salary for the decreasing perks.
