Decaying culture with low pay, poor work-life balance, and high turnover
Pros
There are some good fellow team members who can be fun to work with. The corporate team at The Signorelli company has what appears to be a good culture that has people there with better turnover than First America does. It's just too bad that culture doesn't carry down to First America. Every now and then there are parties or get togethers and those can be fun. There isn't a lot of being up tight at company events like you might see at other places. The CEO, Danny Signorelli, is genuinely a good person and someone you feel good about working for. First America is fairly far removed from The Signorelli Company now. Working for First America is not the same as working for The Signorelli Company.
Cons
Pay is low. The pay is not competitive compared to the rest of the market and other production builders. Salary is low, and closing bonuses are also low. Benefits are standard, so nothing to write home about there. Very high turnover. Management obviously has zero interest in investing in the growth of the Construction team, and would rather continue to hire and spend the money training new people. They rather view employees as expendable assets as a means to profits. The talk of "family" culture where "we take care of our own" goes out the window when profits are at stake, as opposed to what you see being preached at the Signorelli Company. The same goes for caring about the customer. When decisions need to be made about issues involving a customer or warranty, the only things brought up are "how long will this take to fix?" "How much will this cost?" "Do whatever it takes to finish the job quickly and cheaply." "What is right for the customer" doesn't seem to be as high of a priority. Priority goes to profits, as opposed to doing the right thing. Middle management has all been brought in from the outside rather than promote or invest in any of the people who have been at the company for long to build a stronger team and culture. As a result, the culture that made the company good when it was smaller has been diluted and pushed out the door and is becoming increasingly non-existent. And you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who's been there for more than 2-3 years. The team here is filled with people who come in to get some experience, then leave to go work for someone who will pay them what they are worth. As a result, the team is built of a lot of people who have little experience. Management has even passed over promoting people who were qualified for an open position above them in favor of hiring someone completely new from the outside. Work load is high, and only made worse by the lack of organization by management. Mistakes will happen outside of your own control, sometimes caused by the top, and they'll leave you to pick up the pieces of their mess. If/when you don't knock every ball out of the park, they come after you for it. Every couple of months there would be a new procedure or system in place you have to add hours of work to abide by, and then they would abandon that system within weeks or months when they realize it's not helping anyone because it wasn't thought out in advance. They both want you to be independent, and to micromanage you. They want you to find all of your own trades, but this company pays below market rate for trades and labor, and in some cases, WELL below market rate. When trying to hire new trades, and I told them how much we paid, I was sometimes laughed at by the people I was trying to hire. So you're stuck trying to build quality houses with irresponsible, poor quality trades. And when you ask management for help, they say it's your responsibility for you to go out on your own time and try to find more trades and be the guinea pig to get them up and running to build for you. They have champagne taste on a beer budget. There are aggression issues from certain people in upper management, without naming names. In more times than I can count, I saw shouting, screaming, and cursing from the top brass when they found out something wasn't going their way or someone made a mistake. This was often followed up by threats to the employees out in the field to get what they wanted. So you spend your days trying to just avoid getting screamed at by the boss, rather than feeling like you can depend on them for help. And honesty has been a problem as of late. When caught in lies, which have happened enough that I feel the need to put it here in words, brass will brush it off like it didn't happen, gaslighting the employees, or just having a "we're in charge so get over it" attitude. Disorganization. Often times without warning, management will move up a closing date on a home and the field will be left to make it happen, with a lack of resources to do so. And they'll threaten you to make it happen. Rather than attempt to help you. Or, on the other hand, something out of your control may happen that would necessitate extra time on construction in order to do things right, they won't budge and say it's now your responsibility to stress over slamming months of work into weeks or less. Or else. Management prioritizes their sales people over anyone else. Meaning, they boss around construction often, rather than work side by side as teammates. All this is ironic considering sales turnover is even higher. Sales people cycle in and out of this company at a rate you wouldn't believe. They're trying to grow this company too fast, increasing the number of homes started each year at an insane pace that is causing high burnout and diluting the culture the company used to have. All of this is in favor of more profits. When you mention any of the above issues or more, management says things like, "we throw fun parties. We have a trip once a year that some people get to go on," as if those things make up for the rest of your year being high stress and low pay.