Mediocre workplace at best, toxic at worst - Recensione dipendente - Dipendente anonimo presso Applied Research Associates

Unfortunately, cons might be division specific, it sounds like a lot of divisions do create a supportive local work environment, a lot of these are opinions based on what I saw in my many years here. Culture Companies are always trying to improve culture in some way, many have toxic cultures and recognize the lack, others are constantly improving. At ARA, there seems to be some sort of cognitive dissonance where a lot of people feel that the ARA culture is amazing and employees are treated warmly and are given a lot of freedom. In my experience, the way that culture and employee treatment actually manifests are very different. Bottom line, ARA has toxic culture, even if the average leader doesn’t think so. • “Everybody markets” - turns into your technical skills are good and salesmanship is better, it’s a stifling environment for more-technical oriented people, and you are graded on how many contracts you bring in and how customer-facing you are in addition to technical work, basically be really skilled in both arenas • ARA has a “fitting in” culture - you may have to change major aspects of you to thrive here (i.e. the ideal ARA employee fits this mold) vs a better belonging culture - you bring a unique perspective and beautiful contribution by being who you are and the skills you have. • Teams of Type A salespeople with technical skills seem to struggle with conflict, I’ve seen much more synergy and distribution of abilities in teams made up of diverse skillsets. Also, the best technical staff I’ve had the pleasure of working with had no interest in sales – they let someone else do that. • Subtle misogyny here, people you work for will likely be white men that seem a bit oblivious about increasing diversity. People are generally nice, but I felt that this undertone couldn’t be ignored. • Scarcity driven business model – fear of the future really leads here - seems like there are never enough contracts, we must do everything on a budget, people live in burnout, no time to celebrate or fully invest in employees because we might lose everything in the next quarter (also ARA has done nothing but grow steadily since the founding, even hired people and got through the pandemic OK) • When I started ARA groups did fun company-sponsored activities and tried to add dimensions of morale boosting and socializing into their culture – that seems like it was lost after the pandemic – the fear-based leading definitely increased after COVID-19. There is low warmth and high expectation here now. Management Sometimes too busy, sometimes come off as cold and calculating, my experience engineers have been the worst managers, their people skills are often severely lacking. Managers are unprofessional, a lot of toxicity is tolerated or written off as "it's just the way they are". Years of experience “managing” does not equal good management, most seem to lack skills to present as empathetic, caring human beings. I found the managers to be one of the worst traits at ARA. Work-life balance My opinion is the work-life here is pretty abysmal, people are rewarded for not setting good boundaries with work, working on vacation, sometimes working more hours than charged on timecard, exhaustion is a status symbol, and you are constantly in burnout. There is a lot of lip service on this topic from management, but I have rarely seen people put work-life balance into practice. People who quiet quit and work to live and not live to work seem to be penalized for not giving enough. The longer at ARA and the more responsibilities I had the worse my work-life balancing got. Pay Low, particularly for the roles and job responsibilities. I left this job for one that was willing to pay me much more. I understand the shifting of that money to ESOP, however a lot of the changing workforce is expecting to be fairly compensated now, not years down the road if they stick with a toxic company through the long haul. Communication Abysmal, from top of company to managers to inter-employees, very conflict avoidant, lots of unprofessional behavior and gossip. Nobody really states what’s on their mind until the subject of concern is out of the room. Also, there is internal competition from different divisions on different contracts which leads to a disconnected company feel and lots of wasted resources. Flexibility They are not adapting to hybrid environment, WFH was not there before pandemic, begrudgingly used during it and really taken away after. Management seems to fear rather than embrace WFH, this mentality of “if I can't see my employees working it's not ok” is killing your teams slowly. Turnover Lot of turnover at the division I worked at, some divisions and groups may be better but it's hard to know until you are there. Lots of turnover in newer people, ARA "lifers" seem willing to stay even through bad environments. I saw a number of people leave over various things, many were very successful at ARA but desired flexibility, better culture, work-life balance etc, it wasn't just people struggling to fit the mold who left. Finances and Budget I felt like ARA was a company run on a very tight budget, barely enough resources to do much job fully, hours are tracked for everything, not enough schedule and resources needed to completely finish a task/project. It just seemed that employees were pretty minimally invested in, profits and ESOP were priority. Basically, I felt that unless I was a type A, workaholic, low-boundary employee bringing in thousands of dollars to the company my work was not up to snuff.