Vantaggi
SF has a great training program. They're very in depth in the training, & educate you in many facets of the insurance industry. During & after the training program, you will meet good people. Most people I work with are genuinely nice. Having positive & well liked people makes a stressful claims environment more tolerable. -State Farm is a mutual company so it feels good not answering to shareholders. -Food days, recognition of birthdays, holidays gifts/food.
Svantaggi
The claims department is a very negative environment. This is caused by the angry insureds or claimants refuting a decision or handling on a claim. Often, even if you make the right decision in a claim, the person on the other side of the phone will be unreasonable, causing you to have a miserable day. These negative interactions with customers then causes a "snowball effect" throughout the entire department. Getting beat up verbally day in & day out takes it's toll on your overall contentment in life, no matter who you are. Once you get beat up by a customer, you then get micromanaged for everything you do while you're on the clock. You have a meeting with a manager every month, & it feels the manager's sole job is to find fault in your work. The managers start out the meeting with one or two positive comments only to prepare you for the punches they throw at you. The rest of the meeting is followed up by what you did wrong. For the 1st year, I thought the feedback was to help me perform better at my job (which some did) but you later discover their feedback is not very consistent & generally condescending. It's toxic, & every tenured coworker agrees. There's a group called Work Force Management enforced, & they monitor what you do every minute in the work day. That includes monitoring, to the second, on how long you're in the restroom. Autonomy is minimal here. It's also challenging to move to other departments. You either have to campaign yourself to the managers, be the son/daughter of someone high up, or have the CPCU to move up the ladder. A combination of playing politics, nepotism, hard work, & insurance designations will likely get you on the fast track. If you're not, there may be a glass ceiling for you, & it's likely in the position you're already in. After the wonderful training program they have here, it's really all down hill. You only use a fraction of what you learned in training on the work floor. The job will get repetitious after a year, then you'll seek an exit. My advice is learn what you can, try to enjoy the ride, & get out before 3 years if you haven't been promoted. If you stay longer than 3 years, you then should compare yourself to "cattle".