Benchmark Education reviews

Let's get down to brass tacks: they won't pay you what you're worth, and they certainly won't give you a raise, nor a promotion. I was hired for $67k in Sep 2019 in Tempe, AZ, which was fair, but 2 years later in Dec 2021 my salary was still $67k. Adjusted for inflation: that's $61,600 in 2019. I never received an annual review from my manager. My teammates had the same problem. We suspect this was no accident, but rather to avoid any talk of raises. A teammate directly asked for a raise 2 months ago, and was told they'd be gotten back to. Never happened. A business analyst asked for a raise. They got 1%. All 3 of us had been with the company for over 2 years. When I quit for a new job with a better salary plus stock options, they counter offered at 90% plus more PTO. That's insulting. My manager justifies this by saying market research shows I'm not worth any more than that due to my experience level. Market research?? I have an offer letter, you nitwit. They believe it's cheaper to let go of an experienced dev who understands the legacy code, and replace him with a fresh out of bootcamp dev. Seems foolish, but I'm no bean counter. I also never received an exit interview. Probably because they don't want to hear the next part. Production is on fire. Everyday. It's insane how many IT requests the clients are filing these days. That's because Benchmark can't stop outsourcing work to cut-rate vendors like IntraEdge and Hurix. I weep for the codebase. These vendors provide Benchmark with cheap devs in India by the dozen, and you get what you pay for. Many work tickets are still open after 6 months. Forget programming! We literally have to teach these "devs" how to use a web browser! And the work that eventually gets merged... it wouldn't even rate a D+ from a community college. Production is swallowed in flames.

Senior management acts as if they care, but that's all talk. The CEO is bi-polar and has no problem publicly humiliating you. You are only as good as your last mistake. The technology leaders are not as skilled as their team members, but micromanage every single detail as they try to steal your confidence. They talk process and controls while the company is grossly understaffed, so the team carries the burden of process without adequate support. There is an overall lack of integrity and character in every single C Level Executive, a lot of finger pointing and lack of accountability. I genuinely wanted to be happy there but it's far too dysfunctional for that. I wouldn't recommend this place for anyone, not even as a starter role. And the pay is way under current market, plus you rarely, if ever, get a raise. No yearly increases. Even reviews are rare.