Pros
Donuts on Fridays. Quite a few smart, capable managers do care, but have no power to defend their teams or get the resources they need. Wait, that's a con, isn't it?
Cons
CDW is beholden to shareholders. I've been watching customers walk out after more than 10-15 years as customers. If you are not the biggest of the big, CDW will not-give-a-crap until you get fed up and leave. I recently had a customer tell me they found better service from another company at 1/3rd the price of CDW. For the last 3 years CDW has refused to maintain a head count on teams that has worked for longer than a decade to keep teams both sane and productive. Recently, one of the sales guys (the ones that wine, dine, and lie to potential customers, as well as promise vapor-ware to get them to sign contracts, told a coworker "We are not a cheap company."). Funny they should say that since we've recently partnered with TekSystems to outsource level 1 tech support to India. If we're going to charge top tier prices for services and products, we should at least be somewhat capable of providing top tier services. If you are not being hired in management or sales, you will be a contractor. Thanks to these and other policies, the team I work on went from no contractors to 66% contractors in 3 years. Then, corporate complained that we use too many contractor hours and demanded that we cut our contractor hours by 50%. Our team of 22 is now down to 12 across 3 locations and our metrics have tanked, and corporate can't fathom why. There are some amazing perks and opportunities... if you are in sales and work in Vernon Hills. The people that deal with the BS which sales fabricates get squat. (Corporate cruise? Not if you actually work hard for a living.) Also, it's a class system here. If you are in managed services, you are lower class. Field and business services are upper class. Of course, just like the real world, the upper class could not exist without the lower class. The "cons" I could tell you if it didn't violate an NDA, not that CDW pays me enough to have anything left to take in a lawsuit. IF YOU ARE PROMOTED, THERE IS AN ARBITRARY RAISE CAP OF 10%. SO IF YOU WORK HARD AT THE BOTTOM LEVEL, YOU CAN NEVER MAKE WHAT SOMEONE HIRED AT THE TOP MAKES.
