Pros
Due to rigorous demands, unpredictable deadlines, and intense scrutiny you will develop a high standard of work and organizational skills. This does you well with future employers and is a great springboard to the next level in your career – if you leverage the opportunity. You are exposed to a wide range of financial information that is modeled in a structured way that can be viewed as a best practice. The company has a roller-coaster history (bankruptcy, acquired by a private equity firm, positioned for an IPO) so from a financial perspective it has a very engaging story with many nuances within the financial data and policies carried forward. The financial knowledge, business fundamentals, and questions I learned to ask were extremely developmental. My experience allowed me to really tune into what I wanted (and did not want) for my future career path.
Cons
I am no longer an employee which is telling of my experience. I’m not able to pinpoint where it originated but there was a palpable anxious energy and fear within the department. Maybe it was the general cutthroat ‘zero-sum game’ environment of the commercial airline industry. Staying past midnight to complete a rigorous request was simply seen as ‘doing your job’, while any mistake (no matter how immaterial) was unacceptable. There was also an overbearing level of micromanagement. Often my director would tell me to send an email to another department’s VP, but I had to send a draft to the same director first for their editing and approval. The “cover your butt” mentality was toxic, deliberately teeing up emails to others within the company to receive their response in writing with the intent of assigning future blame in the event of a negative outcome. In retrospect my time with Frontier was analogous to a failed relationship where I walked away more experienced, more mature, more aware of the future I desired, and looking back on the chapter as a valuable learning experience.
