Strongly reccomend against IT jobs here - Anonymous employee Pacific Life Employee Review

1.0
Nov 24, 2021
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Compensation and benefits were good, even considering I was underpaid relative to my peers. The individual contributors across PL are without exception lovely, wonderful people.

Cons

PL is a case study in nearly every IT cliche imaginable: -Bad blood between business and technology that you'll get caught up in the politics of? Yep. -Business running off and signing multi million dollar software contracts without talking to IT, and then blaming IT when it's not going well? Yep. -Agile-in-name-only (consistently being asked to present your fully refined sprint backlog for the next 12 months)? Yep. -Poorly thought out gutting and outsourcing that management continually doubles down on instead of reflecting on their mistakes? Yep. -Siloed organizations within IT so far apart that you can't be sure if you dreamed about them or if they actually exist? Yep. -Management thinking that the solution to literally any problem is throwing money and fresh contractors at it without even taking a second to think about what caused the problem in the first place? Yep. -Critical production issue support tickets dropping into a black hole to never be heard from again (and then get told it's a feature of the support system, not a problem when you try to follow up)? Yep. All that and then you realize that PL is less than 5000 employees total. The company is extremely siloed and overbearingly bureaucratic, but has exactly no accessible documentation on how to accomplish anything. You are just expected to know every process intuitively (or I guess find the documentation on a private Sharepoint site?), and you'll sure get angry emails when you mess up. Management's response to complaints about bureaucracy was to institute pre-processes in front of the existing processes, nailing their implied goal of making everything take even longer and be even harder to do. In summary, if you're trying to write a book about everything that can go wrong with an IT organization, I'd fully recommend spending a year or two here. Otherwise I'd really recommend opting for anything else.

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Pacific Life Response
4y
We are sorry to hear that your experience at Pacific Life didn’t match your expectations. As with many companies in this industry, we are on a multi-year business transformation journey with a strong focus on becoming a more digitally enabled organization. To accelerate this transformation, we have augmented our IT with third-party companies that can help us manage the day-to-day operational aspects of IT so that our IT teams can focus on strategic priorities that will help drive this transformation. We have made great progress in some areas, but recognize that we still have some work to do, especially with our legacy systems. Our transformation also involves doing things with greater speed and agility, and we are still building our muscle to do this well. This is an exciting time to be part of our company with lots of opportunities for setting up Pacific Life for the future. As you mentioned, we have an incredible culture and amazing people who are committed to our long-term success. We regret that you no longer will be a part of this and wish you best of luck in your next endeavor.

Explore other reviews about Pacific Life

5.0
Jun 29, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

What I'm most grateful for is my team and the culture. Pacific Life is full of supportive, knowledgeable, encouraging, and just genuinely great people. I feel challenged, appreciated, and lucky to be a part of this culture.

Cons

In-person requirement of four days a week is not consistent. There is lots of flexibility with that, though.

3.0
Jun 12, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great benefits and great team members!

Cons

The Return to Office policy is driving away one of our talented team members. Blindsided by reorgs. No polls done to determine what is best for our team.

6
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Pacific Life Response
2w
Thank you for sharing your perspective and for recognizing the strength of your team and our benefits. Our in-office approach is designed to support collaboration and connection across teams, while still offering flexibility through one remote workday per week, along with our flexible workdays benefit, which allows for additional remote days throughout the year. Feedback like yours helps us continue learning how this is experienced day-to-day across different roles and teams. We appreciate you taking the time to share.
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