Pros
Casual dress code, flexible PTO and work hours
Cons
This company is going downhill fast. There have been a lot of changes in senior management in the past few years, which makes people worried. I started out on the Operations side of things and that was great. On the underwriting side, it's a different story. There is very little discussion of expectations between managers and employees. There is a huge conflict of interest and no confidentiality with (at least some) HR personnel. When issues are brought to HR about employees abusing policies or privileges or displaying continuously inappropriate behavior, no resolution comes from it. Some HR individuals are friends with other employees outside of the office and share confidential information, which subsequently gets shared on the floor by a team manager (like annual/mid-year review and pay details). Management complains about their employees to others on the team but takes no action to correct behavior in 'problem employees'. Favoritism is rampant and obvious, again no action is ever taken to correct this. Management promotes unqualified employees while denying growth to others - citing financial restraints - but then hires more senior titles to the same team. Management continually complains to their employees about their own responsibilities, and will consistently bad-mouth other departments or employees in front of their team. Claims and UW also teams don't collaborate well together. The PTO structure changed recently from a set number of days per year, to 'self-managed', which different managers interpret differently. Some interpret the policy as 'unlimited' whereas others stick to the old PTO structure for their team but don't give guidance or expectations as to how they interpret the policy. Then 3/4 of the way through the year they reprimand employees for taking time off. Some segments of the company are shrinking and/or being sold off with no notice to underwriters, while senior leadership continues to promote 'nothing to worry about, business as usual'. An entire team was laid off in the fall of 2017 with no notice to brokers. Other books of business are allowed to remain with terrible loss ratios year over year. There is no room for growth; sometimes you can move laterally but other teams are too small to allow for upward movement. Managers will continually deny growth/promotion opportunities in order to get a larger share of bonus pool money for themselves or their favorites. In a small office of about 120 people, one branch of this company lost about 50 people in a matter of 2-3 years due to layoffs and resignations. The morale is terribly low and many employees are either holding their breath waiting to be laid off, or are leaving on their own. All in all, office politics and drama are terrible - do yourself a favor and don't get sucked into underwriting here.