Warning - Enter at Your Own Risk!
Pros
Pacific Life has a good benefits package that includes medical, dental, 401(k), pension, and many others. In addition, they provide you "flex dollars" that you can allocate to help pay for the benefits that you wish to elect. Finally, the option to buy additional vacation days is a nice touch for those who enjoy time off. You're going to need the time off - which takes me into the cons.
Cons
I am a current employee at Pacific Life but my days are numbered so the cons really don't impact me much anymore. However, I hope the information below can help save someone else from the agony of working here. The easiest way to sum up all the cons of working at Pacific Life is to say that you will be stripped of every fiber of your being. The company has evolved into a widget producing machine and its "employees" are nothing more than cogs in the machine. Your thoughts, ideas, and opinions mean very little here - you will be treated as nothing more than a robot to do the work. Speaking of work, the volume per employee has gotten so excessive that it's not uncommon for their to be mandatory overtime to try and keep up. That is a direct result of employees being laid off as part of a "cost savings" initiative. In fact, they've brought in a lot of temps and contractors to try and alleviate some of the bleeding that resulted from that slashing of employees. The benefit to the company is that they don't have to pay benefits to any of those temps/contractors who are filling in for full-time employees that were let go. Further proof that you will not be treated as a professional is in how their IT Department functions. Would you like to plug a Flash drive into your USB port? Sorry - can't! Would you like to put a CD in your CD drive? Sorry - can't! Would you like to listen to Pandora or other streaming radio while you work? Sorry - can't! That's right - to do any of these basic things requires special permission at Pacific Life. The final point to drive home the lack of professional treatment is that some departments have management that will insist that you don't communicate with other business areas, even if you need to in order to complete your project. That's right - communication is frowned upon in these areas. There is such disrespect and lack of trust fostered at this company that management tends to blanket employees with that same lack of trust. Apparently communicating with other business areas opens up the potential that you might actually say something that isn't "company approved". This last point tends to be seen and experienced most within the Training and Operations Support (New Business/Customer Service) areas. If, after all this, you decide to give Pacific Life a go, all I can say is good luck. You're going to need it!
