Overall great company, several opportunities for improvements
Pros
- Executive management has very clear direction where the company is heading and how to continue to grow as a business - Management, for the most part, really truly cares about the well-being of employees - Communication is very open and clear - Surrounded by the brightest and most hard-working people in compliance - In general, compensation is on par with industry
Cons
- Being a manager at Schellman is definitely the most difficult and demanding position. We are responsible for managing clients, senior associates, projects, in additional to various administrative tasks. We get pulled from all directions; when things go well, the credit usually go to the senior associates or the higher ups. If things go south, we are the first one here to answer for it. Middle management typically don’t get much attention and recognition. - The compensation for being a manager is not propionate for the additional duties, responsibilities, and stress the role comes with. The promotion raises moving from senior associate to manager is an absolute joke. - There isn’t a support system for managers. Our processes and system simplify don’t have a backup for managers. We often have to do work while on PTO in order to not become a bottle neck in the process. - Managers are rewarded for continuously taking on additional workload. A person saying yes is typically viewed as a higher performer who gets things done. You either kill your own time to get things done or you get burn out and quit. This is a very unhealthy reward system. - Managers in the SOC service line are often expected to be able to manage multiple services. This at one point might be feasible and made sense. However, with the continuously evolving expectations (rather it’s from peer reviews, internal methodology updates, witness audits, personal preference and etc.) and the ever-expanding administrative tasks that certain service line requires, this has become unmanageable. It’s a tall ask that we have to be expert in multiple areas with the constantly changing requirements/expectations, if we don’t live it every day, it’s very difficult for us to become expert in more than one or two service lines. This also put the managers in a very awkward position when clients/principals think we know the expectations, but we are actually master of none. Also, the changing requirements/expectations are not always communicated ahead of time, and we find out via review comments during the QA process. This creates additional work and stress for the managers. This entire approach of managing multiple services should be carefully reviewed to determine if it’s still a feasible and manageable. - Operations has no idea what’s the day-to-day is like in Service Delivery. Some decisions that affect the entire company were made in a vacuum without vetting with Service Delivery. This has caused some pushback/complain, which might have been avoided if Service Delivery was involved in the requirement gathering process (assuming it existed) before the decision was made.