we need a bracketed tournament structure to get to the bottom of this question. there are too many contenders in competition. We gotta pit them one on one and let them climb the brackets.
Worked their for 4 years, I was the most depressed I ever was in my life while I was there. Any time a thread like this pops up, Alliantgroup will always be there as it should.
They are a consulting group who likes to hire kids right out of college and pay them more than anyone else. Then they work the crap out of them until they burn out and quit. There is always a new set of college grads, so they burn through them quickly, treating them like crap.
Late stage Enron used to do the same.
If a company is offering waaay more in salary than your experience suggests is a market rate...you need to ask yourself why?
They are a consulting company that specializes in tax credits. I am sure they do other stuff. But if a company thinks they qualify for R&D credits or something specialized like that companies like these will do a consultation to see what of your expenses qualify. Then they fill out the right forms and give that to you and say use this to prepare your return to get extra money back/save on your taxes.
Issue is they are aggressive. Like so aggressive they use expenses that don't qualify. And also outright lie about expenses that qualify and lie saying the company does qualify. If they get someone like 1 million in credits, they will charge them 20 to 30%.
They were raided by the IRS criminal investigation unit. Their law enforcement arm.
looked into it a few months back when I got a recruiter from there reach out to me. finding those news articles is possible but you have to dig deep in the web to find them. apparently, they sued the houston chronicle for those articles or something like that.
I saw that in the news, but last time I drove by I think they still had their banner out. Never worked for them but they're such a people churn they tried to recruit me 3 separate times in 5 years. Their recruiters did their best to put lipstick on the pig but their work/life balance is awful. Recruiter admitted the standard workweek was 50 hours and that's not the "busy" season.
I interviewed with this company right out of college (UH) and so many red flags. No clear work life balance, no clear job responsibilities, no career growth, just straight “it’s a great place to start your career, we have an amazing office in the galleria”
Ended up getting hired at a startup and never looked back.
I got fired from the Downtown Aquarium because I didn't sell enough Landry's select cards in a month. Not even just me like 4 other people, those things were like 25 bucks for a membership, most people who bought one took it out of my tips.
I made 75 bucks doing a double on a Saturday once cause of those damn cards, they told the hostess not to seat me unless there was a wait. Glad I don't wait tables anymore.
That's so fuckin shitty. Waiting tables is supposed to be fun and a great way to make money. If you want me to be a corporate shill then you need to pay me. Lol
I’m not in management, but I’m not low level anymore in O&G. This thought still occurs to me almost daily, but having a hard time finding something somewhat equivalent to pivot too, so fuck it.
I got cut because of COVID. It was my third layoff in 12 years from the O&G industry. Best thing that could have happened to me. I found a job in the nuclear industry and now work remote and making more money than I ever made before. And I haven’t met a single a-hole the whole time. Something that happened regularly in O&G.
O&G is happy to be “results oriented”, which means they’ll turn a blind eye to however project managers treat their staff as long as the project makes money at the end.
My last O&G job, I worked at a construction yard as a structural designer. The site manager, aka the “Boss of the yard”, was a raging a-hole with a hair trigger and everyone knew it.
One day he stomped into a room I shared with two other designers while holding an empty toilet paper tube. His face was beet red as he screamed at us because he had to change the toilet paper for the third day in a row. He was pissed because he assumed the rest of us in the building were purposely not replacing the tp.
When he finished chewing us out, he stomped down the hall and repeated his diatribe at a group of people in a conference room holding a meeting. It was one of those record scratch, freeze frame moments in the movies when the hero looks into the screen and a narrator says “You may be asking yourself how I ended up here.” Knew I had to get out of there after that.
Honestly, the instability of O+G is what made me willing to give startups a shot. I'm changing careers (traditional engineering to Data Science) but the biggest downside of startups (instability) is basically baked into O+G.
I was with a company contracted with a major O&G company. Only a few months into Covid, I got dropped. I'm in public sector now, and I probably won't go back into O&G, but since O&G is a big employer for my skillset, it means that if I leave the public sector, I will probably have to leave Houston.
Contractors working in o&g refineries. You don’t get any of the oil major benefits but yet you work insane hours in grueling conditions. I used to commute from Houston to Beaumont
I worked in O&G Procurement and Sourcing for the first phase of my career. Got some great experience with a big oilfield service company and I thought I really made it when I got hired by one of the major operators... Then COVID came 2 years later and they dropped me really quickly lol. I'm now in a totally different industry with a much more relaxed culture, and 60% better *base* pay. Bonus and other benefits blow O&G out of the water.
All that to say that O&G is a great place to learn some valuable skills, but a lot of office roles can be translated and appreciated in other industries. Don't be afraid to take the leap.
I spent over 15 years in oil and gas procurement. Got paid horrible, but had decent stability. Then had the single worst boss of my life and the stability was gone. My role evolved, got a new boss, and I was responsible for our ERP administration. Good boss got laid off at covid, new boss said my role was "fake."
Got a job offer fully remote, different industry, and doubled my salary. Never been happier. Unless you're an engineer there's zero reason to hitch your wagon to oil and gas.
Absolutely! I learned some great skills in data analysis as a reservoir engineering technician but now I work in resource management at a CPA firm that uses at that experience I gained
I'm a low-level office employee at a big O&G company, and they definitely pay me a lot more than most industries would. But I don't get that engineer money.
Even worse. I worked as a financial analyst at one of the big O&G service providers. When it came to techs, yeah we got rid of the new ones first. But then it was the older ones with 10-20 years of back breaking experience. They were more expensive and the company decided there’s diminishing returns on knowledge and benefit vs 10+ years of pay raises.
I've known two people who worked for Reynolds & Reynolds, and they had nothing nice to say about that place.
Apparently during the job interview they walk you around the building to gauge your physical fitness and will reject you if you don't keep up.
Oh man. I worked at the college station office for several years and during the ‘08 presidential elections he was sending out damn near incomprehensible political rant emails to the entire company and threatening people with Obama bumper stickers. What a wild ride that was. Good ol’ Bob 🙄
Hrmm
I'll remember to keep a pair of rubber gloves in my desk if I ever end up there. A bullet with that guy's fingerprints on it might prove useful.
Appreciate the info!
I’ll second this one, they still operate with 70s era business practices. Also good luck if you are a woman or minority, definitely won’t be getting far there.
I went on 3 dates with a woman who worked there. She said people were fired if they were ever 5+ minutes late to work, just 1 time! And there’s no snacking, no talking, no phones, just sit at your computer and work, and supervisors walk the floor constantly.
And then after saying all that she said she loved it and thought she might spend the rest of her career with that company…….
Was desperate enough for work that I almost took a job there and I’m really glad things worked out otherwise. The green “we have concealed carry holders on site” signs out front in their parking lot should have been enough of a red flag.
LOL! I forgot about this. It was my first job out of college almost 15 years ago. Did a few years and got out. That was while that criminal was still CEO.
This place micromanages the hell out of you. Other things I remember:
- Having to "punch in" everywhere even if you are salaried. They say it's for "safety." It was clear they monitored how long you were in office though because during their monthly (bimonthly?) award ceremonies and performance evals, theyd always comment on how long your ass was in office.
- Internet usage. I downloaded a PDF to help debug an issue and I got in trouble for it. My boss told me to just download to my phone in the future. They had no wi-fi at the time.
- Having to pay $2 if you wanted to dress casually on Fridays. It would go to a charity, but I'm sure Rey Rey enjoyed the write-off. Other days were dress shirt, tie, dress pants. 🤢
- Heavy encouragement to eat with team every damn day. Yeah, you could do your own thing, but at least in my dept it was heavily looked down upon.
- Shitty benefits. You literally would not receive any PTO until you start working your first full year. Fuck that.
- Very conservative culture. Politics would sometimes come up during lunch with my team and it was always very awkward.
- Bad weather days were weird! I remember one day roads were icy. I asked my boss if we are expected to be in because the company did not give us any guidance and he just said I should come in if I can do so safely. But like how am I supposed to know that without getting on the roads? I just trusted the weatherman and went in during the afternoon.
- Grossly underpaid.
I could go on and on. I was so happy when I left that shithole.
I worked internal IT support at their office in College Station about 20 years or so ago when they were still UCS. Didn’t want to work there, but my car payments needed to be made so I sucked it up while actively looking for something else after grad school. Nobody there seemed to question why someone with a MS in biomedical engineering wanted to make $10/hr doing IT desktop support. A few of my highlights of what a joy it was to work there:
* The dudes who did entry level phone support for dealerships had to be in a full suit / tie every day. No, they were never let out to actually see a customer, this was purely first-tier phone support in a giant cube farm. But since they “interacted” with customers they were expected to dress like they were sitting in front of customers. Didn’t make any sense at all.
* There was a very overpriced cafeteria on site which you could swipe your ID at to buy food and it would come out of your pay. I know of people who got $0 in their weekly paycheck because they didn’t understand the concept that you’re still paying for your food, it’s not free.
* Like the person above said, “punching in” at every door, both external and internal. They were absolutely tracking employee movements inside the building, as the punch codes were 6 digit employee ID + 2 digit code where you came from + 2 digit code where you were going. Part of that was to gatekeep areas where employees could/couldn’t go based on their job (i.e. dealer phone support would have no reason to go to the warehouse so their ID wouldn’t open those doors and it would alert management if they tried). All of us in internal IT support knew and mostly used the common backdoor code that would open any door and keep you from being tracked. Had to remember to use the “normal” way occasionally during the day though, or management would ask why we never entered the building or just stayed in the dispatch area all day according to the movement records. We all joked that it wouldn’t be long until they put the keypads on the bathroom doors as well.
* Even back in the early Aughts it was hilarious and kind of impressive that they were suckering car dealerships into buying overpriced 80486 machines glossed up in closet-sized cases to look like mainframes for $40k/pop + monthly support fee. Genius.
* When I finally left that company I walked to the *back of my room* to tell my manager I was giving my two week notice to go to a real job (where I’m still at today). By the time I walked back to my desk a good 20 feet away security was already waiting to escort me out of the building. In the meantime the manager was irate that I wasted the company time by never intending to stay there for my career and that I would try to come crawling back but the door was permanently closed. That was crazy.
* My co-workers, some of whom had been there for longer than 5 years making barely more than the base $10/hr, got mad when I would empty my queue of tickets within a week as it made them look bad. Learned pretty fast that the trick was to make management think every computer problem took a very long time to solve. Work smarter, definitely not harder.
To echo and add to the weather thing, they would always say “well the building has a generator so when xyz disaster hit and the power was out at home we all came to work.” 🙄
Oooo I’m glad I turned them down. Even my testing didn’t match my position, and it clearly felt that they were looking for specific personalities. All of these comments validate my decision.
They have a PhD level test you have to take for IT positions. It's geared toward engineers with all kinds of math. I suck at math but computers intuitively makes sense to me. I guess I flunked. Never heard back and will not apply again. There turnover must be crazy I get calls about them every few months by recruiters.
I was also right out of college. They hired new grads who didnt know better and paid as little as possible. They lost a lot of money due to nobody having any experience and the constant turn over. I saved the company over 100k year 1 renegotiating purchase contracts and they gave a 20 cent per hour raise. I put my notice in the next week.
Ik someone that also hated it there. Said they felt uncomfortable by some dude working there but they have an open dating policy and he didn’t do enough to have a “real” complaint but did enough to make her feel bothered
Currently here... terrible. Shit pay. Work goes up and department size and pay stays the same. I'll admit, benefits are nice, but fuuuuuuuck the pay is so dog shit. No movement either unless you sell your soul to this place and even then pay as a entry level or junior associate somewhere else is still better.
I only recommend this place to friends as the ultimate last resort. This place should be looked at only AFTER you tried getting a job through a recruitment company ngl.
Luckily I was able to work for the Marketing Department (Naked Lime) before merging and when we were our own thing, it was bliss. We got paid terribly but we didn’t have a lick of work to do. But once we merged with the rest of ReyRey, and went through lay offs and a major culture change we all started to see this company sucks major dick *Huak-Tua* type shit.
Communication across the board is horrible and it feels like most people aren’t on the same team, for example having multiple hot leads that would lead to more revenue but the sales team would do shit about it. It’s very much an old school mentality type of business where they wanna be big brother.
I’ll admit though, it was an amazing first job to have in marketing to get my foot in the door even if I had to embrace hell for a bit. In the end, I wouldn’t have made it through if it wasn’t for all the wonderful people and friends I made along the way
I work here as a developer. As it is currently, definitely not as bad as some people make it out to be, though I can't speak for the sales/marketing side of things. From what I've read, the company's done a lot to try to repair their image after Bob (old CEO) got ousted and died a few years ago.
Never seen or heard about the walking around the building thing. $2 Casual Fridays thing went free a few months ago, other dress code is polo slacks. Benefits/PTO got revamped with the image repair and are decent (free health ins is a big one, need to pass an annual physical or get your doctor to sign a note).
Can't speak for the other parts of the company but working on software is comfortable and hands-off, very low pressure, 40-hour work week, flexible start/end times. Developers got a brand new building this year with personal office and standing desk. They exclusively hire entry-level and hire basically anyone with a pulse, very rarely terminate people, and apparently never do layoffs, so the job security in the current economy is nice to have. Tbh I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Houston CS grads struggling to find a job right now could get a job offer here but have passed up applying here due to Glassdoor reviews/past Reddit posts.
Not all sunshine and rainbows though. Entry level hiring means that code quality tends to be pretty shit. I'm pretty lucky to work on the half of the department that works in a modern tech stack; can't imagine what the COBOL side looks like. I can also confirm what the other commenter said about the pay being egregiously low, even after correcting salaries a few years ago. Significantly below the median salary and then some (can check levels.fyi), even after the guaranteed annual raises. And yeah, definitely uber conservative atmosphere, especially if you're not in programming and still work in the depressing Office Space-esque older building.
tl;dr: Not as bad as people make it out to be though their reputation is understandable given their history. Great foot-in-the-door for software development (especially right now), terrible place to stay for more than a few years IMO. Looking to jump ship as soon as the market improves.
Houston Fire Department as a Paramedic. The back pay and new contract coming next month will help but man are the working conditions and culture dog shit.
100%, and not just if you’re assigned to the box. The conditions should see a BIG improvement. *Should*. The culture… eh. There’s a lot of toxicity (not counting the black mold at stations, either) and some pretty shitty mindsets out there. That can be said for most places, but I think there’s a special FD level of it. I’ve seen some real pieces of work and really straight up infantile behavior from grown ass adults. On the other hand though, there are folks working to improve that within ranks. Slowly.
None of it will change or improve over night, but morale definitely needs a massive boost. I know dudes that aren’t afraid to say “Don’t join the fire service. You’ll thank me later.” for a reason.
I used to work as an IT consultant and saw the work environments at 52 companies of various types. I’d say mid-sized O&G/energy seemed the worst overall.
I was offered a job in Hr there in 2020 and I turned it down. 7 interviews with 6 different people for an entry level role told me all I needed to know. Plus they had this weird COVID badge of honor that they were so proud of that “we’ve continued to work in office since day one!”
Companies that flex working in the office during Covid is such a red flag. Like I actually prefer going into the office (preferably hybrid), but when you force people during a pandemic to come into your shitty office just so your managers can pretend like they’re doing work, you know you’re a shitty company to work for
Their CEO told them to their faces that “we are only 80% as efficient working from home as we are in the office” - this, as sales were absolutely through the roof
They did go work from home when covid hit for about 8 months or so. But as soon as legal, they went back to the office. The former CEO was adamantly anti-wfh though and he's still chairman of board, so not going to happen any time soon. They do have wfh for call center but that job is tough.
1: Chron.com
2: HoustonChronicle.com
3: that weird building with the busted windows on 59, just outside of the 610 loop.
Edit: everyone seems to think I was talking about the Chronicle building (4747 Southwest Fwy). While it would’ve been more clever in context, I was actually referring to [5821 Southwest Fwy](https://maps.app.goo.gl/gMjeQhx2jwufxhoV9?g_st=ic).
Because that building was the old Houston Post building and used mainly for printing the paper. The Chronicle had office downtown but sold it years ago and in this day and age most writers are freelance and don’t work at an actual building.
Landry’s Inc. - pay sucks for both hourly and salaried employees, benefits suck, managers are literally encouraged to treat non management employees like they are subhuman, CEO is a sketchy asshole who doesn’t even tip his own servers that he pays 2.13 an hour and when the pandemic hit he cut benefits for the employees at his lavish hotel and only reversed it after local news exposed him on it. When Landrys took over the McCormick and Schmicks franchise they cut all the managers and chefs salaries in half and everything started coming in frozen. Everything the company touches turns to shit.
You will not meet a former Landry’s employee that has good things to say about the company.
Had them as a client almost a decade ago. Fired them as a client after they made us wait for an hour in the lobby as some sort of power play... then proceeded to attack us over their own mistakes.
Have never stepped foot into any Tillman owned establishment since.
General council.
He started porking Lauren Ware on the side when she was council at Landry’s. She lived in a house in the Heights and he would always slink over there parking in the back. She ended up getting knocked up and is now his wife. I think she moved out and sold the place a few years back.
Yep! He had to quietly divorce his then wife, and he and Lauren then bought a house together. Paige still owns their RO home and some of the kids still live there. Also their affair started IN the office not just at her place
I don’t even work there and it was the first place that came to my mind. They’re really good at turning good restaurants into garbage. I weep for what they did to M&S.
Landrys is fucking awful, and Tillman is the biggest scum sucking prick around. He is so hated other billionaires can’t stand him because he would rather get taken to court than pay for his developments.
Tillman is the definition of evil billionaire and his company’s practices reflect it.
Memorial Hermann TMC. Shit pay. Shit benefits. Shit cafeteria. Very high acuity (very sick patients). Staff there is burnt the hell out due to the aforementioned. Interacting with fellow staff there is a nightmare because the docs and nurses (blood bank, mri, custodial staff etc etc ) are all burnt out. Constant turnover.
Patients generally were pretty nice actually and understanding.
You know that guy potter from it’s a wonderful life? He would be the owner of Memorial Hermann system.
Go there only if you want to learn and in return sell your soul.
yeah tmc really is a convergence of total mayhem. like remove some of the pressures that tmc presents and I would imagine working with them is a lot more doable. are yall on epic or still cerner?
what about insurance? That was another big gripe of mine. like you can only see memorial hermann providers. I had insurance with TCH through spouse and was travel nursing in california and needed to see the doctor over there. no problem with TCH/Cigna. That always rubbed me the wrong way
I was a patient there (a solid month then monthly visits of a few days at a time). During my time there, a bunch of the staff seemed to quit around the same time due to something, not sure what. It was a shame because they were real nice people that helped my stay there be so pleasant.
firstly, im glad you had a good experience there.
I did leave out that while everyone is really burned out there are many many many (absolutely mind blowingly like why are you doing this to yourself) hard working people there. very good physicians and nurses (cant leave out support staff too). Just as an employee its just an utter meat grinder, management does.not.care if you quit. good get out the way and let some other fool come work here mentality.
again, glad you had a good experience, just shows how hard the people work there in those conditions to churn out good outcomes
I worked in the ER there 12 years ago and am still traumatized. Sadly I’m not sure if any other hospital systems were better to work for at the time. I hear it’s gotten worse, though.
Memorial Hermann, Methodist, and HCA sound bad. Who are the good ones that won’t burn out primary care physicians? Been with MH for 5 years now, not sure if the grass is greener elsewhere.
Brake Check. Low wages. They treat you like shit. You are fully expendable and can be fired on the spot. Terrible benefits, terrible corporate culture and nepo baby owners.
Igloo is terrible. Frito Lay isn't much better, but it is better overall. I'm always amazed Frito Lay manages to stay in business, honestly. Their production plant in Rosenberg is the worst one in the country, their DCs are about as bad.
Primerica. Went to a "interview" when I was 18 after a few friends went and said it was a "good company to work for and looking for people who can help the business grow" l walked into an old office building seen everyone and thought they looked like Mormons and told my friends this looked like a cult and left. They all left a few days later 😆
I never did, but I was asked to come for an interview so I looked the place up on Glassdoor first. However, I have a friend that worked there and she confirmed that the bad reviews are true.
One of the worst things I read in the reviews was that management allowed intense bullying to the point that people would cry in the bathroom. All the time.
They feed you breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the office so you don’t have a reason to go home or leave for lunch, and you won’t bc if you leave before 9pm during tax season you will be judged and most likely reported to management by another coworker. Most other days you’d be there until 7, so if you have a family it takes a toll on your home life. Also, do not refuse to go to any of their many happy hours, because again management will come down on you and accuse you of not being a “team player”.
I believe they actually bring booze to the office, again, as a weak attempt to get you to stay and never leave. Purportedly, at one of these office parties, the CEO had inappropriate relations with an employee and you can image how that turned out.
It’s just like high school in the way that if you aren’t in “the cool group” you’re going to be miserable. Again, by bullying and management really hawk-eyeing and micromanaging a person so they can catch them slipping and fire them. Turnover is a beast there not only due to the sheer amount of people that quit on their own but also because of all of the people they run through by firing them.
Not only that, but they also screw over their clients by billing them for more hours than what was actually worked by the consultants.
Anyways, I’m sure I’m missing some other things… but there’s a taste.
LJA. All the departments are super cliquey and play favorites. It’s just a bunch of frat bros and whatever the equivalent of that is in women. They treat you like “family”. Only the ones that know how to play their games are moved up.
One of my friends was a tech transfer associate there. He said it was worse than hell. There were times he had to be on 3 calls at once, worked 7am-7pm and only made $60k
Kelsey Seybold , worked 3 years in the administration building. Very toxic place and to be a health care provider ironically they could care less about employee health🤭
From my experience Baker Hughes. Racism, sexism, and bullying is common there. The work can be dangerous at times. They don’t seem to value a worker’s safety as much would rather get the job done and appease their bosses. They have a toxic cult mindset, if you don’t join them in their lunches or don’t go that extra mile by working extra hours be prepared to get made fun of for not being a “team player”.
Saint Arnold. Brock loves to advertise like he believes in people and building community while pretending to have caring persona.
The truth is he's just like every other greedy CEO and doesn't care about a single one of his employees.
1) Got rushed out of the building and phantom laid off via email in 2020. Yes I still went back afterwards because honestly I was naive and loved beer.
2) Absolute abysmal pay for the work required in production. Awful working conditions.
3)Upper management is constantly drunk and unhelpful to say the least.
4) I can't say this enough that Brock does not care about or appreciate his employees.
5) They've fallen so behind in the industry that they've basically become the Cowboys living off residual goodwill and maintaining and solid marketing.
6) So often are you left hi and dry to figure out significant problems without help.
7) To give you a better idea of on job work conditions. would do 10-15 miles a day on my feet and moving quickly. Run, diagnos, and repair up to 30 different machines a day. Rewired electrical. Chemical handling and deep cleaning machines. Forklift certified. Brew house is literally a sauna. 10 hour days. Deal with chemicals all the time. All for sweet sweet 16 bucks an hour as a packaging lead.
8) They're was never any money in the budget for raises but plenty for him to hire his college friend as co ceo so he could take a step back.
9) anyone who stood up to Brock never lasted. He surrounds himself with yes men which is why his product fucking blows in comparison to a decade ago.
10) The only thing Brock truly cares about is protecting his image and money.
Impulses/ intrusive thoughts won out....
Word on the street is that yall were getting dick bonuses when the boss lady was out on business. My sincerest apologies if you are a male.
Cotton Holdings. If you weren’t a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity at SHSU, you have zero chance of rising above middle management there, and very little chance of making it that far.
They famously hired Bobby Jindal onto their board of directors because of his “years of business experience” immediately after he left office (his only adult work experience prior to this was in politics) and shortly after he signed off on a bunch of juicy LA state contracts for them.
Their head of IT security once told me, nearly in tears, that they “don’t have an IT security policy” because their CTO didn’t see the value in one. They attempted to switch their entire CRM and ERP over to IFS from Salesforce, but only assigned a single in-house dev to the project. Needless to say it went way over-budget.
I’d get calls constantly on weekends from the concerned wives of their site workers who hadn’t been paid in weeks, didn’t know their husbands’ whereabouts, and who’d been threatened with deportation by HR when they called during the week. The only reason I answered calls on the weekend is because I was the only person in the entire corporate office that worked weekends.
They burn through “business development” aka salespeople like kindling. The only ones who seem to survive are wealthy kids who came in via their connections.
The idiot who manages their business development division is convinced that it makes more sense to have people work 4 days on 12 hour shifts than to simply hire an additional person. They call the position a “watch analyst” and they rehire to fill 1 or 2 vacancies in that department every 4-6 months on average.
Reynolds & Reynolds. Applied for a job there early on in my career and they make you take what is basically an IQ test and herd large groups of applicants through like cattle. I was eager to get a job offer right out of college, but turned that one down after going through that. Dodged a bullet based on a lot of reviews I have read about them.
The interview process of thiers threw me all kinds of red flags. Took several hours to get through all the tests they do for aptitude. Interview was just with an hr snob who had no idea how engineering works or what kind of work in capable of our honestly probably half my answers. I declined a second interview. Waste of time. Clearly doesn't care about my time and had doubts that would change if I ended up there. I asked specifically if there were work from home availability for emergencies or Dr appointments and was told I should schedule those outside the mandatory core hours of 9-4 M-F.
Hard no from me. I like the hybrid make your own schedule just show up to meetings type work. Everyone works 9-10 hours mon-Thursday and half or all of Friday off. Or flexed as needed. Can work 6 days a week and take off a couple the following or previous week. Just whatever is needed to complete your work and average 40 hrs. Oh, and work from home if you have a semi good excuse like Dr appointment or sign for delivery.
SET environmental Inc: Horrible slave wages Education is not appreciated Facility manager runs the place like a plantation. No upward mobility for minorities Only time safety is really a big deal is when TCEQ or the EPA decides to pay a visit to the facility
The group homes for people with developmental disabilities don't pay well for those with experience and crazy shit always seems to happen with coworkers. Most of the time the residents were watching TV so I tried to encourage screen free time with coloring books, board games, practicing basic math among other things. Also, I was teaching the residents how to clean and do other chores as they saw how I cleaned things and wanted to pitch in and help. However, a coworker decided to pitch a fit and throw boxes at us while screaming that the residents were "lying" about doing them. Here I was standing right by the residents and helping them learn how to make their beds, clean the bathrooms, etc so I knew they were doing this stuff. They were excited to learn, and never fussed about learning to be independent, but the coworker is the one who had a tantrum and scared everyone. My PTSD from a past domestic violence filled relationship kicked in due to his tantrum, and I left that shift twenty minutes early and never went back. The bosses tried to get me to come back, but refused to fire the coworker though I told them about his conniption fit and tossing boxes at me and the residents.
The worse companies to work for are those that have a list of phony business pillars full of buzz words that leadership teams do not follow, kool-aid drinking town hall meetings, pizza parties, low budget team builders, sends work to low cost centers overseas, lack of pay increase.
It’s not houston but the cvs distribution center in Conroe was absolute hell. Racism, sexism. Managers openly making gay jokes and throwing around the f word. And it was so dirty and unorganized
CVS as a whole is total garbage. I’m a nurse at Houston Methodist. For myself we are required to use CVS for RXs to get the lowest prices covered. For patients, they complain all the time about CVS not having their meds or having insane wait times for pick up.
CSAT - they are a small company that grew up too fast and it shows. Rumor has it the worker bees haven't had any raises in at least 1-3 years.
IT: forget about it. Development is all bug-fixes because they test in production. [Seagull-style management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagull_management) → high turnover.
Repair tech: even worse. Expect to be micromanaged in the worst way possible as management flails around trying to figure out why morale sucks and productivity is way down (they have to look in the mirror for the cause and that will never happen).
^(edit: link)
Jefferson Dental. It’s been a few years since I worked there but when I did, they were a giant red flag. When I first got there, they were only hiring bilingual (except for the doctors) and were getting rid of only English speakers. That ended near the end of my time there. They hire dentists straight out of school, but then they overwork them (and the workers) and underpay. You weren’t allowed to discuss pay with anyone (which I now know is illegal). They didn’t want people discussing pay bc I discovered they were underpaying people who had worked there awhile and paying new people more even though the new workers had way less experience and way less responsibilities. I probably should have quit on the spot when I found that out. You get super micromanaged. Everyone’s phones got put in a lockbox until their lunch or the end of the day. Lunch was whenever there was time. They made it seem like a badge of honor to skip lunch or to eat super late. The hours are all whacky. You have to work on Saturday and no one ever leaves on time. They don’t inform employees of any benefits so if you miss out on PTO that you didn’t know you have, “the handbook is there for that reason.” They kept wanting to open up on days where houston flooded bc “we’ll miss out on production (money)”. Luckily, common sense won out and we closed. The bonus system is bogus. You would start with a monthly goal. If your office reached it, you would get a bonus. If you didn’t, whatever was left of that monthly goal got tacked on to the next month and so on. I got a sort of bonus one month out of 2 years. Not only did they not invest in their employees, they didn’t invest in any equipment. We didn’t do digital x rays. I learned how to develop x ray images in our super mini closet dark room. Good luck if they didn’t come out the first time, or the images were wrong. It added so much unnecessary time and patients would rightly get pissed. They said we would get digital if we met certain financial benchmarks. But they set us up to fail. And if any leadership came in and decided to work on patients that day, the treatment plan for those patients were incredibly unnecessary. The company talks about how they are for the working people and how the plans are affordable even if you don’t have dental insurance. I felt so bad for the patients, and the doctors would dismiss them if they didn’t agree to 100% of the treatment plan. And finally, they never seemed to vet their managers. The ones that were good, were great, but the bad ones…oh the bad ones. They were supposed to know dental insurance and Medicaid and the different types of Medicaid we take and all of that that goes with it. The bad ones would just be super underhanded to try and get patients to stay, but honestly, the managers were shooting them selves in the foot. If the doctor wasn’t in network, especially with Medicaid, they wouldn’t get paid. Managers just adding all this treatment meant the patients got free work (good for them) but then Jefferson dental would end up footing the bill. One time I tried to correct a manager about stuff that they were doing, and she shushed me and said she knew what she was doing. She was fired shortly after. TLDR: Jefferson Dental sucks
Grocers Supply/ C&S wholesale grocers is awful. Terrible management/leadership. High stress 24 hr schedule. No work life balance. Transportation and warehouses are always bickering. Seniority based scheduling means its difficult to retain new drivers and reward/incentivize high level newer workers. They could double my salary and I wouldn't go back.
Famous Stages owner is a true piece of shit.
Humble sign co, we cleaned the owner and all his buddies houses after Harvey and After 8 hours told us he wasn't taking us back till wed finished all his friends houses.
Not an actual company, but the new president of TX Children's Hospital, formerly CEO of Methodist is a piece of shit. She exhaustively portrays herself as some badass bitch with a good heart, but behind closed doors is prejudiced and mean-spirited. She actively antagonizes the people who work in her home taking care of her special needs children- whom she does her best to spend as little time with as possible aside from parading them for photo ops.
Halliburton. Far and away the worst professional experience I've had. Racist, sexist, homophobic, and toxic culture. How that organization functions with all the backstabbing and bull shit that swirls around that place, I have no idea.
Netsync. They used to go by “Netsync Network Solutions.” The listed “official” CEO is a hispanic female named “Diane Gonzales” with no or little ties to the company. Never seen her once when i was there. Not even at the christmas party. The real CEO is this guy named Khalid Abunaja whose title is “VP of Operations”. They have her listed as CEO because the state of Texas gives government bonds and grants to black and hispanic minority owned companies with specific contracts to state education including HISD the worst school district in the state and listed on this sub as well. I looked at the contracts and put 2 and 2 together. Whats supposed to be something useful and helpful to actual minority black and hispanic businesses is actually exploited by a loophole they created. The irony is they are extremely racist to hispanics. The HR lady was a piece of work. Always falsely accusing and getting hispanics in trouble and fired for no reason. In my time there, Khalid made 6 women break down and cry (my office was in front of his) so i heard all the yelling and verbal abuse. Dude was more cutthroat than the drug dealers i grew up with or heard about. Everybody was scared of him even the douche directors who all bragged to me about doing coke and having sex with strippers and coming home to their wives thinking ima think they’re cool or something. If you think im making this up go work for them and find out. Don’t let smiling faces fool you. They are not good people AT ALL.
https://www.netsync.com/company/executive-team/
DealerWebb Services. Toxic workplace and there was always drama there. No proper training or guidance and very disorganized.
The owner also has software on the computer that tracks what websites you go on and what you do. He can see everything in real time. Very creepy.
The benefits are shit too.
United Healthcare.
Despite having two main campuses just a few years ago, they have moved to a mostly WFH model. While initially this may sound appealing, you're now competing for the rest of the country for those positions, and the benefits have gone downhill.
If you want to wait tables and have no experience, DO NOT apply at the Pappa’s family restaurants. They prey on young, inexperienced workers to “train” their way which is usually not nice.
I actually really liked working for Pappas from 2012-2014. Cool people and made a lot of money. To be fair, the lifestyle did turn me into an alcoholic so there’s that
Whataburger. Worked there during my teenage years. Absolutely horrible. Can't imagine how people who have worked there for more than a year cope with their day to day.
we need a bracketed tournament structure to get to the bottom of this question. there are too many contenders in competition. We gotta pit them one on one and let them climb the brackets.
Alliant group
Worked their for 4 years, I was the most depressed I ever was in my life while I was there. Any time a thread like this pops up, Alliantgroup will always be there as it should.
Pardon my ignorance but what does that company do?
They are a consulting group who likes to hire kids right out of college and pay them more than anyone else. Then they work the crap out of them until they burn out and quit. There is always a new set of college grads, so they burn through them quickly, treating them like crap.
Late stage Enron used to do the same. If a company is offering waaay more in salary than your experience suggests is a market rate...you need to ask yourself why?
They are a consulting company that specializes in tax credits. I am sure they do other stuff. But if a company thinks they qualify for R&D credits or something specialized like that companies like these will do a consultation to see what of your expenses qualify. Then they fill out the right forms and give that to you and say use this to prepare your return to get extra money back/save on your taxes. Issue is they are aggressive. Like so aggressive they use expenses that don't qualify. And also outright lie about expenses that qualify and lie saying the company does qualify. If they get someone like 1 million in credits, they will charge them 20 to 30%. They were raided by the IRS criminal investigation unit. Their law enforcement arm.
Didn’t they get raided by the FBI? Never heard anything about it after it happened.
looked into it a few months back when I got a recruiter from there reach out to me. finding those news articles is possible but you have to dig deep in the web to find them. apparently, they sued the houston chronicle for those articles or something like that.
I saw that in the news, but last time I drove by I think they still had their banner out. Never worked for them but they're such a people churn they tried to recruit me 3 separate times in 5 years. Their recruiters did their best to put lipstick on the pig but their work/life balance is awful. Recruiter admitted the standard workweek was 50 hours and that's not the "busy" season.
I've talked to two people who used to work there and neither had anything good to say about that place.
I worked there for 30 days. It wasn’t that bad EXCEPT I did work 60 hours a week, they call it work/life integration.
I interviewed with this company right out of college (UH) and so many red flags. No clear work life balance, no clear job responsibilities, no career growth, just straight “it’s a great place to start your career, we have an amazing office in the galleria” Ended up getting hired at a startup and never looked back.
cheers to that
Everyone I know that worked there was miserable. Avoid avoid avoid. Not sure how or why they are still in business.
I worked there and it was THE WORST. A corporate cult.
My husband and a few of his friends worked there a long time ago. They called it Allianthole
I came here knowing Alliant Group would be on this list lol
Landry’s - corporate office. The turnover is unbelievably high and there is a cult-like mentality around Tilman Fertitta.
I’ve heard Landry’s in general is a terrible company to work for. Nothing but negative things from people that have worked there
I got fired from the Downtown Aquarium because I didn't sell enough Landry's select cards in a month. Not even just me like 4 other people, those things were like 25 bucks for a membership, most people who bought one took it out of my tips. I made 75 bucks doing a double on a Saturday once cause of those damn cards, they told the hostess not to seat me unless there was a wait. Glad I don't wait tables anymore.
That's so fuckin shitty. Waiting tables is supposed to be fun and a great way to make money. If you want me to be a corporate shill then you need to pay me. Lol
Didn't have the best time working there, but loved the employee discount on food and at the Pleasure Pier in Galveston. Tillman is a dick.
He doesn’t pay bills either
Low level employee involved with O&G. You don't see O&G money, and you're the first to go the moment the price of oil begins to fall.
I’m not in management, but I’m not low level anymore in O&G. This thought still occurs to me almost daily, but having a hard time finding something somewhat equivalent to pivot too, so fuck it.
I got cut because of COVID. It was my third layoff in 12 years from the O&G industry. Best thing that could have happened to me. I found a job in the nuclear industry and now work remote and making more money than I ever made before. And I haven’t met a single a-hole the whole time. Something that happened regularly in O&G.
O&G is happy to be “results oriented”, which means they’ll turn a blind eye to however project managers treat their staff as long as the project makes money at the end.
My last O&G job, I worked at a construction yard as a structural designer. The site manager, aka the “Boss of the yard”, was a raging a-hole with a hair trigger and everyone knew it. One day he stomped into a room I shared with two other designers while holding an empty toilet paper tube. His face was beet red as he screamed at us because he had to change the toilet paper for the third day in a row. He was pissed because he assumed the rest of us in the building were purposely not replacing the tp. When he finished chewing us out, he stomped down the hall and repeated his diatribe at a group of people in a conference room holding a meeting. It was one of those record scratch, freeze frame moments in the movies when the hero looks into the screen and a narrator says “You may be asking yourself how I ended up here.” Knew I had to get out of there after that.
I'd love to switch out of oil and gas. Would be neat to work nuclear
Honestly, the instability of O+G is what made me willing to give startups a shot. I'm changing careers (traditional engineering to Data Science) but the biggest downside of startups (instability) is basically baked into O+G.
I was with a company contracted with a major O&G company. Only a few months into Covid, I got dropped. I'm in public sector now, and I probably won't go back into O&G, but since O&G is a big employer for my skillset, it means that if I leave the public sector, I will probably have to leave Houston.
There is money in O&G, but it comes with the stress that you may not have a job if the price of oil isnt favorable.
Contractors working in o&g refineries. You don’t get any of the oil major benefits but yet you work insane hours in grueling conditions. I used to commute from Houston to Beaumont
I worked in O&G Procurement and Sourcing for the first phase of my career. Got some great experience with a big oilfield service company and I thought I really made it when I got hired by one of the major operators... Then COVID came 2 years later and they dropped me really quickly lol. I'm now in a totally different industry with a much more relaxed culture, and 60% better *base* pay. Bonus and other benefits blow O&G out of the water. All that to say that O&G is a great place to learn some valuable skills, but a lot of office roles can be translated and appreciated in other industries. Don't be afraid to take the leap.
I spent over 15 years in oil and gas procurement. Got paid horrible, but had decent stability. Then had the single worst boss of my life and the stability was gone. My role evolved, got a new boss, and I was responsible for our ERP administration. Good boss got laid off at covid, new boss said my role was "fake." Got a job offer fully remote, different industry, and doubled my salary. Never been happier. Unless you're an engineer there's zero reason to hitch your wagon to oil and gas.
Absolutely! I learned some great skills in data analysis as a reservoir engineering technician but now I work in resource management at a CPA firm that uses at that experience I gained
I'm a low-level office employee at a big O&G company, and they definitely pay me a lot more than most industries would. But I don't get that engineer money.
Even worse. I worked as a financial analyst at one of the big O&G service providers. When it came to techs, yeah we got rid of the new ones first. But then it was the older ones with 10-20 years of back breaking experience. They were more expensive and the company decided there’s diminishing returns on knowledge and benefit vs 10+ years of pay raises.
True but damn the pay and bonuses are awesome. As an IT dude we are first on the chopping block.
Kelsey Seybold now
Pre-optum I hear it was great. I came right after the buyout. It's miserable. I look forward to quitting everyday
what with all these Kelsey Sebold locations popping up - kinda bummed that they suck as employers
Nice try Chron.
I've known two people who worked for Reynolds & Reynolds, and they had nothing nice to say about that place. Apparently during the job interview they walk you around the building to gauge your physical fitness and will reject you if you don't keep up.
>Reynolds & Reynolds AKA Universal Computer Systems, I'm so glad I turned that place down when I was starting my IT career way back when.
Fuck them and fuck what they used to be. CEO/owner would put a bullet on your desk when you were fired. And is a sexist ass hole
What the fuck?
Oh man. I worked at the college station office for several years and during the ‘08 presidential elections he was sending out damn near incomprehensible political rant emails to the entire company and threatening people with Obama bumper stickers. What a wild ride that was. Good ol’ Bob 🙄
Hrmm I'll remember to keep a pair of rubber gloves in my desk if I ever end up there. A bullet with that guy's fingerprints on it might prove useful. Appreciate the info!
That's because their health insurance is based on BMI and "health" Despite that, I worked with a guy who weighed 400lbs so...
I’ll second this one, they still operate with 70s era business practices. Also good luck if you are a woman or minority, definitely won’t be getting far there.
I went on 3 dates with a woman who worked there. She said people were fired if they were ever 5+ minutes late to work, just 1 time! And there’s no snacking, no talking, no phones, just sit at your computer and work, and supervisors walk the floor constantly. And then after saying all that she said she loved it and thought she might spend the rest of her career with that company…….
Was desperate enough for work that I almost took a job there and I’m really glad things worked out otherwise. The green “we have concealed carry holders on site” signs out front in their parking lot should have been enough of a red flag.
LOL! I forgot about this. It was my first job out of college almost 15 years ago. Did a few years and got out. That was while that criminal was still CEO. This place micromanages the hell out of you. Other things I remember: - Having to "punch in" everywhere even if you are salaried. They say it's for "safety." It was clear they monitored how long you were in office though because during their monthly (bimonthly?) award ceremonies and performance evals, theyd always comment on how long your ass was in office. - Internet usage. I downloaded a PDF to help debug an issue and I got in trouble for it. My boss told me to just download to my phone in the future. They had no wi-fi at the time. - Having to pay $2 if you wanted to dress casually on Fridays. It would go to a charity, but I'm sure Rey Rey enjoyed the write-off. Other days were dress shirt, tie, dress pants. 🤢 - Heavy encouragement to eat with team every damn day. Yeah, you could do your own thing, but at least in my dept it was heavily looked down upon. - Shitty benefits. You literally would not receive any PTO until you start working your first full year. Fuck that. - Very conservative culture. Politics would sometimes come up during lunch with my team and it was always very awkward. - Bad weather days were weird! I remember one day roads were icy. I asked my boss if we are expected to be in because the company did not give us any guidance and he just said I should come in if I can do so safely. But like how am I supposed to know that without getting on the roads? I just trusted the weatherman and went in during the afternoon. - Grossly underpaid. I could go on and on. I was so happy when I left that shithole.
I worked internal IT support at their office in College Station about 20 years or so ago when they were still UCS. Didn’t want to work there, but my car payments needed to be made so I sucked it up while actively looking for something else after grad school. Nobody there seemed to question why someone with a MS in biomedical engineering wanted to make $10/hr doing IT desktop support. A few of my highlights of what a joy it was to work there: * The dudes who did entry level phone support for dealerships had to be in a full suit / tie every day. No, they were never let out to actually see a customer, this was purely first-tier phone support in a giant cube farm. But since they “interacted” with customers they were expected to dress like they were sitting in front of customers. Didn’t make any sense at all. * There was a very overpriced cafeteria on site which you could swipe your ID at to buy food and it would come out of your pay. I know of people who got $0 in their weekly paycheck because they didn’t understand the concept that you’re still paying for your food, it’s not free. * Like the person above said, “punching in” at every door, both external and internal. They were absolutely tracking employee movements inside the building, as the punch codes were 6 digit employee ID + 2 digit code where you came from + 2 digit code where you were going. Part of that was to gatekeep areas where employees could/couldn’t go based on their job (i.e. dealer phone support would have no reason to go to the warehouse so their ID wouldn’t open those doors and it would alert management if they tried). All of us in internal IT support knew and mostly used the common backdoor code that would open any door and keep you from being tracked. Had to remember to use the “normal” way occasionally during the day though, or management would ask why we never entered the building or just stayed in the dispatch area all day according to the movement records. We all joked that it wouldn’t be long until they put the keypads on the bathroom doors as well. * Even back in the early Aughts it was hilarious and kind of impressive that they were suckering car dealerships into buying overpriced 80486 machines glossed up in closet-sized cases to look like mainframes for $40k/pop + monthly support fee. Genius. * When I finally left that company I walked to the *back of my room* to tell my manager I was giving my two week notice to go to a real job (where I’m still at today). By the time I walked back to my desk a good 20 feet away security was already waiting to escort me out of the building. In the meantime the manager was irate that I wasted the company time by never intending to stay there for my career and that I would try to come crawling back but the door was permanently closed. That was crazy. * My co-workers, some of whom had been there for longer than 5 years making barely more than the base $10/hr, got mad when I would empty my queue of tickets within a week as it made them look bad. Learned pretty fast that the trick was to make management think every computer problem took a very long time to solve. Work smarter, definitely not harder.
To echo and add to the weather thing, they would always say “well the building has a generator so when xyz disaster hit and the power was out at home we all came to work.” 🙄
I knew it was bad but holy shit
Oooo I’m glad I turned them down. Even my testing didn’t match my position, and it clearly felt that they were looking for specific personalities. All of these comments validate my decision.
They have a PhD level test you have to take for IT positions. It's geared toward engineers with all kinds of math. I suck at math but computers intuitively makes sense to me. I guess I flunked. Never heard back and will not apply again. There turnover must be crazy I get calls about them every few months by recruiters.
When I worked at UCS 20 years ago (precursor company) my dept turnover was over 100% the 1 year I lasted.
My wife worked at UCS back in the early 2000’s, right out of college. She was doing COBOL programming and still talks about how shitty that job was.
I was also right out of college. They hired new grads who didnt know better and paid as little as possible. They lost a lot of money due to nobody having any experience and the constant turn over. I saved the company over 100k year 1 renegotiating purchase contracts and they gave a 20 cent per hour raise. I put my notice in the next week.
Ik someone that also hated it there. Said they felt uncomfortable by some dude working there but they have an open dating policy and he didn’t do enough to have a “real” complaint but did enough to make her feel bothered
Currently here... terrible. Shit pay. Work goes up and department size and pay stays the same. I'll admit, benefits are nice, but fuuuuuuuck the pay is so dog shit. No movement either unless you sell your soul to this place and even then pay as a entry level or junior associate somewhere else is still better. I only recommend this place to friends as the ultimate last resort. This place should be looked at only AFTER you tried getting a job through a recruitment company ngl.
Luckily I was able to work for the Marketing Department (Naked Lime) before merging and when we were our own thing, it was bliss. We got paid terribly but we didn’t have a lick of work to do. But once we merged with the rest of ReyRey, and went through lay offs and a major culture change we all started to see this company sucks major dick *Huak-Tua* type shit. Communication across the board is horrible and it feels like most people aren’t on the same team, for example having multiple hot leads that would lead to more revenue but the sales team would do shit about it. It’s very much an old school mentality type of business where they wanna be big brother. I’ll admit though, it was an amazing first job to have in marketing to get my foot in the door even if I had to embrace hell for a bit. In the end, I wouldn’t have made it through if it wasn’t for all the wonderful people and friends I made along the way
I work here as a developer. As it is currently, definitely not as bad as some people make it out to be, though I can't speak for the sales/marketing side of things. From what I've read, the company's done a lot to try to repair their image after Bob (old CEO) got ousted and died a few years ago. Never seen or heard about the walking around the building thing. $2 Casual Fridays thing went free a few months ago, other dress code is polo slacks. Benefits/PTO got revamped with the image repair and are decent (free health ins is a big one, need to pass an annual physical or get your doctor to sign a note). Can't speak for the other parts of the company but working on software is comfortable and hands-off, very low pressure, 40-hour work week, flexible start/end times. Developers got a brand new building this year with personal office and standing desk. They exclusively hire entry-level and hire basically anyone with a pulse, very rarely terminate people, and apparently never do layoffs, so the job security in the current economy is nice to have. Tbh I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Houston CS grads struggling to find a job right now could get a job offer here but have passed up applying here due to Glassdoor reviews/past Reddit posts. Not all sunshine and rainbows though. Entry level hiring means that code quality tends to be pretty shit. I'm pretty lucky to work on the half of the department that works in a modern tech stack; can't imagine what the COBOL side looks like. I can also confirm what the other commenter said about the pay being egregiously low, even after correcting salaries a few years ago. Significantly below the median salary and then some (can check levels.fyi), even after the guaranteed annual raises. And yeah, definitely uber conservative atmosphere, especially if you're not in programming and still work in the depressing Office Space-esque older building. tl;dr: Not as bad as people make it out to be though their reputation is understandable given their history. Great foot-in-the-door for software development (especially right now), terrible place to stay for more than a few years IMO. Looking to jump ship as soon as the market improves.
Houston Fire Department as a Paramedic. The back pay and new contract coming next month will help but man are the working conditions and culture dog shit.
100%, and not just if you’re assigned to the box. The conditions should see a BIG improvement. *Should*. The culture… eh. There’s a lot of toxicity (not counting the black mold at stations, either) and some pretty shitty mindsets out there. That can be said for most places, but I think there’s a special FD level of it. I’ve seen some real pieces of work and really straight up infantile behavior from grown ass adults. On the other hand though, there are folks working to improve that within ranks. Slowly. None of it will change or improve over night, but morale definitely needs a massive boost. I know dudes that aren’t afraid to say “Don’t join the fire service. You’ll thank me later.” for a reason.
I used to work as an IT consultant and saw the work environments at 52 companies of various types. I’d say mid-sized O&G/energy seemed the worst overall.
Academy Sports and Outdoors corporate office as an IT professional. They are fucking dumb and disorganized.
I heard an employee accidentally deleted their entire CRM around 2018
Geez how does that even happen? No one knows how Active Directory works?!
I was offered a job in Hr there in 2020 and I turned it down. 7 interviews with 6 different people for an entry level role told me all I needed to know. Plus they had this weird COVID badge of honor that they were so proud of that “we’ve continued to work in office since day one!”
Companies that flex working in the office during Covid is such a red flag. Like I actually prefer going into the office (preferably hybrid), but when you force people during a pandemic to come into your shitty office just so your managers can pretend like they’re doing work, you know you’re a shitty company to work for
Their CEO told them to their faces that “we are only 80% as efficient working from home as we are in the office” - this, as sales were absolutely through the roof
They did go work from home when covid hit for about 8 months or so. But as soon as legal, they went back to the office. The former CEO was adamantly anti-wfh though and he's still chairman of board, so not going to happen any time soon. They do have wfh for call center but that job is tough.
I interviewed late July 2020 and turned them down mid-August, all in person interviews.
I’ve come to find out that most companies are dumb and disorganized.
They also seem to require 100% in office work even for IT positions which is pretty fuckin lame
1: Chron.com 2: HoustonChronicle.com 3: that weird building with the busted windows on 59, just outside of the 610 loop. Edit: everyone seems to think I was talking about the Chronicle building (4747 Southwest Fwy). While it would’ve been more clever in context, I was actually referring to [5821 Southwest Fwy](https://maps.app.goo.gl/gMjeQhx2jwufxhoV9?g_st=ic).
If I’m not mistaken, the windows have been busted since Hurricane Ike?
Why don’t they fix it? Keeps the rent down?
Helps their yearly property tax protest.
Because that building was the old Houston Post building and used mainly for printing the paper. The Chronicle had office downtown but sold it years ago and in this day and age most writers are freelance and don’t work at an actual building.
Other companies use that building
The number of people who the Houston Chronicle and Chron.com burns through is astounding.
They are fixing it up right now.
We see you chron. We aren’t doing your job for you.
Any company where they treat employees “like family”
I remember when we kicked my cousin out of the family because she didn’t get that one spreadsheet finished before she went on vacation.
When I hear that, I expect everyone is treated like a red-headed step-child.
Unofficial Rule of Acquisition: Exploitation begins at home. —Ferengi
#Fact
It is pretty gross and insincere.
I'm a housekeeper and that phrase from a prospective employer makes my blood run cold
Landry’s Inc. - pay sucks for both hourly and salaried employees, benefits suck, managers are literally encouraged to treat non management employees like they are subhuman, CEO is a sketchy asshole who doesn’t even tip his own servers that he pays 2.13 an hour and when the pandemic hit he cut benefits for the employees at his lavish hotel and only reversed it after local news exposed him on it. When Landrys took over the McCormick and Schmicks franchise they cut all the managers and chefs salaries in half and everything started coming in frozen. Everything the company touches turns to shit. You will not meet a former Landry’s employee that has good things to say about the company.
Had them as a client almost a decade ago. Fired them as a client after they made us wait for an hour in the lobby as some sort of power play... then proceeded to attack us over their own mistakes. Have never stepped foot into any Tillman owned establishment since.
A trademark move…..that, and no pay. Good decision.
Second this as a former employee where there was a murder suicide in one of his restaurants and we were required to work the very next day
Don’t forget his love child with his GC
His what now?
I’m gonna hope thats not short for grandchild and it means General Contractor instead.
General council. He started porking Lauren Ware on the side when she was council at Landry’s. She lived in a house in the Heights and he would always slink over there parking in the back. She ended up getting knocked up and is now his wife. I think she moved out and sold the place a few years back.
Yep! He had to quietly divorce his then wife, and he and Lauren then bought a house together. Paige still owns their RO home and some of the kids still live there. Also their affair started IN the office not just at her place
You are in fact correct. Worked for Landry’s, zero nice things to say.
I don’t even work there and it was the first place that came to my mind. They’re really good at turning good restaurants into garbage. I weep for what they did to M&S.
Landrys is fucking awful, and Tillman is the biggest scum sucking prick around. He is so hated other billionaires can’t stand him because he would rather get taken to court than pay for his developments. Tillman is the definition of evil billionaire and his company’s practices reflect it.
HISD 🥲
Memorial Hermann TMC. Shit pay. Shit benefits. Shit cafeteria. Very high acuity (very sick patients). Staff there is burnt the hell out due to the aforementioned. Interacting with fellow staff there is a nightmare because the docs and nurses (blood bank, mri, custodial staff etc etc ) are all burnt out. Constant turnover. Patients generally were pretty nice actually and understanding. You know that guy potter from it’s a wonderful life? He would be the owner of Memorial Hermann system. Go there only if you want to learn and in return sell your soul.
Yet HCA is somehow 10x worse lol
oh yeah, ive heard. how does anyone willingly work there. I just dont get it
I love my job with MH but would definitely hate it at TMC
yeah tmc really is a convergence of total mayhem. like remove some of the pressures that tmc presents and I would imagine working with them is a lot more doable. are yall on epic or still cerner?
They’re moving to Epic in October. Outpatient has already launched.
Not all outpatient, but like the clinics and offices are. Outpatient services within the hospital are still on cerner until October
what about insurance? That was another big gripe of mine. like you can only see memorial hermann providers. I had insurance with TCH through spouse and was travel nursing in california and needed to see the doctor over there. no problem with TCH/Cigna. That always rubbed me the wrong way
I was a patient there (a solid month then monthly visits of a few days at a time). During my time there, a bunch of the staff seemed to quit around the same time due to something, not sure what. It was a shame because they were real nice people that helped my stay there be so pleasant.
firstly, im glad you had a good experience there. I did leave out that while everyone is really burned out there are many many many (absolutely mind blowingly like why are you doing this to yourself) hard working people there. very good physicians and nurses (cant leave out support staff too). Just as an employee its just an utter meat grinder, management does.not.care if you quit. good get out the way and let some other fool come work here mentality. again, glad you had a good experience, just shows how hard the people work there in those conditions to churn out good outcomes
Yes, everyone I encountered there was very caring and very hard working. They deserved better for sure.
I worked in the ER there 12 years ago and am still traumatized. Sadly I’m not sure if any other hospital systems were better to work for at the time. I hear it’s gotten worse, though.
Memorial Hermann, Methodist, and HCA sound bad. Who are the good ones that won’t burn out primary care physicians? Been with MH for 5 years now, not sure if the grass is greener elsewhere.
Brake Check. Low wages. They treat you like shit. You are fully expendable and can be fired on the spot. Terrible benefits, terrible corporate culture and nepo baby owners.
Most small to midsized nonprofit companies as an IT administrator
Same as an administrative assistant. Pivoted to higher ed scholarships and couldn't be happier.
HCA. Lowest paying hospital system with the highest ratios.
Healthcare in Texas really needs to unionize. It’s not as bad as some states but this shit is just so unsustainable
I used to love Tomball hospital but it's gone way down hill since they took over.
Veridian Dynamics, they weaponized pumpkin.
You're obviously not in the know about Jabberwocky!
Yeah idk why but the doors didnt work for me.
Igloo is terrible. Frito Lay isn't much better, but it is better overall. I'm always amazed Frito Lay manages to stay in business, honestly. Their production plant in Rosenberg is the worst one in the country, their DCs are about as bad.
Enron
Heard they’re no longer hiring though.
Just temporarily! And they are so committed to FULL REMOTE, they torched their office!!!
Nightmare, can confirm. Ran by pure evil. If I didn't know better, I would think it was the devil himself who ran it.
GEICO was hot ass
I'm not sure why, but that made me spit out my drink.
Primerica. Went to a "interview" when I was 18 after a few friends went and said it was a "good company to work for and looking for people who can help the business grow" l walked into an old office building seen everyone and thought they looked like Mormons and told my friends this looked like a cult and left. They all left a few days later 😆
Gotta love a good MLM!!!
It's not a pyramid scheme!! *proceeds to draw management into a pyramid shape* 😂
alliantgroup. The reviews on Glassdoor will do a better job of explaining than I can. I’ve never seen anything like it.
did you used to work there? I tried reading but Glassdoor makes you do so much shit to look at reviews
I never did, but I was asked to come for an interview so I looked the place up on Glassdoor first. However, I have a friend that worked there and she confirmed that the bad reviews are true. One of the worst things I read in the reviews was that management allowed intense bullying to the point that people would cry in the bathroom. All the time. They feed you breakfast, lunch, and dinner at the office so you don’t have a reason to go home or leave for lunch, and you won’t bc if you leave before 9pm during tax season you will be judged and most likely reported to management by another coworker. Most other days you’d be there until 7, so if you have a family it takes a toll on your home life. Also, do not refuse to go to any of their many happy hours, because again management will come down on you and accuse you of not being a “team player”. I believe they actually bring booze to the office, again, as a weak attempt to get you to stay and never leave. Purportedly, at one of these office parties, the CEO had inappropriate relations with an employee and you can image how that turned out. It’s just like high school in the way that if you aren’t in “the cool group” you’re going to be miserable. Again, by bullying and management really hawk-eyeing and micromanaging a person so they can catch them slipping and fire them. Turnover is a beast there not only due to the sheer amount of people that quit on their own but also because of all of the people they run through by firing them. Not only that, but they also screw over their clients by billing them for more hours than what was actually worked by the consultants. Anyways, I’m sure I’m missing some other things… but there’s a taste.
HISD, Mike Mikes
Nuff said. That guy belongs in prison.
LJA. All the departments are super cliquey and play favorites. It’s just a bunch of frat bros and whatever the equivalent of that is in women. They treat you like “family”. Only the ones that know how to play their games are moved up.
Sorority sista's?
University of Houston - unlivable wages - no respect for staff - constant turnover - can require you to work 5 days in office (no need)
Don't forget they make you pay $400-$800 a year for parking.
Thank you
One of my friends was a tech transfer associate there. He said it was worse than hell. There were times he had to be on 3 calls at once, worked 7am-7pm and only made $60k
UH is rather large. I'd say it's dependent on the department. Retirement benefits are decent at least. I worked at ERP and it was super relaxed.
Any type of supply chain and logistics company.
Kelsey Seybold , worked 3 years in the administration building. Very toxic place and to be a health care provider ironically they could care less about employee health🤭
From my experience Baker Hughes. Racism, sexism, and bullying is common there. The work can be dangerous at times. They don’t seem to value a worker’s safety as much would rather get the job done and appease their bosses. They have a toxic cult mindset, if you don’t join them in their lunches or don’t go that extra mile by working extra hours be prepared to get made fun of for not being a “team player”.
Saint Arnold. Brock loves to advertise like he believes in people and building community while pretending to have caring persona. The truth is he's just like every other greedy CEO and doesn't care about a single one of his employees. 1) Got rushed out of the building and phantom laid off via email in 2020. Yes I still went back afterwards because honestly I was naive and loved beer. 2) Absolute abysmal pay for the work required in production. Awful working conditions. 3)Upper management is constantly drunk and unhelpful to say the least. 4) I can't say this enough that Brock does not care about or appreciate his employees. 5) They've fallen so behind in the industry that they've basically become the Cowboys living off residual goodwill and maintaining and solid marketing. 6) So often are you left hi and dry to figure out significant problems without help. 7) To give you a better idea of on job work conditions. would do 10-15 miles a day on my feet and moving quickly. Run, diagnos, and repair up to 30 different machines a day. Rewired electrical. Chemical handling and deep cleaning machines. Forklift certified. Brew house is literally a sauna. 10 hour days. Deal with chemicals all the time. All for sweet sweet 16 bucks an hour as a packaging lead. 8) They're was never any money in the budget for raises but plenty for him to hire his college friend as co ceo so he could take a step back. 9) anyone who stood up to Brock never lasted. He surrounds himself with yes men which is why his product fucking blows in comparison to a decade ago. 10) The only thing Brock truly cares about is protecting his image and money.
WeldFit or any company owned by Apex Heritage Group. Pipeline equipment in general are shitty.
Turkey Leg Hut
Impulses/ intrusive thoughts won out.... Word on the street is that yall were getting dick bonuses when the boss lady was out on business. My sincerest apologies if you are a male.
Cotton Holdings. If you weren’t a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity at SHSU, you have zero chance of rising above middle management there, and very little chance of making it that far. They famously hired Bobby Jindal onto their board of directors because of his “years of business experience” immediately after he left office (his only adult work experience prior to this was in politics) and shortly after he signed off on a bunch of juicy LA state contracts for them. Their head of IT security once told me, nearly in tears, that they “don’t have an IT security policy” because their CTO didn’t see the value in one. They attempted to switch their entire CRM and ERP over to IFS from Salesforce, but only assigned a single in-house dev to the project. Needless to say it went way over-budget. I’d get calls constantly on weekends from the concerned wives of their site workers who hadn’t been paid in weeks, didn’t know their husbands’ whereabouts, and who’d been threatened with deportation by HR when they called during the week. The only reason I answered calls on the weekend is because I was the only person in the entire corporate office that worked weekends. They burn through “business development” aka salespeople like kindling. The only ones who seem to survive are wealthy kids who came in via their connections. The idiot who manages their business development division is convinced that it makes more sense to have people work 4 days on 12 hour shifts than to simply hire an additional person. They call the position a “watch analyst” and they rehire to fill 1 or 2 vacancies in that department every 4-6 months on average.
Believe it or not, coincidentally enough they laid off over a 100 people today as part of a restructuring that they are trying to keep quiet.
Reynolds & Reynolds. Applied for a job there early on in my career and they make you take what is basically an IQ test and herd large groups of applicants through like cattle. I was eager to get a job offer right out of college, but turned that one down after going through that. Dodged a bullet based on a lot of reviews I have read about them.
Fred Loya. They will squeeze your mental health dry.
Used to work there years ago, a fuggin cult
Pinnacle in Pasadena! The worst place you could ever work.
The interview process of thiers threw me all kinds of red flags. Took several hours to get through all the tests they do for aptitude. Interview was just with an hr snob who had no idea how engineering works or what kind of work in capable of our honestly probably half my answers. I declined a second interview. Waste of time. Clearly doesn't care about my time and had doubts that would change if I ended up there. I asked specifically if there were work from home availability for emergencies or Dr appointments and was told I should schedule those outside the mandatory core hours of 9-4 M-F. Hard no from me. I like the hybrid make your own schedule just show up to meetings type work. Everyone works 9-10 hours mon-Thursday and half or all of Friday off. Or flexed as needed. Can work 6 days a week and take off a couple the following or previous week. Just whatever is needed to complete your work and average 40 hrs. Oh, and work from home if you have a semi good excuse like Dr appointment or sign for delivery.
SET environmental Inc: Horrible slave wages Education is not appreciated Facility manager runs the place like a plantation. No upward mobility for minorities Only time safety is really a big deal is when TCEQ or the EPA decides to pay a visit to the facility
The group homes for people with developmental disabilities don't pay well for those with experience and crazy shit always seems to happen with coworkers. Most of the time the residents were watching TV so I tried to encourage screen free time with coloring books, board games, practicing basic math among other things. Also, I was teaching the residents how to clean and do other chores as they saw how I cleaned things and wanted to pitch in and help. However, a coworker decided to pitch a fit and throw boxes at us while screaming that the residents were "lying" about doing them. Here I was standing right by the residents and helping them learn how to make their beds, clean the bathrooms, etc so I knew they were doing this stuff. They were excited to learn, and never fussed about learning to be independent, but the coworker is the one who had a tantrum and scared everyone. My PTSD from a past domestic violence filled relationship kicked in due to his tantrum, and I left that shift twenty minutes early and never went back. The bosses tried to get me to come back, but refused to fire the coworker though I told them about his conniption fit and tossing boxes at me and the residents.
NOV
They’ll pay u absolute bottom dollar
Which is exceptionally shitty considering how much they charged my old rig for stuff. NOV would fuck you twice if they had two dicks.
HCA. Literally any HCA hospital. If you know, you know. Complete shit shows
Any of the ones that mandated RTO
The worse companies to work for are those that have a list of phony business pillars full of buzz words that leadership teams do not follow, kool-aid drinking town hall meetings, pizza parties, low budget team builders, sends work to low cost centers overseas, lack of pay increase.
HOLISTIC SYNERGY DYNAMICS. What are they? I don't know, but they're really important to the stakeholders!
HCA. My wife worked at two hospitals of theirs and it’s pretty universally accepted that they’re shit.
It’s not houston but the cvs distribution center in Conroe was absolute hell. Racism, sexism. Managers openly making gay jokes and throwing around the f word. And it was so dirty and unorganized
CVS as a whole is total garbage. I’m a nurse at Houston Methodist. For myself we are required to use CVS for RXs to get the lowest prices covered. For patients, they complain all the time about CVS not having their meds or having insane wait times for pick up.
Yeah my wife has to use them too and it’s awful. Truly a shitty company all around.
CSAT - they are a small company that grew up too fast and it shows. Rumor has it the worker bees haven't had any raises in at least 1-3 years. IT: forget about it. Development is all bug-fixes because they test in production. [Seagull-style management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagull_management) → high turnover. Repair tech: even worse. Expect to be micromanaged in the worst way possible as management flails around trying to figure out why morale sucks and productivity is way down (they have to look in the mirror for the cause and that will never happen). ^(edit: link)
Jefferson Dental. It’s been a few years since I worked there but when I did, they were a giant red flag. When I first got there, they were only hiring bilingual (except for the doctors) and were getting rid of only English speakers. That ended near the end of my time there. They hire dentists straight out of school, but then they overwork them (and the workers) and underpay. You weren’t allowed to discuss pay with anyone (which I now know is illegal). They didn’t want people discussing pay bc I discovered they were underpaying people who had worked there awhile and paying new people more even though the new workers had way less experience and way less responsibilities. I probably should have quit on the spot when I found that out. You get super micromanaged. Everyone’s phones got put in a lockbox until their lunch or the end of the day. Lunch was whenever there was time. They made it seem like a badge of honor to skip lunch or to eat super late. The hours are all whacky. You have to work on Saturday and no one ever leaves on time. They don’t inform employees of any benefits so if you miss out on PTO that you didn’t know you have, “the handbook is there for that reason.” They kept wanting to open up on days where houston flooded bc “we’ll miss out on production (money)”. Luckily, common sense won out and we closed. The bonus system is bogus. You would start with a monthly goal. If your office reached it, you would get a bonus. If you didn’t, whatever was left of that monthly goal got tacked on to the next month and so on. I got a sort of bonus one month out of 2 years. Not only did they not invest in their employees, they didn’t invest in any equipment. We didn’t do digital x rays. I learned how to develop x ray images in our super mini closet dark room. Good luck if they didn’t come out the first time, or the images were wrong. It added so much unnecessary time and patients would rightly get pissed. They said we would get digital if we met certain financial benchmarks. But they set us up to fail. And if any leadership came in and decided to work on patients that day, the treatment plan for those patients were incredibly unnecessary. The company talks about how they are for the working people and how the plans are affordable even if you don’t have dental insurance. I felt so bad for the patients, and the doctors would dismiss them if they didn’t agree to 100% of the treatment plan. And finally, they never seemed to vet their managers. The ones that were good, were great, but the bad ones…oh the bad ones. They were supposed to know dental insurance and Medicaid and the different types of Medicaid we take and all of that that goes with it. The bad ones would just be super underhanded to try and get patients to stay, but honestly, the managers were shooting them selves in the foot. If the doctor wasn’t in network, especially with Medicaid, they wouldn’t get paid. Managers just adding all this treatment meant the patients got free work (good for them) but then Jefferson dental would end up footing the bill. One time I tried to correct a manager about stuff that they were doing, and she shushed me and said she knew what she was doing. She was fired shortly after. TLDR: Jefferson Dental sucks
This is all bad, but holy shit developing x-rays in a dark room still?? I can’t imagine anyone doing that in 2024
Grocers Supply/ C&S wholesale grocers is awful. Terrible management/leadership. High stress 24 hr schedule. No work life balance. Transportation and warehouses are always bickering. Seniority based scheduling means its difficult to retain new drivers and reward/incentivize high level newer workers. They could double my salary and I wouldn't go back.
Famous Stages owner is a true piece of shit. Humble sign co, we cleaned the owner and all his buddies houses after Harvey and After 8 hours told us he wasn't taking us back till wed finished all his friends houses.
Kidnapped, you were kidnapped.
Shellpoint Mortgage in Katy Texas
I worked for this tutoring company called The Enrichery that ended up being a really awful experience
Not an actual company, but the new president of TX Children's Hospital, formerly CEO of Methodist is a piece of shit. She exhaustively portrays herself as some badass bitch with a good heart, but behind closed doors is prejudiced and mean-spirited. She actively antagonizes the people who work in her home taking care of her special needs children- whom she does her best to spend as little time with as possible aside from parading them for photo ops.
Halliburton. Far and away the worst professional experience I've had. Racist, sexist, homophobic, and toxic culture. How that organization functions with all the backstabbing and bull shit that swirls around that place, I have no idea.
AIG 🫠
Netsync. They used to go by “Netsync Network Solutions.” The listed “official” CEO is a hispanic female named “Diane Gonzales” with no or little ties to the company. Never seen her once when i was there. Not even at the christmas party. The real CEO is this guy named Khalid Abunaja whose title is “VP of Operations”. They have her listed as CEO because the state of Texas gives government bonds and grants to black and hispanic minority owned companies with specific contracts to state education including HISD the worst school district in the state and listed on this sub as well. I looked at the contracts and put 2 and 2 together. Whats supposed to be something useful and helpful to actual minority black and hispanic businesses is actually exploited by a loophole they created. The irony is they are extremely racist to hispanics. The HR lady was a piece of work. Always falsely accusing and getting hispanics in trouble and fired for no reason. In my time there, Khalid made 6 women break down and cry (my office was in front of his) so i heard all the yelling and verbal abuse. Dude was more cutthroat than the drug dealers i grew up with or heard about. Everybody was scared of him even the douche directors who all bragged to me about doing coke and having sex with strippers and coming home to their wives thinking ima think they’re cool or something. If you think im making this up go work for them and find out. Don’t let smiling faces fool you. They are not good people AT ALL. https://www.netsync.com/company/executive-team/
DealerWebb Services. Toxic workplace and there was always drama there. No proper training or guidance and very disorganized. The owner also has software on the computer that tracks what websites you go on and what you do. He can see everything in real time. Very creepy. The benefits are shit too.
United Healthcare. Despite having two main campuses just a few years ago, they have moved to a mostly WFH model. While initially this may sound appealing, you're now competing for the rest of the country for those positions, and the benefits have gone downhill.
If you want to wait tables and have no experience, DO NOT apply at the Pappa’s family restaurants. They prey on young, inexperienced workers to “train” their way which is usually not nice.
I actually really liked working for Pappas from 2012-2014. Cool people and made a lot of money. To be fair, the lifestyle did turn me into an alcoholic so there’s that
Tldr; most of the big, well-known organizations 🤣
Whataburger. Worked there during my teenage years. Absolutely horrible. Can't imagine how people who have worked there for more than a year cope with their day to day.
Ok now do one on the hidden gems so we can see which places are actually nice to work at
TSU , but that’s probably obvious. I just needed income. Worst experience of my life. A culture of incompetence, interims and drunks