SSOE Group reviews

Get ready for a novels worth of cons. The following criticisms are representative of my experience as well as the experience of others I have worked with: SSOE has the “Great Place to Work” certification. This is a joke for any company to have, as every company will have their problems. It's believed among coworkers they buy this title to blind sight people that this company is perfect in every way. SSOE constantly tells us how great they are. But they are far from perfect. SSOE has to be one of the lowest paying AEC firms out there today. Turnover rate is high because people here are underpaid and overworked. Unless management favors you, you are not treated like a valuable person in the company. Everyone who has left SSOE including myself are getting significantly better wages and benefits. Speaking of benefits, their benefits are just not competitive. They advertise themselves as having great and unique benefits, but they are just not. While some things like their dental and vision are decent, their health insurance is down right horrible. They offer HSA and FSA options to help with health expenses, but it doesn't justify how terrible their plans are. Imagine having health insurance that punishes you for using it, yes that's correct, they have two PPO plans to choose from. Both having to pay 100 percent out of pocket towards a high deductible. Both plans have the same deductible, but the only difference is the “better” plan has a 100 percent coverage after you hit your deductible with a small premium (small for covering yourself anyway), while the lower level plan has no premium with an 80 percent coverage after the deductible. Both plans have preventative care 100 percent covered, but the rest is on you! If you have more than yourself on SSOE's insurance plan your deductible is instantly doubled. The deductibles are 2600 individual, and 5200 with a spouse and or kids. That's nuts for such a big company that provides insurance! Most doctors visits are around 300 dollars or more. If you have to go to the doctor more than once a month, its difficult to pay for. For most staff, you don't get paid enough to keep up with regular doctors visits. SSOE's health insurance will only benefit younger people who don't go to the doctor very much. They do offer a wellness works program, but only offers 500 redeemable HSA dollars a year. If you are insuring more than yourself, this barely puts a dent in your deductible. When it comes to management there are very few people who actually care about their employees. All they care about is satisfying their customers at the expense of their own employees, forcing long hours to finish projects with unreasonable deadlines, and then management takes all the credit once the work is done. All they care about is cranking out numbers and making themselves look good. News flash! If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers! Stand up for your employees when your customers are asking too much! Management from most departments will only treat you well only if you are a suck up and happily do excessive mandatory overtime even if it means having no work/life balance (i'll touch on this further down my review). I went through two managers in my time at SSOE and my first manager was first class, and really cared about the staff. My second manager was practically worthless and certain they had it out for me. I wanted to learn more things when my second manager was brought in and kept sweeping my requests for training under the rug and gave others the training I had been asking months for, not giving me a chance to learn and grow and utilize my talents in other areas related to my schooling. Management is cheap. They are constantly worried about pinching pennies. Not just with their employee compensation, but in what they bill to their customers. They've tried to implement a cost savings program called "engage lean culture" that are meetings held twice a week. Most will agree, it makes little sense in this industry to be "lean" because that looses sight of the quality of work produced. They don't realize that though, because in their eyes we should be able to do both easily. They are always trying to look for ways to improve on processes, and that's understandable, but even when processes are smooth and refined, they still have the nerve to tell us “but we can always do better.” The employees see this as “nothing we do is ever good enough.” Stop pinching pennies and focus on a realistic balance of quality and speed. It takes whatever time is needed to get the job done properly. Lastly I'd like to touch on SSOE's claimed “work/life balance” they talk so highly of. They only talk up how SSOE has a great work/life balance because they don't. And they want you to believe daily 10-12 hour days is your work/life balance. Hours can be higher when deadlines get really ridiculous. When workloads are high, you can expect overtime, but they expect overtime from you on a regular basis. If you have other commitments outside of work that you can't miss, get ready for management to have it out for you and have fear of losing your job. You will be shunned if you need to leave during a busy work week after doing a normal 8 hour shift. Doctors appointments, family events, they don't care, you need to work. As one of my coworkers used to tell me “Go home? You are home!” This statement really is a tell all, as you need to fight if you want a normal work/life balance, but once again, you risk management having it out for you and having fear of losing your job if you don't comply.