Great learning experience, would not recommend as a long term career.
Pros
Reasonable PTO and paid holiday package. Solid 401k match. Great on site cafeteria, multiple snack bars, free sodas and coffee, and very attractive office. Casual interaction with upper-level and executive management. Most strong analysts will receive an extremely wide variety of technical tasks and in some cases client/vendor interaction. The Benefits Workstation platform provides a very simplistic introduction to coding and process development. In most cases, mid-level management recognizes and respects the opinion of young talent. Definitely a great opportunity for an inexperienced college graduate to quickly gain marketable skills. Upcoming restructure of resources may potentially correct some of my following Cons over the next few years. Young and very positive coworkers. If you are unambitious and have good people skills, you will flourish here.
Cons
A huge lack of technical talent will leave PTO extremely uncomfortable to take. Upon returning, most issues will pile up, or be dispersed among the only 12 competent technical resources. The company has a huge stress on providing output, and spends very little time or money developing talent. Very uncoordinated (and mostly nontechnical) crash course training into million-dollar client implementation roles within a month of starting. The gap in talent leaves most implementations to new hires, and are cleaned up by 60 hour weeks from the senior analysts. Most analysts in client services are not challenged technically. Most systematic issues are sent to the Operations IT team to solve, and we are often left waiting. Whoever shouts the loudest often receives the most attention. Analysts are often led to monotonous jobs. Very little job overlap within teams, and processing schedules restrict PTO flexibility. Low-level managers only value client satisfaction and disregard quality of work. Best practices are not stressed among "happy client" teams, and compounding issues are often covered by manual intervention. Clients are often subject to minimally tested technology. Version 2 clients lack basic functionality, and the application-dev department rarely understands our actual business needs. High turnover with lack of technical resources often leaves you alone to learn processes. This company needs to seriously consider dedicating time to developing the internal wiki. Ongoing analyst training NEEDS to happen, and it needs to be more than two 3 hour workshops before OE. Task ownership/responsibility is often unclear. You should probably not rely on Empyrean for Visa needs.
