Pros
The health and dental plan offered by ECC is 100% employer paid, which is truly rare in this day and age. However, even that is a proverbial double edged sword. While no one in management will even acknowledge the possibility much less admit the potential practice, several outstanding employees have been purged during lay off cycles with seemingly nothing in common other than higher than average health/dental costs for either themselves or their families. So while the coverage is grand, leveraging it for a series of unforeseen high dollar surgical procedures or treatments might spell the death knell of one's tenure @ ECC.
Cons
The corporate culture is purportedly predicated on three tiers - vision, integrity and results. Over the years of many late hours and long weekends spent laboring long and hard for this company, I discovered that nothing could be further from the truth. How much "vision" is required to realize that the internal estimating arm of the firm did not have a proverbial clue? Time and again, I had to go back to our design partner in an effort to determine options for mitigating a "bid bust" predicated on some incredibly short sighted "vision" on how the project could be built out. And how much "integrity" lies in forcing a salaried employee to record only 80 hours in a two week pay cycle rather than the average 120 hours that was really worked? Without the true accounting of level of effort, my direct management never noted the additional effort, despite so many weekends spent on the project site and late nights spent at my workstation. To top it all off, the potential bonus ceiling in my offer letter was unilaterally reduced by 35% before the first review cycle, in spite of the fact that it made up a substantial portion of the compensation package. Undeterred, I pressed on, confident that the bringing the project in on time and on budget would generate a fitting reward. And what kind of management structure cannot recognize "results" unless they are self-serving? While challenged to harness creativity and imagination in several "first order" projects that the company had heretofore never attempted, I did not count on the obtuse mindset of my management team, with an oblivious level of awareness that was truly appalling. Since leadership is truly an art, the characters throughout ECC masquerading as purveyors of the craft cannot even finger paint, much less evoke passion with vibrant and compelling brush strokes.
