I'm far more relaxed and happy at my job than most of my other friends.
Pros
I've been with Allstate for going on three years now and for the most part have enjoyed it. Most of the time I feel like the company actually cares about me as an employee. I've worked at a few other big corporations and many of them just treat you like a number. The benefits packages are pretty nice, even for a starting employee. New employees get 20 days vacation after the start of a New Year (when hired in the same year this time is prorated from a 14 day vacation), after 5 years or applicable work experience that moves to 25 and continues going up with tenure at the company. Since employees are allowed to carry over 5 days a year I've met a woman who had 40 vacation days to spend in a single year. There's a number of nice on-site facilities Gym, Barber, Shipping, Non-Fee Based ATMs, Oil Changes, Starbucks, etc, etc. During my time there they have been extremely supportive of my continuing education. Not just reimbursing me for a portion of my school, but allowing me to shift my work schedule to fit school into it. They are very encouraging and I have been approached by a manager who will say "I thought you needed to leave early today for school? Shouldn't you get out of here before traffic?" I've also never been told "no" to any type of training class or seminar I wanted to attend to advance my career. This year alone I have taken about 4 weeks in various training classes and we're only in the end of May. Allstate wants their employees to better themselves and is willing to spend the money for you to do it.
Cons
Like many big corporations Allstate is SLOW. Don't expect to come in and start working with cutting edge technology. They also only spend as much as they have to when purchasing hardware for their technology, which ultimately comes back to bite them 6-10 months down the road when changing needs have made their initial purchases obsolete. The company has far too many meetings, we literally have meetings to discuss the fact that we have too many meetings. We might even discuss that our meetings should be shorter, 30 minutes for example, but take an hour to discuss that. I spend at least two hours every day sitting in meetings about something. Finally, the SodexHo cafeteria, regardless of Allstate building tastes like it came from a trashcan someone was scrapping food out of from the back of a dive bar. On top of tasting like my mother's cooking it's also rather pricey with continued excuses why they need to raise that price. Luckily there are a number of places to eat within just a mile or two of the campus that offer better and cheaper food on top of also giving an Allstate discount.
