ETS reviews

Compensation structure is very limiting. As others have said, if you are hired at the low end of a salary band, you're confined to the compensation ghetto forever--you'll always be paid less than others with your job title. Lip service is paid to innovation, but people with the sort of personality that goes along with creative thinking are not valued or welcomed; rocking the boat is not looked upon kindly by management. Software and technology tools are archaic. There is a ton of nepotism and favoritism. People are punished or held back because of the perceptions of other people, even if the reality doesn't match the perceptions. There has been a lot of management by crisis, but this is getting better. In order to win contracts, bids are slashed to the bone to the point where it's impossible to get the work done and stay on budget.

Projects don't ever seem to get finished, they just die. It seems like a project is announced and everyone is expected to drop everything and focus solely on that project until the VP decides to switch his focus to another project. And then everyone is expected to drop everything and focus solely on that project and the cycle continues over and over and over. Lots of work done but nothing is ever actually finished. Things are implemented without proper support behind it or even fully thinking them through. Someone high up has a great idea? Let's roll it out next week! There's a lot of talk of "innovation" but the company culture doesn't support it. The higher ups TALK about supporting it but it's not really supported. Just like how they talk about working remotely, they talk about what a great thing it is but those who do it are frowned upon and favoritism is apparent with who gets to work remotely and who doesn't. We're building a new building that's completely open plan because, as they keep saying, "that's how Google works!". Yes, Google does work that way but ETS isn't Google. It's nothing like Google. The companies are totally different in every single way but the powers that be have decided that what works for Google will work at ETS. No one listens to the people that will actually WORK in that building. The compensation bands are a joke. Basically, if you come in at a low salary expect you'll be paid a low salary for the entire time you work here. You can move up to a higher position in a higher salary band BUT they'll put you at the low end of that band as well. There is NO opportunity to raise your salary within the band outside of the annual increases (which top out at around 4%). Sure you might have the exact same job/ title as someone else but they can easily be making $20K more than you and still be within the same salary band. If you're applying for a job here aim high and fight for every penny because your salary at ETS will depend on it for years to come. What the salary bands also mean is it's impossible for managers to reward their hard workers. Say there are two employees. Employee A makes a salary towards the low end of the band and doesn't work very hard. Employee B makes a salary towards the high end of the band and works really hard. Employee A will ALWAYS get a higher annual salary increase just because they are at the low end of the salary band. There is no way for managers to circumvent this, HR (called SWS at ETS) controls it all. There is a big song and dance about the increases being tied to personal performance but they aren't, they are tied to the salary bands and where employees fall. It's near impossible for managers to get rid of low performing employees or problem employees. Often they're just allowed to do whatever they want or they are passed around from group to group. At the same time there are a lot of managers who should not be managers. They may have taken a class but that doesn't mean they are good managers. There are lots of long time employees which could be the death of this company. In many areas the long timers resist any and all change which means that any young employees brought in leave. I certainly wouldn't want to be young and working in Research. Not much diversity at the higher levels. It's all older white men. There's a new diversity push which is good but we'll see how high any of those employees get. ETS is extremely top heavy. There are managers that don't have a single person to manage, they just have the title.