Pros
Very employee focused. Always thinking of ways to reward employees. Provided an employee lounge where staff could get away from work stress for a few and sit in comfortable lounge chairs to chat a bit with others, or watch TV, or play foosball or pingpong. Frequent company picnics, generous cash rewards, assistance with college costs, surprised all 5,000 plus employees from time to time with gifts of things like their own iPod. Only provided top quality ergonomic furniture, provided top quality computers and industry standard software, usually replacing existing employee computers every 6 months or so in order to ensure work could be performed up to current standards. Offered employees opportunities to cross train and learn skills in other departments when possible. On the corporate campus, the company had a full size employee spa / gym, where at least a couple times a week, after work hours, I would treat myself to an hour long massage. Not sure how benefits are now, but during my employee, monthly employee health care premiums consistently remained at $10.00 a month. The company would tell us, year by year, that due to the company's continuing successes, it would reward this who were responsible for the company;s success by continuing to provide very low cost health care coverage. Oh, and the copays, while I was still employed there, for doctor visits, drugs, etc. never went above $10 for drugs and $15 for doctor visits, or special procedures. So, if it seems as if the salaries were on the low side, keep in mind, that the other costs, like for health care premiums, etc. were beyond reasonable, and then there were those quarterly performance bonuses, and if you worked in the right area, and dealt with the sales force group, when the sales staff got additional $800/quarter sales bonuses, so did all of us working behind the sales team members to help insure their sales successes. I have only worked for two of the many large U.S.corporations in my employment history that I would rate with over the top reviews: One is Intergraph Corporation, and the other is General Mills, Inc. I'll be giving away my age here, but wanted to add that during my 10 years of employment at General Mills, Inc., I accrued retirement pension funds, that General Mills socked away for my future retirement time, and although due to marriage I had to leave General Mills after 10 years with that company when I married, I was able to retire early and can live off of the monthly General Mills, Inc., pension checks I now receive monthly, and will for the remainder of my life. But companies like Intergraph and General Mills, Inc., are almost dinosaurs in this age where employees are no longer valued, instead, pleasing the shareholders by giving what the employees have done to be able to provide for the shareholders of the company aren't given much consideration. In most modern corporations, it now seems employees are mere cogs in a wheel, and if an employee doesn't like the corporate style of nothing for you, all for me and the shareholders I please so I can keep my job, I'm surprised that even so, and even as wages are not much more now than they were in the late '70's before that horrid and intended to remain meant only for corporate boardroom eyes, as it was distributed to the American corporate world in the early '70's, known as the Powell Memorandum or Powell Manifesto, a corporate lawyer who sat on 11 different corporate boards, showed corporate America that it needs to divert the People's government away from serving the people and instead serve the corporate world, and a good way to do that, bit by bit, so as not to seem overtly taking away the People's government would be best done by way of corporate access to sums of money to provide politicians in their effort to assist corporations in passing laws beneficial to corporations, but not the People, and definitely not the nation, its economy, or its environment. The Powell Memorandum, or as I prefer, the Powell Manifesto, is still available in full PDF text form on the Internet. Occasionally, I will go back and re-read that corporate manifesto, and every time I do, I take note of how more and more of Powell's suggestions to allow corporate America to run the People's government to corporations' benefit have, decade by decade, more and more come to pass. I certainly hope both Intergraph and General Mills, Inc. hold to their corporate culture of realizing that it is their employees who will make a company successful far and away more than will any effort for corporations to take away more and more from its employees to give to its shareholders. So sad. Prior to the 1980's, when Powell's suggestions begin being implemented, you may note, America had enjoyed a multi-decade economic boom, with a healthy and large Middle Class, corporations becoming wealthier too, and we were the envy of the world. It was during those decades that "Reaching The American Dream" was coined, for at that time, it was possible. It no longer is, is it? Not with wages being approximately what they were 20 years ago. I was looking back to the year 1980, when I was earning $5.00/hr. I was renting a 3 bedroom, brick home with full kitchen and wood burning fireplace, and my monthly rent was $160. Compare that with the minimum wage of today, being only $2.25/hr more than what I earned 35 years ago, and for even a 1 bedroom apartment rental, it's going to cost someone at least $400/month. So I wondered: In 1980, my rental cost worked out to be 17% of my gross income. of $5/hr for housing Today, a mere 1 bedroom apartment for someone earning $7.25/hr gross, comes out to be 33% of their income for housing. So don't tell me America isn't in an ever deeper, faster downward spiral. What's it going to take, another worker uprising as in the early decades of the 20th century to return economic fairness to ALL Americans. No, not all Americans want more, more, more, for nothing. In fact, with America's top income earners NOT having to work for their income, and demanding more, more, more, for doing nothing, I believe what's needed is their having an honest look in the mirror as to who the true "people who want free stuff" REALLY are!
Cons
I can think of very little to say against working at Intergraph, save for one traumatic experience that eventually ended the Intergraph job I loved quite suddenly. I was tasked to create contractual documents for Intergraph clients and prospective client review. Due to the nature of Intergraph's business interests, often our very intelligent Intergraph India employees would come to America after creating new engineering designs using mathematical equations to support their design applications, if the potential client could understand the top engineer's calculated theory, including detailed written explanation to help clarify how and why their proposal would be an efficient, economic, and technological advanced solution for the potential client. Understandably, attempting to understand the engineering design concept the Intergraph India engineering genius had created called for my attempting to make "Indian" English sound more like "American" English in how it flowed when read. I cannot recall a time when I had a single difficulty working with these PhD engineering geniuses, despite a bit of a language barrier. When I had finished a given project, the Indian Intergraph PhD genius engineer never failed to come back and thank me for being able to translate his mathematical chicken scratches and broken English attempts into contractual document offerings that a potential customer would feel confident made sense to them. I was also responsible for implementing a corporate wide information management database that no one else in Intergraph had so far attempted to design. My then manager was impressed enough to take me around Intergraph and show various departmental groups what this new system could do for them. But, for some still unknown reason, this very same manager, on one fated afternoon, called a team meeting behind closed doors in his office. These were typically weekly occurrences, and so what was to come my way was like a bold from the blue. After a few greetings all around among us all, this manager, who had never said one ill word to be ever before, had always given me favorable reviews, suddenly without warning, and in front of my coworkers laid into me about how I was simply mediocre in my work output. He even cited how my work with the Intergraph India engineers I did English translation for, were unable to express their needs in ways I could understand. II wanted to say "Are you sure about that?" They always came back to thank me for helping to make their complicated engineering designs understandable to their potential clients, adding that the clients were clearly able to easily grasp the engineer's design theory and why it would be both do-able and effective. I wondered whether there was some Indian custom where Indian corporate culture meant one never speaks ill of other employees or something, but I could find nothing to back that up. But my manager wasn't done, once he had gained personal confidence with a highly effective startling response evident in me, even as I said nothing. His criticisms continued until he had gone so far as to complain about how I never had enough work pens on hand at any given time in my desk, how while he'd never said so in the three past years, he could not stand the "smell" of the candles I would burn from time to time in my office, and either I came to ask him too many questions about things I should already know, or I didn't come to ask him enough questions about things I didn't know. I couldn't win for losing in that hour and a half meeting as my poor coworker had to sit there looking at her lap while all of this manager's ire was heaped solely on me. My coworker and I left that meeting, and almost immediately out of range of the manager she said "WHAT was all that about?" She could no more believe what had just transpired that she'd been made captive to sit through than I did. Returning to my office after that meeting, I was terribly shook up, to the point of feeling a bit traumatized for having had such a wicked dressing down in front of my colleagues, and to both my colleague and I, seemingly without merit...as far as either of us could figure,. I immediately called Intergraph's HR department to explain, in tears, what had just occurred, and how I really did need some time away from work to recover from this verbal harassing by a supervisor, something HR, if not the manager as well, knew was illegal for a superior to do to a subordinate, particularly in front of other employees...and to go on for a full hour and a half with this seemingly unwarranted tirade pointed solely at me. The HR department told me to consider myself on paid company disability, to leave for home immediately, and take a few months to seek therapy and restore my senses, once I had described the details of that occurrence. Before leaving my office that day, I also placed a call to the state EEOE agency, and filed a complaint with that agency as well. When I was asked if anyone else present during this event would support my statements, I stated they would. Then I left the office without saying goodbye to the manager, and couldn't even bear looking in the rear view mirrors of my car as I pulled away. After a couple of months of rest, during which time much of my "therapy" consisted of planting new bushes and flowers in my yard, which gave me a sense of accomplishment I was badly lacking after that verbally abusive encounter on the job, I began to wonder whether returning to my job at all would be a good idea. No doubt, I reasoned, considering the volume of the manager's voice as he so harshly berated me did emirate out of his office and likely into the opened office doors of employees in nearby collocated departments. Since those employees could not hear me, only the supervisor, it is easy to surmise that, especially as the supervisor held higher rank than I did, that the office gossip would be all over the place when I did return. Could I deal with that? What if I asked for a transfer, but due to the spread of gossip, any other manager would be hesitant to take a chance on me. In the end, with much regret and sorrow, I decided I would need to end my employment with that beloved employer, all because of one unfortunate, but likely sensational occurrence that could affect my reputation with Intergraph ever after. I knew I could not work for that manager again, and I did not know if any other manager would have me. Best to begin a new job search outside my company. I did, and quickly secured a position that even paid $10,000 more a year, but it was nothing like working at Intergraph,. At the same time, I heard again from the EEOE agency, who had arranged an arbitration meeting between she and I, and Intergraph top management. At that meeting, I was asked to describe all that occurred, and honestly (sometimes embarrassingly tearfully), I explained how traumatic to me at least, such an unexpected high intensity tirade had come from my manager to me, with charges against me that neither I, nor my colleague could make sense of. Those present mentioned having spoken with my colleague to that effect. Then the group retired, and I waited for word from the EEOE 'referee" as to what might come of this. She returned to tell me Intergraph was offering me a large compensation sum, as long as I would not say anything more about this to anyone else. I understood Intergraph needed to keep the otherwise excellent employee relations reputation it had long held, so I agreed, and was thankful for the top management's consideration of the harm just one bad encounter had caused me - particularly my need to feel I could not continue my employment with Intergraph. So Cons? VERY FEW...unless you are unlucky enough to experience what I had experienced. Frankly, I do not see that, at least at the time of my employment there, as being very likely at all. But in case this manager may still be afoot in Intergraph Corporation, now you know, should you encounter the same, how I ended up working it out. I'm not totally satisfied, as I would rather have been able to keep my job, or some job at that then wonderful, employee focused company, but the chance gossip about that loud, rude, and downright illegal character assassination I suffered through, I just couldn't take having another manager reject me based only on words erringly spread around the company. And that is a hurt that will remain lifelong with me.
