Pros
Office locations are very conveniently situated. Once a week, food is brought in. On Fridays they have drinks at the office.
Cons
People deserve to love their job, to grow personally and professionally in their work, and to be compensated fairly for their efforts. The conditions at Added Value make that difficult, driven by a combination of external circumstances, some poor leadership priorities, and a track record of inability to cultivate and retain talent. Budgets seem to be an issue. Pay is low compared to market rates, especially for experienced roles. Raises across the organization happen with great irregularity, and salaries aren’t normally adjusted for inflation year over year, so most years the value of your salary literally decreases. They offer the standard benefits you’d expect to get from a major employer: vision, dental, health coverage, life insurance, etc. They also give you 401K matching. But they only match once a year, where many companies match per paycheck or per month. It looks like the business is hyper-focused on efficiency. It’s been taking its toll on teams for years. Projects run lean. You end up working long hours on your own to get things done, which is too bad since good insight generation benefits from collaboration. Juniors don’t get as much oversight and support as they desire. And more senior staff have to jump between projects because there aren’t enough mid-level staff to cover or collaborate with the juniors. With emphases where they are, there’s not enough structured mentorship: knowing where people’s aspirations are, and giving them the resources and guidance to get where they want to be. Between that and the lack of room for growth in the company, over time, it can impact morale among employees, which speaks to my original point above about loving your work.
