Starbucks reviews

Where do I start. The systems are awful, as in....unbelievably awful. They are light years behind other companies of similar size. One might think this isn't a big deal if you're not working in IT (I work in finance afterall). Quite the contrary. Because the systems and infrastructure are so horrible, it will result in you spending your time doing work that in most other companies would be done quickly and more effectively by a system/application, allowing you more time to grow and develop as a finance professional (i.e. enhancing analytical and strategic thinking skills). Instead, there's lots of time spent copying and pasting, updating excel formulas (we're still on Office 2003 btw), and updating documents to reflect business changes and re-orgs (which happen all the time). As a financial analyst, you'll spend a lot less time actually doing analysis, and much more time compensating for the lack of a technological infrastructure with good financial planning and reporting systems. Not only is this a problem in terms of creating a challenging work environment, but in terms of professional development. I'm concerned that i'm not developing the skills necessary to make me a viable candidate elsewhere should I decide to move on. They're trying to improve this, but with so many partners who have been there for 10+ years in leadership positions (the "but we've always done it this way" crowd), i'm not optimistic that current efforts to change will be effective in the short term. A lot of partners have been with Starbucks for a long time, and don't know how behind the company's operations and systems are compared to other companies of similar size. Starbucks is all about consensus building. It's difficult to get anyone to make a decision about anything. When a decision is made, it's often the one that make the most people happy, which also usually results in the most work and re-work. "No" is not a word that's often uttered. As a result, inefficient processes can be found all over the organization, clogging up resources and time (and of course, money). The vacation benefits are sub-standard for new partners (2 weeks for the 1st 3 years, 2 personal days - 1 given in Jan and 1 in Jul).

The company (with Howard's full knowledge and approval) spent years recklessly building stores with nothing but "gut feel" to guide decisions. When the economy went bust, they continued to build build build. It wasn't until 2009 that they laid people off from Store Development. Howard blamed all of the long time senior executives and fired or pushed ALL but one of them out of the company, along with hundreds of smart, talented, long time employees. The company is now full of cronies that managed to hang on to their positions by agreeing to programs conceived by Howard over a weekend and that lost millions more for the company. IT is totally dysfunctional: projects with real ROI are shelved unless you spend an entire year politicking to get 30 signatures just to start working on defining the project. Projects with the strongest, hardest business case that you've ever seen are shut down simply due to a accounting or process technicality. IT processes are constantly changing and none of them are documented. When you think you have figured out a process, it will get changed the next time you try to get a project approved. Change itself is not a problem, if it actually made sense or there was some business value to it, but most of the changes are arbitrary and punitive. Many of the new leadership positions tend to be filled with inexperienced and unskilled cast offs from other companies. If you like working for someone who you will never learn anything from, this is the place for you. Corporate Social Responsibility would be great if was actually backed up with real business value. There seem to be pet projects from Howard that sound great on the surface and make everyone "feel good", but have no real proof that they conserve resources; these projects tend to get all the money and attention, while real projects with strong business cases, get caught up in an endless bureaucratic, ever changing process loop.