business analyst

intern

software engineer

application programmer

senior technology consultant

Black Knight

Personally, I kind of wish I still worked here, though there are still good reasons to have left. The code base is very secure and managed by a fine group of intelligent architects. Mostly everything is very neatly organized and accessible, making development work a breeze. Their suite is also particularly advanced, though not too difficult to work with from a coding perspective. It is evident that a great deal of forethought and planning goes into the look and feel of their application, and personally this is something that I found I could take pride in as a developer. I was usually very satisfied with my work and its reception.

Work culture was a lot of fun. People are generally very friendly and easy to get along with. If you're a nerd, you're going to have a blast with these guys, and even if not there are plenty of varied interests throughout the company that you shouldn't have trouble finding a group of people to rely on to make the day a little more interesting. Most managers are down to the level, except the head supervisor for the QA department tends to run his department as though he's a drill sergeant. Other than that, as a software developer I was able to joke around at a personal level with my direct manager, my department's supervisor, and the head of product development.

The downsides included frequent unpaid overtime (at times, 50+ hours/week) and sales biting off more than they could chew. There were times when sales would make promises to customers that the application was capable of doing something that it couldn't, and then we would have to rush to make it do that, but I assume that happens everywhere. On the plus side, developers are often brought into business meetings alongside the BAs and customers so they can hear requests first-hand and make recommendations for spec changes or clarifications, and many BAs were willing to continue working closely with developers throughout the life of the project. All in all, a very responsible organization that took success and failure as a whole rather than pointing the finger at individuals.

Before I left, there was a large political upheaval that cost some senior employees their jobs and caused a lot of unrest and suspicion amongst the ranks. This, plus boredom with the Sharon area and low wages compared to Pittsburgh, are what caused me to leave. From what I've heard from colleagues since, more of the people I've respected have left, and there are still concerns about the health of the organization under the new CEO. While I would personally recommend LPS as a great company to work for - especially if you're looking for a great quality code base and thorough QA - I wouldn't personally go back just because of the area and uncertainty of the current political situation.

BK keeps a lean staff by laying off employees any time there is pushback from a big client.  Also the economy greatly impacts mortgages and loans as well so be prepared for layoffs then too.  Not much money is spent on the employees.  It’s all about wining and dining clients and being as stingy as possible with the operations funds. 

Black Knight is not transparent about salaries.  Your offer will likely be based on what you currently make and not so much the position you are offered, so you have no idea where you fall in the pay scale.  If you decide to take the plunge be sure to negotiate your salary before signing an offer. I suggest asking for the salary range,  but they are likely to tell you the hiring salary range and not the position range. 

Most jobs are project management time, and you are required that to track every second of your time. You may be salary but essentially with the excessive time tracking for ROI you will feel like you are clocking  in and out 10-15 times a day.  To me it is FAR  worse than being hourly — unless you only support 1 project with a few tasks. 

Everything — and I mean everything - is tracked .  The record keeping and documentation is excessive and and at times oppressive. You will waste countless hours on seemingly useless tasks. 

Expect to have tons of project meetings. Your manager may require you to attend in person even though 99% of the topics do not pertain to your job or most other attendees Skype in. Some days you could have 3 hours of meetings,  and some projects have all day meetings which really hinder your productivity (which of course is measured).

Depending on the department you work for you may also find yourself feeling like you are in kindergarten with  a micromanaging manager constantly checking behind you and telling you what you should be doing instead of letting you be the adult and make your own decisions based on deadlines. The pressure is real and overtime is expected as God forbid you miss a deadline no matter how many meetings they throw at you. 

Here are the positives: 

My coworkers are great  -  I couldn’t ask for a nicer team which makes this all so sad as morale is at an all time low. We have had people leave, but thise who have been here more than 4 years are unlikely to leave because they get that 4th week of vacation which is hard to give up.  Most of us don’t want to start over with that. 

The dress code is nice as it is jeans every day.  Business attire is only required when and if  you have client facing meetings.  

*Disclaimer:  Please keep in mind that some of these things may be different in other BK departments.  General things about the company will apply to most if not all departments.

A group of middle aged white persons went to India and bought software for the financial industry. They work hand in hand with the developers from India resulting in long delays in projects (due to time difference). The company is young but the persons who work there are on average in their 40's. Not a place for young persons looking to grow. The business is managed by the oldest members who try to hold on to the business model of the 90's. They make the attempt to be modern but fail due to the idea of keeping things BAU (business as usual) as much as possible. If you want a company that is ran by older generations then this is the company for you. If you want job security and don't like to change this is the company. They only fire people when financially they can't keep you on. The IT infrastructure (not the persons, the technology) fails more than what is normally expected at a software company. Daily occurrences and random sessions failing, email sporadically not working, and many others. This is a knows issue and the persons at the company just accept it.  I offered to fix with decision logic using nested statements instead of with cases/switches and they said no, they wanted to keep it as it was with the issues (the problem was the non DRY code giving a lengthy processing time. They would rather deal with the issue than fix the code even if they can. Once every three months my active directory profile got deleted by some anomaly they couldn't fix and they had to rebuild it and then I had to get my credentials again. This process took a week and all the software was built in India (the developers) and it has frequent daily issues with a wide variety of issues. This happened 3 times in 9 months. 25% of the job is finding a work around for your daily tasks that 75% of the time works properly.  When you think of old technology in the tech industry, this is the company you think of. Keeping old business practice fuel by older generations and not fostering growth of younger persons. They recently bought out a company (the competition) and it was a start up and when we met them, it was literally like "old guys meet the new young guys" (that we don't work with or interact with)

To sum this place up: Work here if you want to be treated like a small incompetent child. The typical day for myself is that i wanted to walk out the door at 3:30. The moment i sat down in my god forsaken cubicle was pure 8 hour agonizing misery. I would have to constantly work on 4 emails, if i didn't respond in the amount of time allotted i would have a tyrant of an assistant supervisor come wheeling down her pathway of micro-managing questing me as to why i didn't respond to the email. I would be talked to by two assistant supervisors who were probably the most vile human beings  to call themselves professional human beings in a working environment. There were several lay-offs as soon as i started at this company, I began to question why I had left my previous employer, because this place was as equal to the 7 level of hell in Dante's Inferno.  The conveyance team that I was apart of weren't the nicest of people i had to deal with as well. They were very rude and inconsiderate since I was the only one handling my specific job title. Oh I also was not properly trained the way i should of been.  I was basically thrown into the lions den to suffer or get the heck out. Needless to say this place was not a professional place and I often felt as if  I were back in High School. I would rather waste 40 minutes of driving everyday to Amish Country than spend 8 hours of hell in this place.

LPS (now ServiceLink) is a solid Company to work for, especially if you do not have a College Degree.  You can make between 14-17$/hour with quick Training.  
Management leaves something to be desired.  People are laid-off on a whim and not forewarned.  This Company has been losing money over the past few years and is beginning to get into business-crisis mode.  They are cutting costs wherever they can and only seeing things as "bottom-line," not "for the future."
I would recommend this job only to a recent graduate of College who is seeking some office experience, or someone without a Degree who has previous banking experience.  No employees received a raise after their yearly Reviews, regardless of merit.  This is a dying Company with a $40 million dollar Software investment recently getting thrown in the trash.

I repeat, this company is using out-dated software in lieu of a $40 million software roll-out completely falling on it's face.  Approximately 400 people have been laid off within the Company over the past year and a half.

Proceed with caution, take the job if you have to, and the job itself is very quiet and mundane.  After a while, you end up getting complacent and suffocated to the monotony.  If you are a true go-getter and looking for a fulfilling, meaningful job, look elsewhere.  This is a nice bus stop for a few months, a year maximum.

Personal management is by LOB, so opinions will vary. The management experience is great if treated as an adult hired to do a job,which most department/resource managers do. Other 'leadership' members tend to come out of pocket and micro-manage where they don't belong.

Culture has taken a severe downturn. Executives should be required to go to Cultural and Diversity training and then attend meetings to see how teams comprised of these minority groups are treated, how their schedules are not respected, and the overall overload of work/burnout which leads to low morale and internal/external turnover. D&I are not just buzz words, they are actions.

Beuracracy and politics are the most difficult part of the job as well as learning how to cope with the fact that your pay is equivalent to your title, not your role or actual work done and your merit increases are based on who likes you and not your overall contributions and value you have brought to the organization. Additionally, the intern program appears to be a permanant bring your child to work day, but now with pay and benefits for the child, thus perpetuating a circular 'good ole boy' culture and gives new meaning to keeping it in the family.

 PTO, holidays, sick time, PC holidays, surprise holidays, and time away from work are the most enjoyable parts of the job.

Do better Black Knight. 

On a typical day I would run a queue and color coordinate the downloaded spreadsheet based on the documents requested via intranet from our clients. I would also have to run a spreadsheet of follow-ups for the day in order to satisfy attorneys and trustees to reach their deadlines. Prior to uploading the documents I would have to proof them further for accurate recording information and if necessary research where copies of the originals are. Reading emails had to be done every 2 to 3 hours to keep up with the demands from clients that took priority because of deadlines or follow up emails on deadlines. Some documents had to be requested from on-site vendors. I learned how to focus without being distracted at home and how to read mortgage documents for recording and title accuracy. Being WAH (work at home) employee, there were about 2 co-workers that would contact me because we worked the same client but management was not in touch very often only during conference calls, deadlines or follow-up urgent issues. The hardest part of the job was not being able to walk across the isle to get pertinent information when emails were not being responded to and the most enjoyable was working at home.

Low pay; two people doing the same job can be starting at drastically different amounts; it is strictly based on negotiations. If you get an offer here, be sure to negotiate. Some departments have mandatory overtime (10 hours a week). Some departments have flexibility. Some departments are lenient about tardiness and absences; other departments have a strict point system. They are still on a pay freeze that has lasted years. 401K matching freeze has been initiated as well. Management is too laid back. No job security. There are mass layoffs often, and rumors of closing. They have hired external people; (who gave their two-week notice at their at-the-time job), only to rescind their job offers a few days prior to their scheduled start-date. ***Be very careful about putting in a two-week notice at a job if you are offered a job here.*** I personally have known people who were left without a job because they accepted an offer from LPS/ServiceLink, only to have their job offer rescinded.

The positions within LPS are generally not hard - they're data entry mostly, and pretty easy to get away with daydreaming all day. The downside is that while they say there's all these opportunities for promotions and advancement, but there are surprisingly few. And when there are, they aren't always posted on the internal job listings.

The Mendota Heights building is also cold as hell, and it would be quite nice if we could do something about that.

Typical day: Pull my assigned workgroup of states or firms I review files for and start plugging away at them. Review the files to determine what's going on with the foreclosure and where the attorneys are in the process. Contact the firms (email, phone, internal communications) and advise them of what you've found in your review, and how they can proceed on the file to help expedite the process. Rinse and repeat for 8 hours day, as an attorney liaison.

They don't like to give raises because they give a monthly commission based on productivity of you and your team. You have to be really long overdue for one to really get it - and then you'll still have to fight for it.

Great people and an overall great place to work, but it's an entry level job and the pay reflects that (~$15/hr). There are ways to move up easily if you are willing to put the work in, but if you are wanting to advance to a more technical role, there aren't a bunch of opportunities to so.

Management here is excellent and very understanding. Though some of the strict corporate rules restrict the way that they can/can't do. I will say this though, if you put in the hard work and dedication, management will notice. They love that and it will be rewarded some way or another 

Overall a very relaxed environment and down to earth co-workers make it enjoyable place to work, but the work can be very monotonous at times and speaking with customers over the phone isn't always the best.

Dedication towards wanting to help the customer will help you go far at this place.

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