software engineer

quality assurance manager

quality assurance analyst

technical writer

analyst

CACI International

CACI is dishonest with New Hires and the benefits they offer. The company will take advantage of you in the following ways. 

My recommendations are:

-Don't trust other CACI employees unless you plan to spend money, socialize and become "friends" they all had to go through the same stuff I did below and that's how they operate to survive.  

-Don't use CACI's Relocation program. 
It is cheaper to put your stuff in storage and get everything when you arrive overseas.

-Have 10,000.00 in Savings or on Credit available as you will be paying for your own transportation, and hotel stay until you find an apartment and CACI decides to allow you to be reimbursed which takes a long time as it has to be done a specific way and without error. Otherwise it will take months to get reimbursed as your requests will get kicked back constantly. 

-The company depends on one person for transportation when you first arrive and you will have to use public transportation after that.  There was no assistance with any of the errands except for when I was in-processing and they expect you to just show up to work.

Relocation - Instead of giving the new hire the money and allowing them to make reasonable decisions, CACI, hires a "third party" and gave them your relocation money to spend as they see fit. This person scheduling and providing relocation will overspend as much as possible to make sure you stay at least a year or else you will have to pay it all back. 

All of the costs for my relocation were unreasonable and its like they went with the most expensive tickets and expensive companies they could find which provided the "least" amount of service. 

The flights we had was so bad that the flight attendant didn't want to give my wife water and the Airline gave us gift cards as an apology after the fact. The flights were 2500.00 for two one way tickets and I had to pay 200.00 for excess baggage as we were only allowed to check one bag per person on this overseas flight. 

The person who scheduled the Household Goods Shipment hired an expensive company which only uses large metal shipping containers instead of the wooden crates I am used to with military moves.  For this reason,  I had to travel on my own to another military installation to get the customs paperwork,  go to a civilian customs office in another town in the middle of nowhere and watch the movers move my stuff out of the shipping container into a van instead of them just delivering my items straight to my address like any normal shipping company would. 

The shipping company charged me extra for the 2000 lbs container but I only shipped 600 lbs worth of stuff inside. The shipping company couldn't provide a formula as to how they came up with what they charged and I contacted the State Governor and Attorney General about the price gouging.

Taxes- CACI will take your paycheck at random without notification for tax purposes. My 2nd paycheck went missing for that reason and I was unable to pay my hotel bill. The manager didn't want to listen to my problem, "finance" said they didn't want to be involved with it and HR failed to respond in a timely manner.  A contractor who works for a better company helped me out in the end and allowed my wife and I to get back on our feet.

Housing - You get no time to look for an apartment or a house. You have to find one on your own time or use PTO in advance. I had one day to relax after arriving at the airport and was told to show up to work. I received an email prior to starting work stating that I would get 30 days to look for a place and enjoy the area. When I got there they told me it was a typo and its not in my contract.

CACI fails to tell you they don't pay the 3000 to 5000 Euro deposit for a place when you get overseas and you will have to pay 1st months rent on top of that which is about 2600.00 per month. 

Prior to the company being able to start reimbursing you for housing you need to provide a signed rental agreement before the company does anything which means you will pay out of pocket.

Reimbursement - They tax all reimbursements, expect not to get paid what your supposed to for about 6 months.

The job is simple and repetitive with the exception of someone at the top deciding to update software or hardware which breaks everything and gives the customers a week do whatever they want while at the same time calling you and asking when it will it get fixed. 

If you work on day shift you will get burnt out from constant barrage of calls you will receive regarding the same issues. 

Working on "Shift" or at night provides more time off and you don't have to take PTO at all. 

If you work Dayshift or eight hours you will have to take PTO for every holiday which will keep your PTO balance at zero for a long time. 

There are a lot of pitfalls here which could easily cause you to get into financial trouble, lose your clearance or become stranded. Be careful ask questions and negotiate benefits while making sure they are part of your contract.  




​I started my employment with CACI on May 24, 2019.  I should have known that it was going to be a terrible experience from the beginning.  Someone dropped the ball and my start date ended up being two weeks later than expected.  I was not given information from my recruiter about the process of transferring my credentials.  My thought on this was, "everyone makes mistakes and it'll be ok."  I should have known better.  The communication problems only worsened from there.  I was given a name and told that this would the person that would help me navigate through the on boarding process.  I was more or less on my own.  I could email and ask questions and wait hours or days for a response.  I had no idea what needed to be completed or how.  I'm still finding out things that I am supposed to be doing on a daily, weekly or monthly basis and had never been made aware of.  I did my timecard training and asked for more information on time strings...what times strings to use and for what business.  That took months to get answers.  I had no idea for the first month that there was an admin time string, a local long distance time string or time strings for training, team meetings and IT issues.  God knows I needed that IT issues time string. 

For the first two months that I turned in expense reports, I submitted my mileage for each day that I traveled for work.  I got paid and everything was great.  The third time I turned in an expense report, it sat and sat.  I contacted the reviewer and he advised that I need to submit the case name and case numbers for each day of travel.  I didn't do that the first two months and it didn't seem to matter.  I admit, it's probably there in the instructions, but we are pushed and pushed to produce more and more and where is the time to learn?  I added the case names and numbers and all was fine, until the next month.  I turned in my expense report with case names and numbers and the expense report sat and sat.  I contacted the reviewer and was advised that I need to include the location for each day of travel.  I wasn't told that the previous months.  Where is the consistency?  We are left out here, isolated and expected to figure everything out on our own while producing unrealistic amounts of work.

Not long ago, our bonus incentive program was discontinued.  That means that anything I do above what I'm required to do is on my dime.  Who would want to work for free?  I don't know many people that would.  But wait...there's a solution for that.  It's called performance based case distribution.  Now, everyone is required to work harder and faster and with no mistakes.  As investigators, we are competing with each other and working harder than ever, solely to be eligible to receive more work.  And if we aren't deemed worthy, we're not eligible to receive work.  We are told to use our PTO.  Wait...I only have three days of PTO, because I just started in May.   That leaves LWOP.  And when we're on LWOP, we don't get paid but are still required to pay for our insurance out of our pocket...our empty pockets. 

I was recruited by CACI.  I wasn't looking for a new job.  I hadn't applied for any new jobs.  I was sought out and recruited with promises of a great work environment and great people.  Last week, I produced 117%.  I'm not the best at math, but I'm pretty sure that means I produced 17% over what is required of me.  I did 17% more work than expected and I did it for free, because there are no bonuses.  This morning, I received an email that says that I am not eligible to receive any work at this time.  I guess it wouldn't matter any way, because I can't even connect to the VPN or my iPhone hotspot with this computer.

CACI along with the other criminal players in the background investigation business (Keypoint & USIS) have clearly stolen taxpayer $$$ in return for rushing background investigators to submit Reports Of Investigation (ROI's) aka "Whatever the subject or source says I'll put in the report without vetting it and quickly submit it to meet stats." 

The entire process is a complete joke and a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars to dispatch investigators to ask silly questions of subjects when the subjects could have answered the "followup questions" on the original SF-86 or other questionnaire. Driving to meet with a subject to play secretary and review the questionnaires for errors is a total waste of investigators time. 

I want the public to know as a former background investigator this entire process is broken and has placed our country at GRAVE RISK FOR DAMAGE TO NATIONAL SECURITY. The entire operation is rigged to allow greedy contract companies such as CACI to bill the government for awful work and make BIG $$$. The government is simply a big fat ATM for these companies to withdraw taxpayer money from without any accountability.

CACI works background investigators OFF THE CLOCK ALL THE TIME which is a clear violation of the contract the company signed with each background investigator and also federal law. Does CACI care? No! They know they are doing it! Does the Department of Labor care? No! The Department of Labor Wage & Hour Division is incompetent. They never answer the phone when contacted to report Labor Law violations. 

Corrupt members of Congress were lobbied by these companies to allow for the work to be privatized and treated as a for profit endeavor. Background Investigators are abused on a daily basis by team leaders and management to squeeze out more "production." But if background investigators make a mistake, despite being pressured to fabricate and submit incomplete reports, then they are thrown under the bus faster than you can say CACI's motto of "Ever Vigilant."

And yes ladies and gentlemen, background investigations are treated like widgets and your "production" is measured through stats and the quality of your work is never a factor in how you are evaluated. 

And yes, I second the motion that management and training staff have the MOST FOUL ATTITUDES!!!


THE ONLY WINNING MOVE IS TO QUIT THIS STUPID JOB AND NEVER LOOK BACK. TOTAL HOTEL CALIFORNIA EXPERIENCE!!!

To all former background investigators who made it out of this job to a better job while keeping their sanity & integrity:

FREE AT LAST! FREE AT LAST! THANK GOD ALMIGHTY, WE ARE FREE AT LAST !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Low-Ball employees on pay offers and give the excuse it's a fixed price contract.  CACI pays their Level 2 Engineers ($65-70k/year), less than Boecore ($77-78k/year)(sub-contractor on the same AFSCN CAMMO contract).  CACI is paid $75-79/hour from the government for a Level 2 Engineer and CACI only pays roughly $34/hour for a position that would normally be paid $90k+/year.

Turn over is a huge problem.  10 people have left the CAMMO cyber team in under a year.  Several turn overs on the software, networking and project management teams means there is constant change in personnel.  How CACI won the "Best Work Place Award" is mind boggling.

CACI and sub-contract managers circumventing the CACI's retention/telework policy to justify their paychecks and positions.  Managers use the excuse "Teleworking is not allowed on the contract."  No where in the Performed Work Statement, Statement of Work, Technical Orders, or any other documents state telework is not allowed when no meeting scheduled.  But still required by the sub-contract management to drive 30 miles and 1 hour each way into the office to sit even though the same work can be done from home logged into the CACI virtual desktop.  Of course that same sub-contract management equates 3 years in the Boy Scouts to other people's 20+ military service...DERP

CACI does not promote from within.  A Level 3 Engineer position ($83k/year) opened up and none of the CACI employees even knew about it until after a Boecore employee was promoted to the position.

Dismissive management who doesn't want to hear anything from employees..."Take it up with HR" was the response.   

Recently tried speaking with the management about an incident and the reply was "It's not my problem, take up with HR."  My reply was "It is now your problem because you are the manager and you won't find a replacement Cyber Engineer with 10+ years of HBSS experience at the low-ball pay CACI is paying...Good Luck."

That same management type went into an employees office and seized/removed personal property from their desk while they were working at a different location.  Needless to say that was the last day at CACI.

Listen to your employees or they can keep doing the status quo with a huge turn-over.  Pay the industry standard rate.  The CACI needs to align sub-contractor managers with CACI company's policies.  Very Top-Heavy organization with waaaay too many managers not earning the company a dime but sucking a 6 figure income and all the managers do are forward emails which staff has already received 3 times.

I would stay clear if I were you. (If you are looking to join in the background investigations department). I do not know what other departments are like but in background investigations, it is not the best. It used to be a good place to work and I actually felt like what I did actually meant something. The company says that what they do is in the interest of National Security. You would think that the company would value quality background investigations. However, throughout the past few years, the company has been given multiple multi-million dollar contracts from the US government thus the work for background investigators has piled up even more. 

Don't get me wrong. Having work is always a great thing. There was a time a few years ago, when CACI didn't have much work so many investigators were laid off/had to take leave without pay/use up their own pto and even just waited around until work came their way. But the issue here, lies in how the work is distributed. CACI is currently having a shortage of investigators. They know this...and yet they have once again accepted these multiple government contracts and are currently expecting their current investigators to work overtime in order to meet their customer demands.  The work is nonstop and the expectations are unrealistic. They want us to do quality investigations (which do take time) but they also want us to get these cases out as quickly as possible. Management's priority is to just get the cases done, quality cases is not the main priority. Meeting production metrics and getting cases out as quickly as possible is the main priority. 

This is not the first time this has happened either. Within the past few years I would say this has happened 2-3 times and would last 4-6 months before starting again a few months later. Probably why CACI is having trouble retaining their investigators/recruiting younger talent. 

But hey, if you enjoy being overworked, mediocre pay (for the amount of work expected of you) and being tricked into thinking that what you do is vital for National Security, then this is the job for you. 

If the company truly valued National Security, they would not be overworking their investigators and giving them work from multiple contracts with strict deadlines. When you do this, quality decreases in order to keep up with all the work that needs to be completed on time. Additionally some contracts are being prioritized over other contracts, thus delaying completion dates and creating a backlog of cases. 

But that's just my take. Some investigators might disagree with me but it is what it is. 

Upper management made a bad choice that caused CACI to no longer receive their regular case load from the feds. With barely any cases to work, THOUSANDS of employees went without pay for months and upper management was still paid the entire time. CACI never admitted what really happened and strung employees along for months. CACI didn't want to pay people's unemployment, so they just cornered people into quitting, all the while acting like they were such nice people for not laying anyone off. Sure you didn't lay us off, but you weren't paying us either. Being on leave without pay for months with no answers and no end in sight is not a gift! If you can't afford to/don't want to pay people, at least fire them so they can collect unemployment and pay their bills! During that time, until people started threatening law suits, CACI actually expected new employees to pay back all training costs if they quit. So employees were on leave without pay for months, and if they quit, would have owed the company thousands of dollars. After the threat of law suits, upper management announced that employees would be allowed to quit without repercussions like it was their idea. Zero integrity. Total cowards. Don't care about the employees at all. 
CACI says they care about national security, but all they really care about is making money. They create monthly stats that are impossible to meet and turn a blind eye. If you don't meet the stats you will be fired. So you have two choices: work more hours than you'll get paid for and do things correctly, or cut corners and pray you don't get caught. Keep in mind, if you get caught cutting corners, you will be fired & possibly go to prison. They would be happy to throw you under the bus.
Don't bother going above and beyond for this company, they'll use you and promise you a bonus you'll never get, and then next thing you know they're CCing 10 managers on an email because you forgot something as minuscule as including a page number on a fax. You mean nothing to these people. You will put in extra effort you won't be rewarded for, and then be stabbed in the back.
The way they're handling COVID-19 is horrendous. We are on leave without pay again. The little money we are guaranteed, our internet reimbursement, has been held from us for over a month due to "complications" with some new direct deposit system that they recently changed for no reason. All the while, upper management is still getting paid. 
What upper management does at this company makes me sick. 
If you want to be constantly stressed out, treated badly, live in fear, and have zero job security: work for CACI.

Government contractor. Work is dull and unfulfilling. No variety, no attempt at creating team cohesion or building morale. Management is impersonal. If they have personalities, they do their best not to show it. Opportunities to communicate directly with the federal agency are all but nonexistent. It's not clear if the government doesn't want to deal directly with CACI employees, CACI management doesn't want CACI employees to deal directly with the government, or some combination of the two is at work. Management tries to keep transparency to a minimum. Why? Who knows. Questions are often not responded to or responded to only after unreasonable delays.

Performance feedback, to the extent it exists, is a**-backward. Basically, you hear no feedback. If management gets no feedback from the government, they treat that as a good performance review. Positive feedback is nonexistent. You only hear about it when something is wrong. Otherwise, they don’t care about you at all. Management is too busy licking the government’s boots to give a s**t about its employees. As long as the government pays its invoices without complaint, management has no incentive to care about anything else. Management seems to spend all its time obsessing about administrative s**t like timecards. Basically, your job is to do your timecard right and avoid doing anything that draws negative attention from the government or CACI management. To the extent performance is evaluated, it is evaluated lazily based on quantity- and volume-based metrics that disregard work quality. If you want to be evaluated positively, you’re better off working quickly and sloppily than carefully and accurately.

The positives are pay, relative to comparable positions elsewhere, benefits, and work/life balance. Working over 40 hours a week is a rare occurrence. That said, vacation time is limited to maybe 10 to 12 days a year. They try to nickel and dime you on billable time. If they think there’s a 15-minute period where you weren’t 100% glued to the task at hand, don’t be surprised if they say you have to work extra or use leave. Government contractors can be soulless in general, but CACI seems worse. The atmosphere is not one of meanness or greed; it’s one of apathy, and it’s contagious. They don’t give a s**t about me and I don’t give a s**t about them. I would jump ship for the first competitor that offered better pay or benefits.

Not sure why CACI has such a great rep as a workplace. It must vary widely depending on exactly what you’re doing and who you work with and for.

I came into the position as a developer with more knowledge of the stack than the tenured personnel, as far as the platform and technolgoies being used.  However cronyism and clickish exclusionary behavior by my lead and other personnel on the team, kept me from integrating effective standards based thought processes.  My attempts to introduce standards based design into what was a very badly designed system were generally marginalized until a Caucasian millennial on the team validated that it was a good idea while reintroducing it as their own, some time after they laughed at my proposed updates at previous meetings.  I consistently found myself being passive-aggressively ridiculed under the guess of a joke, or my ideas undermined by my team lead, who was a subcontractor as well as by other subcontractors within the group that knew less than I did about the technologies with which we worked.  Much of my time was spent waiting to get tasking because the lead, who was not qualified for her position and basically would complain about there being "too many objects" when our environment was a Java based SOA development team.  Due to her ignorance of true enterprise or senior level Java development experience, she let a socially accepted more junior engineer do whatever he wanted because he was accepted as a local SME on everything computer science. (Also there was a demographic difference such that I seriously considered it an EO complaint situation.)  In all the experience drained me and while I thought I was being jovial and happy to come in to work earlier in the year, personnel around me were just using that joviality to justify their marginalization of my ideas and the little bit of work I was able to get done.  I reported these issues to my CACI management, who promptly acted as though nothing was happening at all, and basically gas-lit me about the entire situation.  I got no real assistance from management who finally moved me to another team that also seemed to not really take me seriously, as though they were actually just waiting for me to leave, based on the original team experience, and whatever had been said about me behind my back to cover for how I was treated.

Do not take any position beneath your desired salary! NO MATTER WHAT IS PROMISED!!!

Management promotes, supports, and gives bonuses to individuals they like. If you should so happen to be an individual that cares more about your work than making friends, you will likely feel overlooked and unappreciated. As a top performer in the department, I cared more about getting my work completed accurately and efficiently. I had only a few people I would stop and talk to and they understood my priority. 

I thought I was working for a company where my work ethic would speak for itself. I was wrong. I was constantly being told I needed to do more while at the same time told I needed to let others help me with my work. Pretty incongruent right? The truth is, I did not need help. I was known for accurately working all of my mods within SLA timeframes. 

That wasn't enough and I was never promoted to a senior position.  Despite the fact that I was NOT failing audits and could complete mods faster than just about everyone on the floor, I was placed under manager review because he THOUGHT I was doing something wrong. The auditor told him both verbally and in writing that my work was compliant and accurate on several occasions. It did not deter his impulsive actions however. 

I do not understand this leadership style. I do not understand a company that expects educated individuals to act as sheep who cannot think for themselves. I do not recommend this company to anyone with experience and education. You will be disappointed. This is a place for college graduates to land after graduation. If you are beyond that stage in life, tread lightly.

Sadly, I believe the CEO, VPs, and even the PMs are better than what I described. I do not believe they truly understand why people are leaving. I hope someone tells them the truth. Positions of leadership are vital to any organization and who holds those positions can make or break the reputation of the company. 

I loved working background investigations. Work/Life balance in the sense of going to doctor appointments without have to ask permission was fantastic. My section lead was hands down the best supervisor I ever had and my team was great. Leadership on the other hand is questionable. A couple things that leadership told the investigations division was alarming. 

This is what we were told: 
1. First day in the academy- “You are just a number and easily replaceable.”
2. “Since work is low, you’ll need to use your PTO if you want a better paycheck.”
3. “We have created a tier ranking system within investigations so you’ll have to compete against your colleagues to get work and make a living.” This caused people to quit because they couldn’t afford rent and were living out of their car. 
4. “We are thoroughly disappointed in all of you for losing the #1 contract spot. We expected much more and we really hope you do better or else….” Turns out it was the bidding teams error. They bid too high so it wasn’t the investigations division fault. 
5. When asked if investigators could apply elsewhere within the agency because we didn’t have any work due to an agency transition leadership stated on a call: “You know, the other positions within CACI require a certain level of education and experience that Background Investigators just don’t have.” 

CACI will probably deny all above. I remember every persons name that told us those things, all of which were on monthly leadership calls. Being told all of those things made the job difficult. 

The metric system is nearly impossible to meet unless you work for free. There’s no way investigators are meeting their metrics and working solely 8 hours/40 hour week. Case assigners give so much work to investigators that for years, we couldn’t have a personal life at all. Reviewers are all different so have consistency with report writing doesn’t exist. 

Pros: Flexibility to take care of personal business and professional work as well.

Would I go back? Yes I would because of the boss I had and the team I worked with regardless of how backwards upper management operates. 

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