program technician

tax representative

tax auditor

insurance agent

program analyst

California Employment Development Department (EDD)

Coworkers are rude and condescending to new employees; Coworkers love to make new recruits look bad by publicly and in front of upper management pointing out their errors and shifting blame. Coworkers are tattle tellers and will make every effort to make you look bad in order to be praised by management. Coworkers who were training were very micromanaging, rude, unprofessional, impolite, and condescending making it difficult to learn concepts quick and making it hard to ask questions without facing disrespect and animosity. Coworkers even withhold information from new recruits and upper management blames new recruits instead of checking how their permanent employees treat new employees. The supervisor is a gaslighted, fire starter and blame shifter. Expects new employees to learn the ropes faster as if the new employee was 30 years into this job. Management doesn’t listen to the complaints of employees regarding rude coworkers. Management turns a blind and deaf ear to the permanent employee chastisement of new employees but sides with permanent employees over maltreatment of recruits and even punishes new recruits when they stand up for themselves. Supervisor is a hypocrite by telling employees to act professionally when they themselves can’t manage their own behavior. Supervisor keeps putting employees down and doesn’t offer any words of encouragement or support to help employees become successful. Supervisor holds grudges against employee (especially new employees) who make minor mistakes that are easily fixable. Supervisor made me doubt my intelligence, doubt my credibility, forced me to give yes or no answers instead o clarification, continues to shift blame on me when some situations if not all of them were not my fault (especially when I know I did the best I could and used all my resources I could use); Management has unrealistic and hard to meet expectations that causes one to feel like their work is not good enough and it’s never enough! I lost complete trust from my permanent coworkers and supervisor because of this hostile work environment and they demand me to trust them which can never be mended!!
Stop allowing your permanent employees to talk down to new recruits! Stop shifting blame, holding grudges, acting unprofessional, and being rude to new recruits who are doing their best. Stop harassing employees who have been striving to do their best they’re human!!! Stop being a boss!! Be a leader not a boss who steps on people and tells everyone what to do and violate their rights and say in things. Punish your permanent employees who cause harassment and for the upper upper management, punish the supervisors who keep harassing their employees and bullying them it’s illegal to have this kind of behavior and unacceptable. Stop being reactive! Learn to be proactive. Stop being best friends with employees in the workplace and stop with favoritism (treating permanent “perfect” employees better than the new employees or the ones who are trying their best). Here is some more advice: Stop putting people down! Do unto others as you would have done unto you! Stop expecting too much from new recruits especially if it’s entry level. Stop gaslighting your employees. To the supervisor I used to work for: How dare you mistreat me, gaslight me, shift blames on me, tell me I’m not good enough and I am a failure, allow your employees to harass me and treat me like I’m stupid, confuse me many times, tell me to be professional when you yourself cannot maintain that (you are a hypocrite!), set unrealistic expectations, accuse me of things I didn’t do, put me down a lot, make me doubt my own intelligence, force me to try to trust you when you already broke that trust, held every grudge against me, harass me, degrade me, and try to make me look bad to upper management.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The pay is okay… not exactly fantastic. The job is “hybrid remote”, which is nice, but I remember asking multiple times during my multiple interviews how often we would actually be in office. I was told it would be one week per month and accepted the job that is an hour away from home under the impression I’d be commuting one week per month… I have since spent more time in office than from home. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The lack of accommodation for life events/emergency situations.  

 My car broke down for 3 days and I wasn’t even allowed to work from home then (even though we hadn’t even been phone trained yet, and were still doing strictly off-phone work).  I live several cities away and can’t just hop in an Uber, although I was asked if I could. Oh, yeah, let me just pay $100+ one way, twice a day for the next three days while my car is in the shop needing $2k in repairs.

Yet there is one person in our training group who has never set foot in office, and others with autoimmune illnesses that are forced to come in, even during COVID exposure times.  

I really wish they were more accommodating to life situations and emergencies… but aside from that, so far, the job is good.

 Training is good, although, I feel like if they were going to segment it the way that they do- they should have us spend more time focusing on practical application of the training material, and allowing us time to actually get somewhat adept at what we’ve learned  before throwing us back in training again and throwing more at us. It’s is a lot of information, with little time to master it. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Like any call center really. Everything you do throughout the day is monitored. And while they don’t want you to go to break or lunch late, they also don’t want you to go early. So you’re either rushing to get people off the phone to not be late, or dragging out conversation unnecessarily to avoid going too early. 

Communication isn’t the greatest… some supervisors are great at communicating with THEIR team, but no one else’s. Other supervisors don’t communicate with ANYONE, and so there is a constant state of misinformation. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Like any other day in any other call center- only, people actually depend on you for their livelihood here in most cases.

For fifteen years I functioned as an Information Technology Project Manager. At first I was responsible for the day to day operations of one of the largest tax database mainframe applications in the United States. I then moved on to managing projects involving enhancements to the mainframe programming. And I finished up in my last three years helping to build out a Data Analytics application built on the SAS platform. 

I learned a great deal about project management both through training at the California State Information Technology Training Center and through day to day operations. My education included formal training on Microsoft office, developing business requirements, running successful meetings, creating project schedules using other software, and most importantly, human interaction skills. I found that the most challenging aspect of managing a project is managing the people. Being a Project Manager is like having your own little company creating a specific product for a specific time; you have to know something about everything and most importantly know about people. 

The most difficult aspect of my career as a Project Manager in a government environment is of course the politics. Governments are not designed to run efficiently and without digressing into the usual debate about running the government like a private business, I will just say that dealing with factors not designed to create efficiency can be frustrating. That is why I retired early from civil service and am now in the final quarter of my MBA degree program. 

In short, I love Project Management, and I am looking forward to being able to utilize my skills, experience and education to help an organization accomplish its mission and vision.

Work is very busy and expectations to multitask are very high, which is understandable and achievable. The problems are that management lacks the leadership skills necessary to properly advise and assist with problem solving. The department is overwrought with mismanagement and disorganization. The clients who receive services from EDD are the least important aspect of this agency, many of whom are denied benefits with no recourse or approved for benefits but receive them several weeks after approval. Communication with managers is fair, however, communication with clients is unacceptable and possibly nonexistent. There are opportunities for professional development to learn more about operations, but little opportunity to use the skillset. The technical processes are antiquated and need serious updating. I have had a manager who was efficient and compassionate about the position, but was one out of many so it was difficult for this manager to make a large impression. If you are seeking employment with little or no chance of promotion and can fly under the radar, working only for a pay and little satisfaction, EDD could be the environment for you. With more managers like the one I described earlier and well as updated technology,  improvements can feasibly be made. The great employees are already there.

I got hired during COVID, so the year's worth of training was crammed to under 3 months, and I felt like I was not set up to be successful. Our management was constantly changing, and not every manager was the same. Though most were very supportive, others failed to respond to emails for assistance with claims. I used to get emails from coworkers who were hired with me that would inquire about processes and policies that could not be found in the manual (because some policies were suspended due to COVID), I mean, the fact that they trust someone hired at the same time as them more than their own managers says a lot about management.
It's a great opportunity if you get hired as permanent full-time staff. Limited-term is only under contract, and can end at any time. No health benefits to limited-term staff, though it's the same workload and same amount of hours.
Now that many people have returned to work and the department isn't swamped with claims, hopefully staff getting hired are trained thoroughly and properly, because the workload can seem stressful and overwhelming if you don't know what you're doing, and have little to no support.

A typical day at work, use the internal system to research case by case. Call the business owner to confirm the appointments. Do my audit detail works, give the audit result to my supervisor and the business owner.
I was a tax auditor at Employment Development Department(EDD), I learned a lot how to work with the business owner, CPA or bookkeeper to get the accounting financial informations that i need to complete my audit. I learned some special skills and knowledge how to prove my calculation without the accounting financial statements and just by asking a few questions to get basic information that i need to do my job. 
The hardest part of the job was to give the assessment to the business owner.  It doesn't matter how small/big is the assessment, the business owner is not going to like it.  It takes time to go over every single detail of the result. Sometimes it takes a few days to make the owner agree with the result.
Management and workplace culture is normal, no different as others.
The most enjoyable part of the job is case by case.  I felt the work cycle is changing all the time because of the cases.  Audit has the same concept, but each case is different.  Different story and different type of business. Challenge is different every week.

Bad managers and supervisors.  They yell at employees like animals,  they bully employees like "dumb dumb"  whereas they do not have degrees and they make employees' lives miserable.  They do not understand policies and procedures, but they wrote employees up to show that they are knowledgeable although all evidences of polices, procedures and the leads'work were provided to them.  Their write-ups and termination packet are clearly showing that they cannot read and understand polices and procedures because they were promoted from other positions.  Their creating issues are in Memorializations, again in write-ups and termination packet that is repeating multiple times to exaggerate and mislead readers.  Their creating issues are illogical and not supported by any concrete evidences, but the evidences are supported by their verbal and writing lies.  These managers' behaviors are protected by upper managers,  EDD department and state personnel board because they never read  the write-ups and termination packet to see whether the creating issues are illogical or not and because they do not care about employees.  EDD mission, vision and 12-essentials are lies.

The trainers and especially the MANAGERS  do not understand policies and procedures of the EDD program. Lots of politics especially when it comes to promotion (even questionable). They cannot read and understand polices and procedures because they were promoted from other positions. They specified the quality of the claims but in reality, it's the quantity. Their creating issues are illogical and not supported by any concrete evidences, but the evidences are supported by their verbal and writing lies. These managers' behaviors are protected by upper managers, EDD department and state personnel board because they never read the write-ups and termination packet to see whether the creating issues are illogical or not and because they do not care about employees. EDD mission, vision and 12-essentials are lies. Some of the managers cannot write a proper sentence (literally was in shock mode when some of them would email their employees). Many many things within this venue is questionable. To be honest, this place  really needs a reality check.

Expectations are high and pay is low
You need to be a fast learner and work independently because management is hands off when it comes to helping you understand the UI benefits program.  They expect you to read the manual and understand complex concepts without much guidance. 
No opportunities for growth or counties employment with tge state of California 
No benefits for limited term employees who were hired too assist with the massive influx of out of work Californians for 1 year and an option to stay on for 2 years after first year commenced and limited term employees were still needed to handle the workload.  Still, with no benefits.  Once  the 2 year term ended we were let go.  I am not even able to get through to EDD to speak to a claims specialist about my claim for two weeks now calling at all hours of the day.   We were never asked to do an exit interview or offered any assistance by Human Resources to examine our relevant experience for other opportunities with the state. 
Not a good place or environment to work. 

What is the best part of working at the company?
Benefit package,  growth opportunities, training 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Production based expectations can be overwhelming and unrealistic at times,can hinder quality of service to the public and lack of acknowledgement for your responsive efforts. Create pessimistic attitude among staff. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Diverse group of talented and skilled personnel. All Work and no play. Every unit office has their own vibe and it reflects whomever is in management positions that oversee daily operations. Pretty much the personality of your supervisor or manager reflects their impact on staff morale. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Login, follow the process,complete yoir assigned tasks, take your breaks, be efficient and productive, repeat. And hope you dont have a micro-manager that day.

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