customer service representative

project manager

tax analyst

software engineer

devops architect

Drake Software LLC

Workplace bullying is a very real problem that needs to be addressed correctly without people having to be afraid of being punished or retaliated against when they report it. This ended up driving me out of a job I really liked because I felt like I had no one to protect me. I am still in the process of healing from what happened to me while I was working here several months later.

If you are on FMLA I would warn you not to tell anyone at work, even if you think they are your friend. Coworkers here do not take kindly to someone getting a "free pass" for not coming in.

The bullying started when a coworker I was no longer friends with decided to share with all of our coworkers I was on FMLA. This made them angry because they thought it was unfair. There were coworkers wrongly claiming that I made up a medical condition to get on FMLA. Instead of getting the support I needed from them, they shunned me for it instead.

As the bullying escalated, everyone in my entire department refused to speak to me and glared at me every day. I was degraded on a daily basis both online through cyberbullying and at work to my face by coworkers, in the break room behind my back, via company email, coworkers throwing notes saying bad things about me back and forth on notebook paper (in front of a certain DM who refused to do anything after multiple reports to her and upper management) and after work both on and off company property.

Coworkers then began prank calling me after my shift ended, making up false reports about me and going to certain DMs about me complaining, making extremely loud noises when I was on the phone with clients so I would get supervisor calls and irritate my already furious DM, sitting away from me as a group on the other side of the room in meetings, and spreading false accounts that I was a drug dealer and that was how I financed my car.

This began to create friction with my DM, because she felt like I was disrupting her team. She started piling on multiple loads of assignments a day to try and get me to quit. I would have to place clients on hold for long periods of time instead of helping them to try and get the multiple assignments done in time, but sometimes I couldn't. She ended up complaining to upper management that I wasn't doing my job and put pressure on them to have me transferred off her team. There were too many days to count that I felt afraid to come to work.

After reporting the bullying to HR, I was transferred to another department and none of the people participating in the bullying faced consequences. The bullying not only continued but worsened.

A false police report was made about me by someone from work saying that I was a drug dealer. This led to me being followed home directly out of the company parking lot after my shift ended by police multiple nights a week, police staking out my apartment at night, being followed to work by police, being followed on my lunch breaks by police, in addition to permanent damage to my personal and professional reputation that was never rectified.

Work became intensely triggering to the point I was barely able to function, which led to a need to take additional medical leave time as the level of stress from this situation had a severely detrimental effect on my well-being and left me in crisis mode to the point I eventually had to abandon my position.

Someone I looked up to a lot at this company once told me that part of being a leader is recognizing the fact that everyone has value, and I think it is imperative that members of upper management, DMs, and certain CSRs placed in training positions be reminded of that moving forward.

The interview process is about 2-4 people asking you a series of questions and then when the applicant leaves, they facebook stalk them to see if they are a fit. Some of the people in the interview are "leadership" agents which is a regular CSR who does more work for the same pay as a normal CSR.

During tax season you work 54 hours per week with only 1 day off. The one day that you have off, you better hope that your kid or significant other is considerate enough to get sick on that day ONLY because if you have to miss work to take care of your family or yourself, your manager will shun you and gossip about you with the other managers making your arrival back to work very...awkward. Or issue write up's without warning.

The benefits are incredible. Is it worth working 54 hours a week? No. No, because you're paid RIGHT ABOVE min. wage and then asked to know 7 programs ON TOP of the software support.

Upper management doesn't have a clue because the director of support and the vice president of support are acting out this facade every time the owner or CEO come to the support department.  

There isn't any consistency. As a company we have security training that takes place every year. The whole company attends and so multiple departments are attending together. The support department has complete and total different rules than the other department. The developers are allowed to have the cell phones, surf and are not micromanaged, the support department are not. The claim is that the support department have certain rules because they handle socials. THE PROGRAMMERS AND OUR EF DEPARTMENT DO TOO. How would you feel if the number one tax software service compromised your social or credit card information... because trust me, it has happened.

This is  a HIGH stress level job. This is a high call volume job.

Drake uses a KPI and availability point system . Login, don't be one second late with that computer login (this is NOT an exxaggeration!) or you will get a point against you. This includes returning from any time you were not logged in.  
Take phone calls. Lots of phone calls. Try your best to help the client even IF it is NOT in your skill set, then after frustrating your client and yourself, your manager MAY allow you to pass that call to the next level or department. Before you pass it to the department you have to keep taking calls, leave that log open and try to complete the template to forward  in between calls. IF you try to stop taking calls to complete the proper setup to forward the  issue (usually technical so lots of details are needed), you also get points taken from your KPI percentages. Your manager will prompt you several times while you are on a short break from the phone (as in five minutes); therefore, it is easier to just keep working on the submission and hopefully get it submitted in a somewhat timely manner before the client calls again about that issue. So in short there is a lot of additional stress with the process. 
Nepotism  is prevalent at this job. Working hard and keeping all your responsibilities in check does NOT make a difference.  
The culture is lacking, with all the extras they do allow, you can't get off the phones long enough to enjoy those extras. 
Management is driven to keep up the KPI's so they become irrational and uncaring most of the time.  
There is very little room for advancement in this company as a large of the positions are for the call center agents. 
The best part is the benefits and friends you can make.
I worked here for ten years before wising up. Loyalty can be a fault. 

Work is pretty hectic during tax season December through April but during the summer is pretty relaxed. You can expect the summer to consist of on the job training, and team activities or assignments. During tax season expect 54 hour work weeks of 6 days a week at 9 hours. Time off is not permitted during this time however if you do miss you can make that up by working more than the  scheduled 54 hours. The benefits are not too bad they pay for some of your health insurance and supply a small life insurance. You get PTO starting out at I believe 1.5 hours a week, which increases with each year of employment. Management have a hard time of it managing 20+ people, so they may not always give you the correct answer or be available when needed. The starting pay is usually 10-11 an hour. you will be paid every two weeks. In the first year you can expect to just be required to know the tax software and have good attendance. After that you will be expected to be very knowledgeable on the SEVERAL other software programs that Drake offers. Which can consist of the tax and accounting software, their online programs, a transfer site, and a hosted platform. After time the unqualified and rude Tax preparers that call you will wear you down.

You get 4 weeks of training.  A lot of information given to you in those 4 weeks.  Depends on when you start, you may have time to get to use the information that you used and you may not.
During the weeks before tax season begins, everyone is very nice and relaxed.  
Once tax season begins, everything changed.  Everything, no one is happy, no one is nice, in fact they don't want you to even have time to go to the bathroom unless it is your break or lunch.
If you are on the phone and need to go - to bad.  If you are on the phone and it is time for your break or lunch, you have to get permission to move from your phone to go.
You even get it counted against you for not going during your set time.  Wow if you can't get off the phone and then have to leave at a different time, how was that the employee's fault.
The whole atmosphere and attitude changed once Jan 1st happens.
BTW, it does not matter how long you have been there, you will get phone calls that you have no idea on how to answer.  Don't dare transfer that phone, you have to keep those customers on the phone and figure it out, unless they get tired of you trying and hang up on you, you can not transfer them or hang up first.
Some of their policies are terrible, and the customers are getting upset.  Too bad.

I did thoroughly enjoy my time working at Drake. They have a four week training program (paid) before you're set to work, in which a lot of information is blasted at you about all of the programs, features and resources, but there's so much that you continue to learn throughout years of working.  They ensure that you can fully comprehend getting benefits set up, and I had the luck of having great managers and trainers.  The work culture is great. There's not any super strict dress codes ( You can work in sweat pants if you want, have dyed hair, piercings, ect.). The biggest downside to working, is that around late December through April, you will be set to work 55+ hours every week with only about 30 seconds between calls at times, and off season goes back to a 40 hour schedule for full time when everything gets allot more relaxed. (where you have anywhere between 10 to 50 minutes between calls). The other downside, is that some of the clientele can tend be slightly hostile while you're still fairly new, until you gain better understanding of the programs. Raises every year, PTO that rolls year to year, it's overall a great job. I would say that I would recommend you have strong windows knowledge, and great patience. 

Would not recommend this for any developer whose just starting their career due to outdated technology and nontransferable skills outside of the general development environment experience.

Pros:
Good people. They do a lot of free food and quarterly lunches when its not tax season. Parties are nice, but that's all its got going for it. Possibility of yearly raises depending on performance. During the summer work hours were flexible enough to do 3 day weekend if you chose to do 40 hours in 4 days

Cons:
The technology used to make the software is all outdated (not even object oriented) or in-house so no transferable skills. No room for advancement in the company. Learning the in-house tools and all the nooks of how to connect your code to certain tasks that is done by other code and files you don't normally see is a chore because lack of documentation and what documentation that does exist is difficult to read and understand. Work hours outside summer require overtime (could be avoided if technology was more advanced). So you won't have much of a work life balance.

This is a horrible place to work,  they do not hold up to their advertised business ethics. Employees and their families are not first,  Mr. Drake's family is first, everyone must work lots of overtime so he can support all of his kids and grandkids while we must put our families last on holidays.  Every year Drake requires more and more out of their employees with less pay. They keep taking away our benefits, Christmas and after season dinners and instead make us participate in events that are no fun and the food is gross and then fed us the same meal again two weeks later, what a cheap person you are.  Way to go Mr. Drake!  and you think you are a Pillar of the Community, well stand back and take a hard look at your employees, most of them are severely over weight, taking depression, anxiety and blood pressure medication.  The stress levels are unbearable and management doesn't care because their theory is , " Its not about hours its about getting the job done."  in the mean time we and our families are the ones that suffer from your gain.

This is a great company to work for. Hours can be long & tedious during tax season, that's what makes us #1 in the US for our awesome customer service! I have gained so much software & tax laws knowledge than before I came to work for this company. I have made some wonderful friends as well. I have never had such a more amazing boss than I do now with Drake. She is amazing, smart, hard working, & actually listens to her team. I hope there is more out there just like her!
The hardest part of the job is being away from loved ones during our long  hours over tax season. The most enjoyable part of my job is being able to hear the joy, happiness, & satisfaction over the phone when I am able to help that person on the other line. They call in thinking that there problem can't be fixed, when I fix it, the joy is amazing! That to me is what AWESOME CUSTOMER SERVICE IS ALL ABOUT!

A typical day involves answering calls and troubleshooting from the particular program that the caller is experiencing issues with. It is extremely overwhelming during Tax season. Mandatory overtime, constant short staffed branches cause for less than 30 seconds in-between incoming callers, some of the callers have more difficult issues which takes major research. It is exhausting and demanding. There were/are zero work from home options for the Nashville branch during the Covid-19 pandemic. Getting guidance and assistance from management is very difficult ALL THE TIME. This is not an easy job, but it is a job. Majority of the individuals are wonderful. The pay is a joke. The PTO is a joke. They need MORE managers and HR in ALL branches. The hardest part of the job is the constant changing of the shifts and the mandatory overtime. It should be optional. The most enjoyable part of the job is the KNOWLEDGE. Everyday I learn something new. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Customer service representative 5 salaries reported	$14.30 per hour
Project manager 8 salaries reported	$105,000 per year
Tax analyst 4 salaries reported	$67,000 per year
Software engineer 3 salaries reported	$83,333 per year
Devops architect 3 salaries reported	$145,000 per year

Working at Drake Software LLC: Company Overview and Reviews

Drake Software LLC

Drake Software LLC Ratings

Popular jobs at Drake Software LLC

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected