inside sales representative

fulfillment associate

customer success manager

senior customer service representative

software engineer

Wolters Kluwer

I deliberately waited a while before placing this review as I thought some distance and acquiring a higher paying job would provide some objectivity. But as the company is looking to hire another software engineer and in two instances their own HR recruitment called me twice to hire me for the position I was let go from I thought it prudent to write a review.

There are "fires" in production on almost a daily basis and some more than not require you to interrupt your time on the weekends to fix them something that will not be told to you upon hire. Expect to stay past 6pm during a regular 9am -5pm work week at least two to three times a week on average.Management to be fair like the mileage varies. You have people who occupy those positions with extensive backgrounds who are available and reliable and are able to roll up their sleeves and provide an extensive knowledge base and are a resource that the development staff can utilize and build upon.

And then you have in contrast the manager who comes in after 10:30 am and leaves early for the day (without letting his staff know his availability) and is demanding to know what has happened and to bring him/her up to speed on the situation who does not have the technical proficiency to code review or look into situations with the code as his subordinates might be able to do and yet he or she is the position to evaluate your performance and progression as they see it. And sometimes that is unfortunately determined by office politics rather than by merit.

Performance evaluations are held monthly as per company directives. Upper mobility and promotion opportunities are not that open.. in fact I saw a great senior developer there promoted to manager after 8 years of service. Performance such as his as I had a chance to observe it should have been rewarded in fairness three to four years into the company maximum.

The ticketing system is fine but it is hampered by sliding production release times for deploying code changes that are delayed without telling the developers or key management and so you have spend time dialed in on the VPN on your own time at home waiting to make sure that the deployment went through without any problems sometimes well over an hour. Also expect to provide detailed test plans and walk through QA teams through web conferencing or on the phone on how to test the sample data as well as to provide them with said data essentially doing their jobs for them in addition to your own unit testing as a developer.

Legacy code for the older clients is driven by session variable ASP into hard coded queries and connections strings that lapse from client users over 20 minutes or so that blow up the page without redirecting to a login page. No optimization on said pages are done or for that matter on any of the many stored procedures that are unnecessary stored in page long functions etcetera. If it is isn't broken don't fix it attitude exists there but the problem with that is you can clearly see where things can and will break given time and yet we are told not to touch it and any initiative given to suggest corrective solutions simply ignored.

I provided exception handling and logging to existing C# code for the payment file application and changing the configuration of the XML in that process depended upon by their clients that if not there the lead developer and myself would have had to have look in four to five different places for the placement of the client payment files, the database tables, source file and destination of FTP file directories event viewer, internal production mailbox etcetera. For as many clients as that application handles that was a basic requirement that should have been there from the inception. Before that the app was failing on an almost daily basis. I was let go and the time I was let go in the conference call with HR and my manager I was told I could take "a victory lap for what I had accomplished" just before the bonus salary reviews were due in and the lead developer was asking for my feedback online for was I was still troubleshooting being the first one of my team in the office. And they already had their solution I had built for them in place and working fine take that as you will.

As a researcher in what is internally described as "the most profitable division in the branch of the company with the highest future potential for growth and revenue", I have always found the work environment to be a great disconnect with the caliber of clients we work with. The office in New York is drab, despite sporting jawdropping panoramic views of the Manhattan skyline (including One World Trade, The Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty). Researchers are payed less (it seems) than either the Sales or Finance divisions of the team, which is odd, considering the Researchers actually generate the product that can be sold and monetized to clients. 

The nature of the office is antithetical to the collaborative structure that the job truly requires. Researcher often have to stay late to complete tasks, but the low base pay means many are miserably clamoring for such a state of affairs merely to afford living in the New York City metro area. Customer Service often refuses to answer clients calls, leaving researchers to answer questions from clients over everything from pay to technical support questions. 

When clients are brought over by Sales staff to see where the information that multibillion decisions are based off of comes from, one can see the underwhelmed looks on their faces a mile away. The office appears to be stuck in a 1985 time warp, with a computer system that has the processing power of an iPhone. They must be bewildered at how such highly acclaimed research and trademark protection information can be routinely produced in such an environment. The fact is that the small team of researchers there perform herculean tasks on a daily basis to deliver such results to clients, but are neither compensated for such feats by the high management, or assisted in completing tasks by removing the obstinate technical hurdles (slow/outdated computers, unreliable tech support, fickle outside vendor databases).

As a result, the turnover is frightfully high, as seasoned researchers become disgusted at the lack of innovation, investment and reform from leadership. For a new researcher, this can mean stepping into a weird space where camaraderie is discouraged due to the increasing transience of the workforce, and as the Company only offers lipservice towards boosting morale. Each time a researcher leaves, the burden shoots up for all others as it takes months to bring onboard and train new researchers.  Immediate supervisors and Team Leaders lack the power and autonomy to implement the obvious changes needed on the ground, and all decision requests for changes disappear into a labyrinth Vice Presidents and Senior Management. 

The Finance and Sales divisions of the team are notorious for making promises to clients that either are technically impossible to meet, or refuse to inform the clients of the accurate pricing for searches by insisting they can be bundled together into a single research report. Researchers are then pressured by high management to comply with the clients' requests for fear of losing the accounts. This means more complex searches on tighter deadlines, and a higher possibility for human error or technical malfunctions. The sales team is either ignorant or simply feels that the standards for charging customers for searches and the timelines for possible completion is beneath them. Senior Management never steps in to rebuke their unethical practices.

Overall, Wolters Kluwer is a fantastic company. Unfortunately, the attributes that are ubiquitous in other divisions in the company are nowhere to be found in the Research department of Corporate Legal Services.

After working for this company, I can say that the benefits are fair with lots of PTO which you get right at the start of the year and do not have to wait to accrue.

The insurance for eye care and dental is decent. 

Overall a great work environment. Everyone is nice and friendly and you get a decent amount of space to work with. Good lighting and windows. Cleaning staff is questionable though. Sometimes they will leave your things knocked over and can't be bothered to move an additional 6 inches to put your trash can back where they found it.

On the bad side of things, this work place will penalize you even if you have absences coupled along with doctor's notes or true emergencies. From what I understand, this sort of practice is currently being investigated as being against federal law as Walmart is currently under review for this same kind of system. Something to keep an eye on in the future. 

There is little to no job advancement and trying to get ahead in the company can take lots of years. 

Work for the most part is not stressful unless you get that one difficult customer here and there. But the company does like to try and give breaks off the phone pending you have sought after skill sets to do emails instead. 

Employee treatment may not be the same depending on what supervisor you have. For instance, you may be out sick for a day for the same reason as another person, but you may get penalized for it while the other person does not simply because of a supervisor's personal assessment of the situation. This can make employee treatment unfair and frustrating. 

Communication within the company is very bad. Always be prepared to be the last one to be notified of a change to a system or product. You may not even find out about the change until it comes up with a customer. 

It can be very difficult as well to find help if you are struggling with a situation. While they do have floorwalkers, there is never any backup if said person goes to lunch or on break. And there is only ever one person assigned as FW to help in a particular department. 

All in all, a good company, but frustrating if you are looking for a place to be understanding if you have an emergency or sick person to attend to. Be prepared to get written up or lose your job even if you do end up going to the hospital with a 104.00 degree fever or potentially on your death bed from high uncontrollable sugar levels. Apparently, their work is more important than your health or even you life for that matter.

This portion of the company has very little respect for their employees and upper management has little to no experience in their field.  Most of the VPs are friends or colleagues of the old owners of the acquired companies or the confidants of the VP of clinical solutions, Arvind.  There is no room for advancement, management feels as if they know everything and many of the companies are hemorrhaging money, the only group that is saving them is UpToDate because it is a historic and well known company with well known and used products in the medical field.  They bring in new talent, but if new talent questions the ethics, management or the way things are done the individuals are boxed out until they either leave or the company makes up some excuse to fire them.  I saw many people get fired not because they didn't do their job well, but because they had two sick days in a row or they questioned policies and procedures or stood up and challenged something that was not right or because the employee needed to be fired to make space for a buddy or friend with no experience who needed a job.  In addition, they have multiple people on staff in certain departments that do not work and live on the paychecks, only coasting by because they are a friend or a family member of upper management.  A large percentage of the staff is either related or knew each other outside of the office before they started there, the company even received a warning from internal HR to hide this or hire more unknowns because it was starting to look suspicious from an EEOC perspective.  The only positive for my position was that it was work from home flexible, otherwise there were no other positives.  The benefits were good until they decided to get rid of the MN health plan through Medica and change us all to the BCBS plan that is used by the rest of the firm, which is two to three times more expensive than what we were receiving.  Either way, I am surprised that this company still runs without regulatory intervention or multiple employment suits with the way they run their business and hire/fire people.

NOTE: This is only for the health, specifically clinical solutions division in Minneapolis.  I also worked with corporate on items as well as other business units and found overall that WK was a great company, this portion of the company is the main bad apple of the bunch.

WK-TeamMate is a division of WK, a multi-national, multi-billion dollar company.  In the past few years they have been implementing a complete corporate makeover, from primarily a hard copy publisher to a digital content provider.  This has been a successful transformation, as now around 80% of revenue comes from digital.  I am very impressed with the company's ability to articulate a comprehensive vision and then proceed to implement that vision.

TeamMate was a 20+ million division when I joined seven years ago.  They are now around 65+ million in revenue.  The explosive growth of the organization has led to some growing pains, such are requiring larger office space twice within my tenure, and management shakeups as the people who got us to that size were not able to grow any further.

The company is very forward leaning as far as using the latest Microsoft tech stack and moving forward with development techniques.  It is an Agile shop, and uses Version 1 as the dev cycle management system.  TFS is used as the source of truth, with feature branching for cycle development purposes.

The pay scale is competitive and there is a bonus system in place.  Advancement is available from member to team lead, to manager.  The managers are expected to be hands on for the coding, they are not isolated from the daily work.

There is a great deal of green field work available as TeamMate+ is the current market leader in it's space and there is continuing  work on keeping it there.  The software is Enterprise level, giving you plenty of opportunity to work on front end, middle tier or database work.

The company sponsors an annual Code Games competition, the winner of which will be able to have their idea funded and implemented either as an internal process improvement or as an addition to the product.

There are frequent social activities and sporting event ticket lotteries.  It is a friendly and supportive atmosphere.

Wolters Kluwer can be daunting. You get thrown a lot of things at once when you start. The company has support and training available. The salaries offered are far too low to start. You are promised a certain commission but make sure it isn't verbal. 
The Baltimore location is downtown with issues. The building is way too cold and you need to cough up for parking at 140 to 160 per month. The parking lot is dark and creepy. They need to change the location and NOW. Lunch is a ridiculous half-hour. You get the feeling they do not want you to be a human during the day.
There is flexibility for some reps to work at home and come and go as they please. Others are not allowed to leave and lunches are carefully monitored. There's no place to go for lunch so you're basically trapped until the end of the day.
Your manager makes or breaks you at WK. Some endlessly have meetings to go over your shortcomings. Managers seem to never really take a day off. You hear from them by instant message, cell phone, and email. It's as if they are afraid to take the day off.
The benefits are pretty decent. 
Take the higher-end health insurance. Other than the health insurance being great, all other benefits are the same. WK doesn't match the 
401K. They give you a bonus if they make money. Gee thanks. 

There is that corporate uncomfortable stiffness in the office. People do not really smile or seem happy. They grumble around, do not talk much, and run out at night.  It doesn't seem to be a company where people are proud or at all joyful. The company seems to know it has no unity for the people, so they've tried to have some outings or pot luck events that seem impersonal and strange-- like an arranged match.

First off Wolters Kluwer is a good company that has good growth potential and most people are great to work with - HOWEVER as you avoid the customer service department in the Hagerstown office. When I first started, I immediately was taken in by one of the managers that was very welcoming and wanted to see me succeed. Just a few months before I started I was told that the company just had relocated to the Citi building. However, I started to notice a change once I was pulled from the online support team and put into customer service.  Many of the women in the customer service department were bullies. They could not separate work life from personal life. My supervisor had a thing for favoritism on our team. She would let her favorites leave early and others she would make stay after their time to leave to clean up phone calls. I noticed how the rules started to become extremely strict to the point where we could no longer take a few moments to write notes for a customer. Ridiculous policies were put into place that made us stay hours after our scheduled time to leave and take over our personal time. We were to get them done in a minute and if we decided to take anymore time, they would come over and scold us for it. It also came down on limited time to use the restroom which is extremely unprofessional and illegal for a workplace.

Seems like it could have been a great company to work for maybe if I was in a different department. I learned a lot regarding e-learning, platforms, scorm packaging, etc. There was no real hard part of the actual job itself. The hardest task was actually working through management and those put in leadership positions. I loved the laid back enviroment but I clearly witness that the laid back theme mentality played a part in the work productivity.There was no order, no real instruction, no leadership. Every one was on any boat sailing. The permanent employees allowed the temp contractors to make a lot of work related calls, changes, decisions, etc. without having any real knowledge or concept of the company processes. Though I made good money, I often had to remind myself that I was actually working. It was cool job, but very disorganzied and at times weird. I have never seen anything like it. If I had a question, no one had the answer. It was clear that no one knew what the heck they were doing. You could see those employees who actually worked hard, picking up the slack of those who didn't. It was a sad sight and no one was doing anything about it. Again, it seems like a great company to work for, just not in the online training dept.

Company is made up of many business units, so employee experiences differ.  Overall, not a bad company, but also, not a great company. WK is a global company that will provide many opportunities to find work challenges. But the company is quite fragmented and is working to create a unified brand. I would say that my daily work-load is heavy, but I currently have three different leadership roles I perform. My boss is located in another state, and is very busy as well. He very rarely interacts with me. From my position, the company makes one step forward, two steps back. And it's a real shame, because the talent of the workforce is very high, from my interactions. Yet middle and upper management has not yet properly managed the workforce. Constant re-organizations, with new leadership, has been the norm since I joined in the company in 2014. So it's very hard to get momentum or progress on certain initiatives. Changing priorities are not uncommon in most companies, but for WK it's the norm. Not the ideal situation, but does create an environment where you learn to adjust quickly to refocus your energy in different directions. Again, not all parts of WK are alike, so someone else may have a completely different experience.

Euro-centric management that is somewhat out of touch with the US and other region of its employee population cultures and workplace norms.
Senior management is trying to come from behind in introducing technology that makes it a player in the rapidly changing four core business in which it competes. Old style management is hurting its ability to adapt to new technologies - that is, entering the digital age. The "do as I say or you're out" management style hurts its ability to offer new and different ways of operating and introducing new ideas.
Its Central Services group is slow to react and good luck trying to get anything done when you need it. You'll rely on your contacts and bartering to get a laptop or iPhone.
Finance will always win when you try to press for new equipment or techology that will pay for itself in the long run.
Human Resources department is reluctant to make the necessary changes in its own senior management to understand the needs of its employees. Below the VP levels were some good leaders with potential but they have either been purged or removed.
Therefore, it is just an "ok' company to work for - but you probably will be stifled and move on...

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Inside sales representative 35 salaries reported	$20.50 per hour
Fulfillment associate 10 salaries reported	$25.50 per hour
Customer success manager 1 salary reported	$48,500 per year
Senior customer service representative 9 salaries reported	$51,444 per year
Software engineer 4 salaries reported	$102,750 per year

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