Pros
Salary agreed upon was what I asked for.
Cons
I was first notified about a position in mid February 2012. Had a Skype interview with 3 people then didn't hear anything until mid April 2012. Turns out they had not yet won the bid from the client. Then another in person interview with 3 people one of which already interviewed me the first time. Had to first sign a non disclosure and a ton of paperwork I never had to do in any previous employment situation. Then finally, an offer letter and employment agreement came. Even though we agreed upon a daily rate, a claim that in NYS it is illegal to pay by a daily rate, so they had to annualize the daily rate and put that figure in the contract. I didn’t have a problem with that. What I did have a problem with was some kind of ridiculous formula they came up with where they would only pay a ‘differential’ rate for 6 weeks (3 pay periods) before they start paying the agreed upon rate. I called them on this to find out when I would get the money owed and in two different conversations with two different people; it took 20 minutes into the conversation for them to tell me, “Oh, well when the project ends, you’ll continue to get paid minus the differential”. When I did the math, the money I would get at the end equaled what I wasn’t getting up front so I was okay with that. However, nowhere in the contract did it clearly state that. When I asked them to add it, they refused and told me this was standard practice. Well, against the little voice inside of me, I signed the agreement and started the job. From the beginning, we (the team hired for the project) was brainwashed and conditioned not to speak to any of the clients. If we did, we had to make sure it was clear, concise and for information we could not get from our own team that was already part of the project. This was a daily reminder to us. We also discovered right at the beginning that we had to prepare PowerPoint slides for the manager that was ultimately funding this project. I can’t tell you the ridiculous amount of time every day that was spent doing, redoing and redoing the slides. Now, while I have had the opportunity in my career to create PowerPoint slides and present them, not once during the interview process was I asked about my PowerPoint skills. Not once. It became obvious to me that what I and the other folks came up with initially was unacceptable. The funny thing was, the client kept asking how we were doing on the actual work we were hired to do. We spent so much time changing the slides as per our manager; we didn’t spend the time on the actual work. There is so much more to mention but I will mention one more scenario that happened. I had contacted a client manager requesting him or someone from his team to provide us with some info we required. The client manager bluntly informed me that nothing would be provided and no time will be spent unless he was given a document stating what the project was and how much time would be required from his team for it. Also, that he would need approval from his manager for participating. I provided this information to my manager on two different occasions in front of the team but he never passed that on to the client who would have been able to assist with that situation. Two weeks later, the client found out that the manager I contacted would not support us and he was very angry that it took that long for this to come to his attention. I kept my mouth shut of course but had my manager acted on it two weeks earlier when I first told him, the client being very angry could have been avoided. When the project ended for me (months earlier than I expected it to), I was shorted almost a days pay. They claimed that they were paying me as per the agreed upon rate schedule in the contract. Even though they had to annualize the rate, I took the daily rate that was agreed upon and multiplied it times the days worked since it was less than a year and came up with a figure that was higher then what they paid me. I fought with them for quite a while until they started ignoring my communications. In speaking with another member of the team that was hired with the same type of contract, he figured out that they got two + free days from him as they shorted his pay also. The funny thing is, when I first started on this project, I was very excited about the opportunity and was looking forward to a long career with TwoFour. That didn’t happen. One additional item, the position was supposed to be in Lower Manhattan. After we started, we were told we had to travel up to Purchase NY. That was a 3 hour commute one way for me. Summary: if you happen to be contacted by this company or you contact them, be careful about being sucked in by the amount of salary they agree upon. The project will probably not last as long as they say and when it comes time for them to pay you, you probably will not get what you expect to get.