Acuity, for all its organizational culture shine, is likely just as flawed as other organizations underneath the hood. Departmental culture is an extremely important component of one's experience at an organization, because it more directly impacts the day-to-day experience and how a career progresses. These "cons" do not apply to all departments but relate to first-hand experience within Acuity's project area. The corporate culture is present, in parts, at the department level; it is a guiding north star. Several aspects, however, go astray. First, there is inconsistent commitment to providing training and skill development to help individuals grow. For some roles, for example, there is no basic project management training even though that is core job responsibility. Becoming better communicators is a year-to-year expectation, yet little is consistently done to nurture those skills. Essentially, when joining Acuity, even directly out of school, you either have it or you don't. If you don't, then you need to find a way to build whatever skills are needed while doing your job. Typically, this is left to the manager and individual to identify and pursue learning and development opportunities, but a lack of commitment from leadership to ensure skill development is a focus and little transparency into what is allowed from a budgetary standpoint creates hurdle after hurdle to actually move forward. With skill development lacking, growing in one's career at Acuity can be unnecessarily challenging. Acuity is a flat organization, so it is possible to quickly run out of promotion and role opportunities, especially if there is no desire to move into management. This leads to the overall lack of opportunities and the introduction of favoritism and bias. It is possible that, if you have a misstep early in your Acuity career, even a minor one like a project not going exactly as senior leadership wanted, you will carry a label of not being able to handle complex work and big responsibilities, and this will limit what you work on and your ability to advance, whether it is justified or not. Conversely, if you have one positive interaction with a senior leader, even a minor one, you can end up being the go-to for the prime assignments and be more likely to advance. In either case, it does not matter what you do in the intervening months or years, first impressions are everything. There is little leeway to showcase personal style and skills, the preferred approach being mimicry of leadership's personal or desired working style. Leadership can set unrealistically high expectations while not modeling the desired behavior themselves or providing essential feedback. It is truly a "do as I say, not as I do" situation, which naturally introduces bias. If your communication style or pace differs from leadership, or you speak up with a different perspective, prepare to encounter bias. It may not appear right away, but after time, when you are battling to move yourself forward and grow, you will find bias has you spinning your wheels. Additionally, something that has developed since the remote work revolution, bias also touches Acuity's hybrid working environment. While the company line is consistent treatment regardless of working from home or in the office, there is a significant demographic of senior leadership that will give preferential treatment to those in the office, not truly buying into one's ability to collaborate or be as effective if working from outside the office. Even after three years of hybrid working, there are those still fighting to bring people back into the office with minimal effort to meet remote workers halfway. While it is not explicitly stated, there is the perception among employees that those working from home are seen as lesser employees. Overall, Acuity is a tale of two organizations. Sometimes the positives outweigh the negatives. Sometimes, the negatives can be too much. The company is probably not too dissimilar from others in that regard. Since the pay is fair enough but the overall skill development and growth is poor, you could probably get paid more for the same experience with greater opportunities elsewhere.
