What's the company culture at State Farm?

Every business has its own style. What is the office environment and culture like at State Farm?

Are people dressed in business casual, jeans and t-shirts, or full-on suits? Do folks get together for Friday happy hours and friendly get-togethers?

What is a typical day in the life of an employee at State Farm?

It really depends on the department or location that you work in. Here at our Corporate Headquarters in our systems department, it is very casual. We have a "Dress for your day" policy and employees are free to wear jeans and t-shirts.

Here at our corporate location we have a park for our internal employees with pools, sand and hard court volleyball, tennis, soccer and softball fields, playgrounds for the kids, and mini golf. There is always something going on at the park. Many teams decide to get together after work at the park or other areas, none of which is mandatory.

A typical day for me is email, phones, interviews, and meetings. There is great work-life balance here for me.

I worked at the Birmingham Operations Center, and this place was a nightmare for me. I was an auto claim rep doing liability. The job itself was great. I loved investigating automobile accidents. The problem is that you end up working with the dregs of Alabama society. They are mostly idiot savants that can't do anything except what they are doing (in some cases since they were teenagers). They mistake the fact that they have been doing one thing their whole lives for talent.

The job itself: You have something called an electronic claim file. Now this claim file is assigned to a "team". What happens is that everyone... and I mean everyone on your team has something to say about what you did. So you don't have one supervisor you answer to, you have several! If you think this becomes messy, complex, and leading to lots of drama then you are right! Backstabbing is a way of life. People say things about your appearance, your gender, even your race right to your face! And HR and management could care less. In fact, they are often involved. I actually had an hr rep tell me personally that as long as a manager didn't explicitly break a law than the manager can do whatever he/she wants. This place is pure evil.

The dirty little secret about "the farm" is that as bad as the environment is... many put up with it for the money. These people are EXTREMELY overpaid, especially the veterans. Keep in mind, this is basically a glorified customer service job that requires no special skills. You get an unbelievable amount of sick days and vacation. The veterans are required to do very little work (because the unspoken truth is that they cannot be terminated) while new people are worked like dogs. They even have an old General motors style pension plan. How can state farm pay for this? through their extravagantly high premiums. I hate them

Unfortunately, the culture is somewhat poisonous. I work in Claims, and there is quite a lot of back-stabbing, poor conflict resolution and politics.

If you are a person who is intelligent, reads, and has a tendency to think for yourself or question things that do not make logical sense, you will be very unhappy at State Farm. There is too much emphasis on and snobbery surrounding titles when it comes to how employees are treated and upper management really has no idea about the day-to-day challenges of the employees who are not suck-ups.
Also, if you are single and/or childless you are lower priority when it comes to time off. If you have an illness, prepare to be tortured. If that illness interferes with what Management thinks you should be able to do as opposed to your doctor's diagnosis, it's worse. You have to jump through hoops for your own peace of mind.

IF you care more about quality (making sure you actually provided what the customer needs within reason) over quantity (just because you answer a ton of phone calls doesn't mean you're giving great customer service), then work elsewhere.

People are nice, but often very superficial. It's difficult to tell whom to trust, and there is an overall elementary school mentality.