High Expectations for Low Pay, No Thanks to Growing Pains - Recensione dipendente - Website/Support Engineer presso Directive

2,0
2 gen 2017
Consiglia
Gradimento del CEO
Pronostico commerciale

Vantaggi

Most of my fellow employees were great to work with, going all the way up to the COO (the CEO's wife). If I required something be done by a separate team, I could rely on it being done, or at least reaching a fair compromise. The environment in the office was lively,, which helped contribute to the first point above. As of when I left, the company held a "Crock-pot Thursday" each week to either serve home-made meals (usually in Crock-pots), or to take us out to a restaurant on some occasion. I'd be lying if I said the food wasn't good.

Svantaggi

There was hardly any time granted for training on the job's aspects. The most training I received was for the company's ticketing (PSA) software, ConnectWise. However, for the rest of the job, there was extensive unfamiliarity with the company's assets, such as the server hardware/software/OS/etc. from other team members. For example, a team member may be familiar with adding a user to cPanel/WHM to set up a new website, but would not be familiar with the inner workings, such as the Apache virtual host(s) being created, or the PureFTPd account. Most of my familiarity with the servers that were managed were gathered from the hosting companies we worked with, and even if I shared this knowledge with other team members, it didn't seem to be well-understood or received by them, with explanations taking multiple meetings. In short, there is a vicious cycle of poor knowledge acquisition. This poor knowledge acquisition segues into the company's inability to solve its biggest business problems. When I had visited the company almost 5 months after leaving, I found 2 employees about to go to a meeting about an issue that was still unresolved, one that I was very familiar with since it entailed about 50% of customer support issues. Because they do not have anyone at the company with the right knowledge in the right department to tackle this issue, it will remain unresolved. You could call these two issues a part of "growing pains" the company is having. It felt like the company wanted to "go big" but still hold onto a "mom and pop" kind of operation. Thus, despite working with mid to large IT companies and investing large amounts of money into technologies (again, ones that are better understood from a marketing standpoint instead of a technical one), the company either can't afford to, or will not pay its employees on what could be considered a reasonable wage for their skills or demanded tasks. Perhaps it may fit some of the employees with lesser knowledge/experience, but even employees who have been with the company for over 5 years were making an insignificant amount more than employees working for 1-2 years. This low pay did not add up to the high expectations associated with my position. It is only natural that a person in IT (especially involving websites) can be considered on-call at all times of the day. Most companies, however, will compensate properly for this, such as a high wage or salary, or even giving the employee a day off in some cases. They also have a rotation in place, which I had attempted to set up near the end of my employment (this rotation was either ignored or otherwise not followed) Directive's "growing pains" prohibit it from accomplishing this. A large clientele with few employees equates to being on-call every night, and hardly receiving compensation at all. In fact, there were even a couple of instances where I was "sprung loose" before the end of the work week to avoid overtime pay. This, along with literally being tired from staying up all night handling the previously-mentioned unresolved issues, was ultimately the issue that led me to finding a new, higher-paying job elsewhere.

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Risposta di Directive
8y
Happy to hear that you enjoyed the food and working with the people here, such an important part of a good culture we take great pride in. We are a pretty good sized firm already and do have aspirations to go even bigger and keep a little mom and pop feel to it, but on purpose. We think that’s an asset. We understand it may not be for everyone. We appreciate your feedback and at the time of reading your feedback, we certainly have experienced growing pains over our 25+ years. We’ve overcome the issues you mentioned with our hosting department. We’ve since centralized control of the web hosting servers with our own internal fully trained and CPanel/WHM certified staff. The rest of the staff just requests what they need and don’t need to understand CPanel/WHM. The issues we experienced with the terrible hosting company did cause a “Bleeding of clients” for a few months on one segment of our many divisions, the Website Hosting division. Fortunately the new host we now use was able to fix everything that the old hosting company and the department you worked in could not fix. Migrating data centers was a huge project and a trying time for our company and admittedly, was pretty stressful as it was out of our control. As for on-call time, we pay for overtime and we now also match the on-call person’s time spent off hours with matching vacation time as a bonus. Our on-call rotation for hosting alerts is fully implemented, staffed and adhered to. Without knowing who’s salary you’re referring too, I can tell you that different people grow at different speeds based on performance as well as other factors. We’re happy to share that we’ve increased salaries over 40% in a few short years and it’s part of our internal directives to offer competitive wages. Thanks for your feedback.

Esplora altre recensioni su Directive

5,0
2 ago 2018
Consiglia
Gradimento del CEO
Pronostico commerciale

Vantaggi

My coworkers are very passionate and have taught me alot, company lunches on Thursdays, free snacks, coffee, drinks, bagels, I get to create my own schedule with no micromanagement from my boss, vacation time, health insurance/dental compensation, we can also bring our dogs and cats to work, when I have an issue or an idea I'd like to suggest my management team listens to me and respects me

Svantaggi

I've got nothing to say here

5,0
11 feb 2018
Dipendente anonimo
Consiglia
Gradimento del CEO
Pronostico commerciale

Vantaggi

Very supportive of staff and clients. Willing to train and increase employee knowledge. Can't say enough good things about this company. Way more pro's than con's. I went out with major health issue, and they held my job. Not many employers would do that. Provide their employees with snacks/drinks all day. They provide employee's with lunch every Thursday (Crock-pot Thursdays). They go above and beyond for clients and their employee's. Environment is very friendly, supportive and welcoming. I truly am enjoying watching this company grow! I can't wait to see the future and how big they make this. They have grown so much since I have started.

Svantaggi

There isn't a Captain in the Marketing room anymore. There should be a temp captain until the spot is filled. Also, the captain's meeting should be the captain and one fellow employee from department (if enough people in department) rotate the employee's. Sometimes people have good advice to bring to the table or may think or help with ideas in the meeting but maybe not. Could help to keep more people in the loop of on-goings or struggles/issues.

1
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Risposta di Directive
8y
It's great to hear your experience. The idea for the captains meeting is something we will discuss in the next one. We do plan on having more regular staff meetings. We just have to figure out where to do them as not everyone fits in the conference room at once anymore! Good problem to have! We could always all go out to eat and have them there ;)
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