Vantaggi
- Flexible scheduling and working from home. - Employees "on the ground" are generally competent, pleasant to work with, and try to do good work.
Svantaggi
The following represent my own personal opinions: - Below market wages. - Substandard benefits: Typical for this field as a full time employee on a multi-year contract are 21 days PTO, 8 holidays, 2 floating holidays, 50% employer matched 401K, 60/40 split on health/vision/and dental. Vision offers 10 days of PTO, 7 holidays( I think), 1 floating for your birthday. Based on healthcare market rates for health/vision/dental, there is no subsidy for healthcare.There is minimal/no matching for retirement. Out of home market healthcare provided by company is PPO only, and offers 2 plans, both of which are ridiculously expensive for a single employee. I have heard this is even worse if you have dependents or a spouse. - Poor working conditions. Days are spent in a windowless, poorly ventilated, extremely dated warehouse that has been partially converted to office space. Illegal electrical is everywhere and fire-escapes are likely not code compliant. Building is not ADA compliant. Employees (including those using assistive walking devices) are forced to walk up/down 20-25 stairs to enter building including regularly carrying heavy equipment and supplies up and down stairs.No elevators.No fire system in building. Fire codes are partially complied with by placing battery powered smoke detectors everywhere with an ample supply of batteries that must be changed by the employees.Its possible this met code in the 1980s when the place was converted, but unlikely. Several un-serviced non-commercial grade air conditioners serve the building along with a few swamp coolers. Allergies and sickness are rampant in the office likely on part of the improper HVAC systems. Desks and chairs are from the 80's to late 90's, completely worn out, and most likely not OSHA compliant. Ergonomics simply do not exist. Non-permanent emergency escape lights are installed and may or may not work. I would not want to be in this building if there ever was a fire.I was forced to sit for about 8 months in a completely worn out and filthy chair with no padding left, no arms, and a back that was falling down several times a day. - Inadequate equipment and office supplies: Provided laptop is 4 years old, and in multiple modes of failure. Equipment is too old to provide adequate work output, including failing hard disks, failing displays that only work some of the time or not at all, failing USB ports, failing batteries, UPS systems that are completely dead, inadequate CPU power and memory for modern needs. Outdated software and minimal to no support from corporate offices. Every single Engineer on the contract has requested updated hardware, which had been turned down by the corporate offices. I've even witnessed employees walking around with USB keyboards to plug into outdated, used up laptops where the built in keyboard and mouse no longer functions. Requests for other basic office supplies such as pens, notepads, post-it notes, etc are met with disdain. If you plan to work here, plan on bringing in your own mouse, keyboard, and other peripherals and office supplies, chairs, etc.At least, batteries are provided. 2 external monitors were provided, one of which was actually a television(!) that would turn off by itself at random intervals. - Management is completely ineffective. Concerns are raised and never addressed. Government employees regularly and directly task contract employees with additional duties that are not part of the contract, to which it is my belief is in violation of any government contract that is not listed as a "personal service contract," which, to the best of my knowledge, this is not. Contractors are left to manage their own work including project management and other duties that are not laid out in the job description or delegated to those workers to perform under the contract. Day-to-day duties are not discussed and are not assigned to contractors by the Vision contract management. Little to no direction is provided, and employees are left to "fend for themselves" in dealing directly with government employees. - Virtually no documentation of existing systems, procedures, network diagrams, etc are provided to contract employees. This can make it difficult to impossible to carry out the designated scope of work. Any documentation that has been provided has been completely out of date and does not reflect the current state of the networks/systems/ or procedures that are expected to be carried out/maintained by contract employees. - Some (but not all) government employees are difficult to work with and refuse, or obstruct access to necessary information in order to perform the scope of work as defined. - Nearly no general Standard Operating Procedures seem to exist, and if they do, they are not provided to contract employees. You are left on your own to "discover" what these procedures might be, and then to follow them,while being reprimanded by government employees for failing to follow procedures you were not aware of. - The district has failed to provide adequate funding for replacement equipment over the years. The entire network (350+ schools, 40 admin sites, and many other tertiary organizations including a public television station, a city, prisons, and minor police organizations) is made up of a complete hodge-podge of random equipment from multiple vendors and generations, none of which works together well. Due to lack of stock of proper replacement equipment, network repair has literally been pulling working but 15+ year old equipment from locations to re-deploy in other locations where equipment is more "needed". This leaves network "management" to develop ad-hoc, custom solutions for supporting and maintaining equipment in environments where this mode of operation was never intended by the vendors nor the employees who designed the network. - Some contractors are working, possibly in conflict of interest, on multiple contracts simultaneously. This leads to a lack of resources on the core contracts that have given Vision a place in the Las Vegas market.