Vantaggi
- Your coworkers will be fantastic, competent, and friendly. I cannot understate what an absolute pleasure the majority of your peers will be to work with. - The leadership and management truly do care for the employees and their well-being. - The workplace does feel like a family. - The monthly meals and quarterly cultural events are well-designed and promote collaboration and community. - Their financial support of charities is honorable. - The building is incredibly nice, with an excellent kitchen, breakroom, patio, and snacks. - They are very flexible with scheduling if you have competing family considerations. - Loyalty is very well-rewarded in terms of social capital.
Svantaggi
Before we begin, I want to state WingSwept’s core values: Honesty, Eagerness, Accountability, Respect, and Teamwork. I also want to cite WingSwept’s mission statement - particularly in reference to WingSwept acting as ‘stewards’ of their employees. I have taken the liberty of capitalizing the core values as I address them for your consideration. As you read the below, please take the time to thoroughly assess what I’m saying - be skeptical, be open-minded - whatever you like. As with all things, you’ll likely find there is some truth to this matter. Religious organizations have a penchant for wrapping traditional predatory business behavior in idealistic language. - WingSwept states they offer competitive pay. Why, then, do so many employees leave and potentially double their pay? Why am I on track to be making 5x as much? Why does WingSwept’s leadership seem to plan for pay-based employee attrition in their sales and IT departments? My hypothesis is simple - everyone is one to two steps lower on the ladder than they should be, relative to the market. Is this an HONEST business practice? - Leadership seems to act like they’re a moral authority - calling employees ‘entitled’ and ‘passive-aggressive’ when they themselves are. Do you want to be talked down to as if you’re a child instead of a grown adult? Go to WingSwept and rock the boat with an opinion counter to the ‘WingSwept way.’ Is it RESPECTFUL to talk to your employees that way? - During your time at WingSwept, I think you will be indoctrinated with a fear of the job market, a fear that your skills and abilities won’t suffice, fear of the stress and change of searching for and getting a new role, fear of lay-offs, fear of a business that’s not a family, and most importantly, the fear of losing the connections you’ve made at WingSwept. Is it RESPECTFUL to instill fear into your employees? - Members of middle management are like petty bureaucrats who have an inability to make any meaningful decisions of their own. Why are they even called managers? They’re just paper pushers. In a healthy organization, managers advocate for their reports. At WingSwept, all managers seem to do is communicate upper-level decisions downward and prevent lower-level feedback from going upward. They plug their ears in relation to compensation - but then a paradox is introduced! - how can they truly care about their reports when they can’t even advocate for their reports’ financial well-being based on performance? It feels that they are absolving themselves of personal responsibility but are still undeniably complicit. Does this sound like an environment with good TEAMWORK? Does management sound ACCOUNTABLE or EAGER in supporting their reports? When management pretends to take your feedback and throws it into a black hole, is this RESPECTFUL and ACCOUNTABLE and HONEST? - I empathize with the middle management, however, it is clear that they are juggling multiple roles by the consistently late hours they seem to work into the evenings. I wonder if it’s RESPECTFUL of their time, their families, and their life to leave those evening hours unaddressed for years on end? - WingSwept has a very slow career progression rooted in loyalty and certifications. If you’re ambitious or have ‘lofty’ financial goals, WingSwept is not the place for you. There are no Christmas bonuses, to my knowledge; there are no cost of living adjustments (COLA), at the time of my employment. Furthermore, the HiPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) matters most - title matters - position matters - tenure matters - you’ll find that the value of the idea matters least. Things will, at times, seem very much like an echo chamber. Does an echo chamber seem like good TEAMWORK? - If you do subscribe to the career path that WingSwept provides, prepare for an extensively exhausting certification path developed in part by someone who doesn’t even have any or most of the certifications (at the time of my employment). These certifications appear to be carefully selected to maximize WingSwept’s partner relationships as opposed to your professional growth - some of them are just fodder and will add nothing to you professionally. Of course, you’ll have to study for these on your own time! Don’t even think about getting a promotion without checking off every certification on the way! Does this seem RESPECTFUL of your career goals? - The profit-sharing plan seems to incentivize micro-management and a ‘sweatshop’-like culture, tracking metrics down to a granular level, punishing employees for increased volume of business rather than rewarding them for doing their best to handle it. These issues have certainly been brought up. Where’s the ACCOUNTABILITY? - WingSwept seems to have a fear of automation. Many things are done manually, when they could so easily and reliably be automated. Unfortunately, due to this, some team members are pigeon-holed into roles doing menial grunt work. Is that good TEAMWORK and RESPECTFUL of those team members’ desires to grow by providing them meaningful tasks? In summary, in my opinion, WingSwept talks the talk but doesn’t walk the walk.
