Advanced Technology Services Help Desk Representative reviews

The pay is way below what industry standard for support is. I've seen this company pay people as low as 29k for employees with knowledge in things like VPN, SCCM, Active Directory, Lotus Notes (Bleh, but that's another story), Networking, and all manner of other standard and advanced troubleshooting. It's insanity and they refuse to acknowledge that it's an issue or fix it in any way. If they could pay people minimum wage and still get applications who knew how to turn on a computer they probably would. Management and executive leadership have no idea what's going on or how to run the company. Management treats employees like children and have a constant issue with micromanagement and managing every minute of your day. They have applications deployed on their end for this sole-purpose. If you're in "After Call Work" status following a phone call for more than two or three minutes, expect them to be standing over your shoulder or sending your harassing messages to get back on the phone in "Ready" status. They're horribly understaffed and have been in denial about it from the beginning. They got the Caterpillar contract in May and basically just cloned one of their old contacts and ended up screwing themselves royally in the process. They can't handle the call volume and refuse to (or can't) hire the number of people needed to do so. As a result, the phone queue is constantly slammed and you will never get any breather time between calls aside from your scheduled breaks and lunches (that you'll probably be taking before 11:00 AM). Training and documentation is horrible. They tell you you'll get two weeks of training, but will throw you on the phone without warning after about a week because they're overwhelmed with calls and are willing to cut corners to get paid because they get paid per call answered. The absenteeism policy is insanely draconian. You get three "instances" of sick leave on a rolling twelve months before they start writing you up. The policy encourages you to take multiple days off in a row without pay because if you take them off individually you'll meet your instance quota too quickly. They had a fire drill once and tried to force everyone to stay on the phones instead of evacuating, as per the law. They walked around passing out ear plugs and told us to mute our mics whenever it wasn't necessary to speak to the caller. The Fire Marshall came upstairs and yelled at the management; it was hilarious. One team was forced to close and lock their door with the lights off to hide from said Fire Marshall. All this was done with their core company values stating that "Safety" is their primary concern for employees. Yeah... You will have almost no promotional opportunities here unless you work in Peoria, where you will get promoted just for showing up to work and living there. The list goes on. Don't work here unless you don't have any other choice.

Office Politics, advancement, and grudges! Advancement was a good thing at the time, but often left huge rifts in the processes, examples, and departments. Many good managers moved on to better things, but those whom advanced within did not stay because they were not respected or "were not a good fit". Many issues seemed to spring from separation and culture from other I.T. locations. (3) There are some serious issues with retaliation and protection. You could not speak up without fear of losing your job. Many managers whom protected their employees and challenged high level authority to protect their employees were removed from service and in some cases removed all together. From my understanding this is currently being managed, and H.R. is taking a better stance, but at the time it was an issue.