Pros
- YOU GET TO BE ONE OF THE GOOD GUYS! Only 6 star privacy rating for an ISP by EFF. Net neutrality isn't even up for debate, these guys care about more than profits! "Customer comes first" mentality permeates every facet of the culture. Use your favorite search engine and look up some articles on them. There really aren't many for-profit companies where you can come to work and feel like you're making a difference in the world (or California anyway). - GREAT PLACE TO LEARN! If you live in the North Bay and you're a young tech professional this is a great place to hone your customer service and tech support skills. They hire junior reps into SysOps & NetOps with little to no experience in that specific field! - GROWTH, GROWTH, GROWTH! The company is constantly growing and they love to promote internally. Tech saavy & customer first mentality means relative certainty of moving up and increasing your skillset (and pay of course!). They're adding new products and areas of service all the time in Northern AND Southern California. - EMPATHY & FLEXIBILITY. You're not just a number in a corporate machine. They will provide time off for personal issues and won't just fire you for anything. It should be noted this varies between departments. - GREAT CUSTOMERS. This is more about the type of customer that Sonic attracts. They didn't even pay a cent for advertising until something like a year ago, they grew solely by word of mouth. You may have to go through the "walk grandma through setting up the emails" stuff on the consumer side, or stay up all night on the operations side, but you'll find that anywhere. - FRIENDLY COWORKERS. People smile and say hi to each other, and they're always willing to lend you a hand (this is everyone in every department). Managers & Executives don't pull rank or act arrogant; everyone is very down to Earth. Everyone makes mistakes, and as long as you learn from them and pay attention nobody is going to rub your face in it. It's one big team that exists for 2 reasons: Providing people with the internet they deserve & making customers happy. - BENEFITS. They may not be able to compete with the huge tech companies, but they provide affordable medical insurance and a 401k. - BRING YOUR DOG TO WORK. I know a lot of people where this is worth a small fortune to them to bring their best friend to work with them. It's also a pretty cool feeling when you walk over to someone's cubicle with a pressing question or issue and get confronted by a happy dog. It can really put things in perspective when you're stressed out about something and get to pet or play with a dog while fixing something! - PARTIES! Dane throws a killer company party at the end of the year at his own expense (it's different every year). If you work at Sonic, let's just say the end of the year is a very special time for every employee regardless of position. On top of that, monthly company meetings historically involve free food and beer. That's right, if you're of legal drinking age you can take the edge off while finishing up on a Friday with beer and the catered food of the month. It is wine country after all! There's also a very low-key Summer BBQ which I believe is historically more of a family event. In summary, there's a lot of intangibles that get missed when viewing companies on Glassdoor. Salary isn't the whole story, and anybody that's worked for a huge company and been fired for basically nothing knows that it's not a good feeling. People rarely get let go at this company, and if they do it's because of something extreme. Whether you're looking for a job while going to school, an IT pro looking to branch into a new field, an enterprise salesperson, or even a programmer with years of experience Sonic is worth a look. Did I mention food, beer, parties, and bring your dog to work?
Cons
- Wages are traditionally lower than industry standards for the same job title in larger organizations. As they're growing this may no longer be the case. - Depending on the department, you may find slightly higher requirements for dress code (ie Enterprise Sales), or extra stuff like 24 hour on-call duty (SysOps, NetOps). - Management style varies greatly depending upon department. Some departments are rigorous in metrics and performance reviews, others are very hands-off and expect you to handle things properly. This is negative only if that particular style doesn't work for you as an employee. - Primary consumer product (Fusion) is ADSL2+ which means slower speeds for customers far from a CO. Some customer's get 20Mbps, others get 3Mbps or less. Why would someone choose Sonic over big cable in these cases? 2 guesses, but you'll probably only need 1.