I will preface this and say it depends on which office you are located and who you are working for. This review is from my experience working in the Seattle/Bellevue office in a support role. I had the opportunity to travel to Boston for training for a week and found the people to be friendly, welcoming, and did not judge you based on your position or looks. You will find good people in this office too, but the bad experiences far outweigh the good, dangerously so, and you will not have a soul to turn to despite what they tell you. Making a complaint about unfair treatment or workplace bullying will only isolate you and add to the pain. No one will believe or help you. Only ignore, laugh at you, and/or spread malicious, unfair, and untrue gossip, stalk you on your personal social media, and escalating things until you are so beaten and bullied your only choice left is to quit. It really is like an elementary school playground only everyone is supposed to be and adult.
I absolutely do not recommend anyone work here in a support role. Particular caution should be paid if you are a person of color or a woman. The office largely contains a lot of people who have been here for many many years and you’ll find A LOT of favoritism and tight-knit cliques. It is difficult as a newcomer to find their place. There is a lot of politeness, but it can take a long time to feel fully welcomed and some never really are.
I was told that the office ran on a hierarchal class system, and support staff are low class and the Account Managers and Engineers and etc. are upper class and socializing between the two is discouraged. At the same time, I was also heavily criticized for not being social enough or not socializing in the right way and often held to an impossible double standard while watching trouble makers go completely unpunished leaving them to run wild wreaking havoc everywhere for pure amusement. I’m a minority, they are not. Additionally, you will find you will often not be invited to any team building events and team social events. It’s the whole low class/high class thing. Support staff are never invited to these. Exceptions being office-wide events like the holiday party. But team events – in this office, it’s extremely rare.
I haven’t gotten to the job yet… Here goes – you will do nothing in this role but file and schedule meetings. Additional duties are taking notes and assisting with meeting and event preparations and maybe on rare occasions other duties as they get to know your capabilities. However, this job is largely meeting scheduling and filing and that is it. I don’t care what the job description says. That’s the job. You will have a lot of down time to sit at your desk and find ways to entertain yourself. You can ask for work, but they prefer to do the work themselves despite being super busy. Never take this personally. It’s on them. It was my understanding people previously in my role had the same experiences with their job duties, or lack thereof.
I will end by saying there are no opportunities for growth or advancement unless you are presently in school training or plan to return to school. There isn’t anywhere for you to go here.
