Pros
The initial onboarding provided some good learning opportunities. Co-workers were generally friendly and well-intentioned. Forces you to become highly independent and self-reliant in problem-solving. Really nice 9-5 work balance life that allowed me to have a social life! I learned ALOT, was really cool to be exposed to a complex environment mixed with different vendors and tech. I came out being more aware and understanding of just not help desk but networking, imaging, and security. It was nice of them to pay for my coursera subscription. It helped me keep up to pace with learning the new protocols.
Cons
Unsupportive & Contradictory Management: Leadership lacked interpersonal skills, creating a cold, "damned if you do, damned if you don't" environment. They were frequently too busy to assist, often telling staff to "use Copilot and figure it out." They would get frustrated when asked for validation or approval on tasks, yet would issue formal write-ups if I took the initiative to help an employee without consulting them first, citing that it was something I "should have known" required prior approval. I was also frequently tasked with management-level projects such as sourcing vendors and coordinating e-waste recycling with absolutely no credit or recognition. Perfect attendance and high dependability go completely unacknowledged. Misplaced Blame & Unfair Discipline: IT was regularly blamed and reprimanded for things entirely outside our control. I was held responsible when former employees failed to return their equipment (strictly an HR offboarding responsibility). I even received a formal write-up for deploying assets based on direct instructions from HR, simply because the offshore team hadn't officially assigned the ticket to me yet. Offshore Disconnect & Unbalanced Workloads: The department relies heavily on an offshore team, which caused frustrating workflow issues, compounded by language and cultural barriers. The offshore team would frequently reassign tickets to me without any notification or summary of the issue, making it difficult to jump in and help. Because end-users found it hard to communicate with the offshore team, employees constantly bypassed them to reach out to me personally. Furthermore, the offshore team observes significantly more holidays, leaving the tiny American staff (just 2 people) severely understaffed and unfairly burdened with the entire company's workload on those days. Task distribution was highly skewed; the offshore team was typically assigned low-risk, routine tasks, while I was consistently burdened with high-risk, complex issues without equitable support. Punished for Professional Courtesy (FedEx Labels): I took the initiative to learn how to create FedEx shipping labels to assist HR when they were unavailable. Instead of this being appreciated as a courtesy well outside my standard IT duties, I was yelled at and reprimanded whenever there was a communication error between management and the person requesting the assets. Even when having the flu that day and forgetting to put ground instead of express on the label, it ended up as a discplinary call to demand to be more focused. Workflow & Ticketing Issues: End-users frequently bypassed the official ticketing system via direct messages. Despite consistently asking them to submit tickets, they rarely did, resulting in a significant amount of uncredited work. Cross-Departmental Scapegoating: The sales department frequently used IT as a scapegoat, blaming minor tech inconveniences for their own inability to hit sales targets. Work Space; First it was very dirty from the previous guy, had to clean and vaccum everything myself. Sanitize the coffee station and lay out rat traps and deterants due to me finding dead mice around the offce. Below Market Pay: Compensation was roughly $10,000 below the industry average for the actual workload and responsibilities expected. Medicore health and dental and no other benefits like tuition reimbursement for my degree.
