SHI Integration Center in Piscataway, NJ
Pros
- Good place to get your foot in the door in the IT industry, as there is a lot of cool and expensive technology to work with - Great work/life balance; work usually stays at work - Lots of overtime available if you are willing to do it - Good amount of vacation/sick days for new employees - Free gym across both locations with staffed trainers - The work is boring but pretty easy, and there is occasional downtime depending on the time of year - If you show up to work and do the bare minimum it’s practically impossible to get fired
Cons
- If Headquarters is where the business of SHI gets done, the Integration Center is where the physical labor gets done. The Integration Center is a warehouse, so the work is warehouse-environment “factory” work. As a Data Center Technician you are unboxing servers, racking and stacking, and cabling racked servers. The work is a step-above retail work; it’s mindless, manual labor. You can train anyone on how to cable a server in a few days, if that. - Extremely low salary for the IT industry. They try to “compensate” for that with quarterly bonuses that are then taxed heavier than your paycheck would be, why not just pay the employees a higher base salary and get rid of bonuses entirely? - Quarterly bonuses fluctuate based on “performance” when in reality it’s middle and upper management that approve the bonuses; the upper managers rarely take the time to even get to know your name. - Terrible place to work for recent graduates as its a dead end, low paying job that doesn’t require a college degree whatsoever; it’s a revolving door regarding employee turnover. - Integration center employees are practically viewed as second-class citizens in SHI, as the HR department pushes all issues involving the Integration Center to the side. For example, female employees have been harassed by other employees and some employees have even been caught with drugs at work, those people were never fired. - There’s a toxicity and negative work environment as most people are dissatisfied with the company and their practices; they feel slighted and underpaid. - Even if you are “salaried”, you have to clock in/out to record time, including lunches; managers can be strict about tardiness. - You are expected to “look busy” even when there is absolutely no work to do, as there are periods of the year when work slows down significantly. - Mandatory 1-hour lunch every day in addition to a 8-hour shift; 9-hour work day every day. - Even if you are qualified, its mandatory to work 1 year before being promoted to a new role or to Headquarters; this practice is absurd. - Middle management is useless as most middle managers don’t care about their employees and only get involved when something goes wrong. - Cameras everywhere that upper management watches; this creates a “big brother” mentality while working. - Loosely enforced “no phone” policy. - And finally, you need to pass through an airport-like security scanner before leaving the building.
