Hilariously Outdated IT Infrastructure. Dishonest Leadership.
Pros
- Excellent Health Insurance rates - Pay rates are reasonable - A few managers and directors are making positive steps for their teams - If you live in southern PA, it's one of the closest Baltimore companies to commute to - If you can zone out, you can work here 40 years
Cons
- Absolutely unwilling to invest in proper technical infrastructure on the IT side. They claim otherwise. - Plays games with vendors; 0 interest in purchasing support for certain key vendors - Operating a 24x7 TV network without proper redundancy yields some interesting on-call weeks - Sub-par vacation policy, but you can reduce your salary for a 3rd week. -They claim this isn't 'buying' vacation. - Some teams can't even think about leaving the building to pick up food. Eat out of the vending machine and keep working! - Some teams have 0 camaraderie. Went to 2 Xmas parties by myself. Team of 6. - Commodities like packaging tape are strangely difficult to get purchased. - Everything is a priority, all the time. Nobody has the spine to set priorities, or push back on the chaos. - Dreariest place I've ever worked. Gray depressing walls. Nobody has fun, or takes pride in their work. Everything goes downhill year after year. Soulless. I served a 2 year sentence at this organization. I've never worked so hard to accomplish so little. During that time, I noticed a pattern of mid-management making promises, but never actually delivering. Core group of old-timers controls all planning, purchasing, and decision making for the department, regardless of their knowledge. New ideas are 'welcome' until someone decides to send an email and quietly kill them. If you go through 3 budget cycles and still can't get a $4B company to spring for a $10k project (despite telling you it's no problem to your face), something is very wrong. "Race to the bottom" was mentioned in another review, I think this is accurate. Do more with less is a great policy, but they take it to the extreme. There is a complete disconnect between upper management and reality. An organization that buys used crap IT equipment and shies away from building anything properly shouldn't be running a national infrastructure. Vendor support is non-existent for major vendors, because Sinclair doesn't want to pay for it. Any tools to automate or simplify a huge infrastructure are not considered, due to cost. If something breaks, just work harder to fix it. If they acquire more stations, you're just on call for more locations, that's all. 150 locations would probably necessitate a 24x7 NOC, but hey, on-call phones and burnt out employees are cheaper. It's a tall order for this organization to claim to be 'leading the industry'. It didn't feel 'leading' when a team of Engineers is on a call trying to resuscitate an 7 year old equipment with 0 vendor support at 2AM on Thanksgiving. Completely avoidable! Watched a Cloud project that could have taken them into the future get flat out killed because older staff didn't understand it. Very frustrating. The employee culture is 'at least we have jobs'. It's tough to get anyone motivated to do anything, because frankly, there's no budget or willingness to rethink anything. Just work harder. IT Employees may develop 'shell shock' from the constant, completely avoidable emergencies and break/fix nature of this organization. Training? Certifications? Industry conferences? Not happening. The goal is to keep buying TV stations nobody wants and throwing them on the pile. They are now starting to produce their own, second-rate content. You're witnessing the end of an industry. If you're in IT, and want to do something to further your career, skip this joint. Going from a cutting-edge company, to Sinclair, back to another cutting-edge company was a surreal experience.
