An Apology To Customers and Future SolarCity Employees
Pros
The best thing about working for SolarCity was being able to resign and know it was my choice to leave the company. This is a rare thing. One day, my coworkers and I made a list of everyone that had left our office in the last 12 months. Out of 24 employees, only 2 resigned. The others were laid off or terminated.
Cons
To SolarCity Customers: Trust me - the front line employees of SolarCity are aware that the company is screwed up and makes customers really upset because bad/slow/non-responsive service is provided to them throughout the entire process after the contract is signed. The reality is management literally makes overnight decisions that are significant to the company's operation, but doesn't communicate the changes to all staff. For example, it's not uncommon for an employee to email a coworker and for them to reply and say that they have been moved to a new department and no longer are part of the procedure. The bad part is, no one has any idea who the new contact person will be to replace that person. So, employees can't help their customers with their issues if they literally cannot get information from within their own employer. To make it more complicated, it's not uncommon for newly formed departments to then be disbanded and laid off shortly after they are formed. Positions and departments also often get renamed or repurposed. This means that processes and contacts change yet again. Due to staff turnover, chances are whoever you talk to is really new and has no idea how to help you. The only training given is on some specific job duties. If you have a question about anything else, employees have no idea. As an employee, chances of getting information from other departments is just as good as yours is as a customer. With the rate of turnover, it doesn't take long for an employee to feel a sense of seniority and be promoted to management. As a manager, they scramble to make sure they look good to upper management, but they have no training on how to lead a team. What they end up doing is creating unrealistic quotas for employees, and work their employees to death. For example, designers have "24-hour challenges" to see who can push out the most amount of work. That's not healthy. All it does is burn out the employee. When that happens, management finds a way to terminate the employee and bring in someone fresh. The name of the game is numbers (quotes and $$). They don't care about employees or customers. Front line employees are left holding the bag. They do want to help their customers, but their hands are tied. They have no support from within to do so. To Future Employees: You're probably thinking that this is an exaggeration of the work culture and that if you get hired, things will be different and you'll be fine. I actually liked the company when I started, until I understood what was really going on. The reality is, if you can't suck up to upper management and immediately fall into the cult mentality, then you're not going to make it. If you know someone in upper management, then they will save you from some of the negative culture. It's very typical to hear rumors that headquarters is changing procedure and policy and that a new department will soon be created that will handle basically what your position does. It really doesn't make anyone feel secure that their job won't be eliminated. Lay-offs have been so common that on Friday mornings, coworkers would say goodbye to each other in case they were the next one to receive "the call". You'll watch as they company works to "tighten the belt", but you see upper management spending lavishly for company-wide meetings, parties, and while they travel on the company's credit card. It's perplexing. I'm not sure why upper management would lease Teslas for their friends who are also employees, or need to rent out entire auditoriums just to stream a meeting. A conference room isn't good enough? Don't come to SolarCity thinking that you'll have a different experience. I'm sorry, but you won't. You'll be as good as you can be at your job without having much training, a stable manager, a clear understanding of what's expected of you, cliquey coworkers, available resources to do your job, and a thick-enough skin to listen to the unhappy customers you desperately want to help, but can't. You'll cling to your job and try to ride out the turbulent and abrupt changes made in the company that make it impossible for you to be successful and try to ignore the rumors that your office will be next for lay-offs. You'll work hard for that promotion you were told about, but it likely won't happen. However, you'll reach a point where you discover you should get paid more and treated fairly, and that's when you'll resign. What a glorious day that is!
