Pros
You work from home. You get health benefits.
Cons
Do not expect to fix challenging problems or really learn anything. You will learn a few procedures to fix common problems and escalate or refund the rest (due to the time it would take for you to fix it being more then an hour) This job is 90% customer service. Being able to smile (or sound like you are happy, technically) to a belligerant, spiteful, terrible person is the true job description. Stagnant pay. There was one pitiful .25/hr raise 3 years ago that maybe 10% of the employees were eligible for. Working from home. It starts as a pro, but as you do it more and more it becomes a con. You have no line to separate work from home. You never meet your co-workers. There is no time for 'water cooler' conversation. Your only method of communication is monitered 24/7 by the company. Working from home means that the software on your machine tracks how you spend your time all 8 hours of your shift. If you go over on break for 30 seconds expect to get a torrent of IMs asking where you are. You have to ask permission to use the restroom, to account for the time it takes, or do it in a way that nobody knows you went. My 4th anniversary at the company I didn't even get an email. I don't think any of us have been here 5 yet the company is so young. Some people report getting water bottles or a cheap wifi mouse as a 3 or 4 year 'bonus' There used to be a shift differential if you worked night or overnight hours. (A vast majority of shifts are evening/night) They removed that, which equates to a 10% pay cut for most of the employees. It was replaced with a quarterly reward system, where if you are in the top 5% of metrics you get a $200 (taxable) bonus. Which before taxes equates to less then .10/hr over your past 4 months salary. There are lesser bonuses going down to the top 20% I believe, but its just them throwing pennies at you. Terrible hours. Expect to work weekends and nights. Expect to not have a social life if your friends/family are 9-5ers. I haven't had a weekend off (without using PTO/Vacation time) in 4 years. Never ending workload. It is a call center. There is constantly a queue. A never ending queue. You will be lucky to get 30 seconds between calls. When the queue is gone, they offer to let engineers leave early so it will return. People basically fight for one of 10 slots to leave early. Employees would rather lose 2-4, sometimes all of thier shift just to not have to work. Having those people leave means the work for you increases if you stay. There is no light at the end of the tunnel, you can't see a goal to reach for the day. Its just a machine constantly throwing piles and piles of work at you for 8 hours, its incredibly demoralizing. When shift bids happen, approximately 6 months apart. There will be about 50 shifts to choose from. Maybe 3-4 of those will be reasonable for your lifestyle, the rest will uproot you. If you have family commitments, or even a weekly get together with friends, expect to never be able to plan for it again. You will almost certainly be working weekends and/or evening+nights. Since we are 24/7 nationwide, east cost techs have to work till 2am to cover for west coast customers. Expect to re-plan your lifestyle every 6 months. Since its inception, raises were said to start happening when the corporation turned profit. Some of us toiled away for several years with that as the light at the end of our tunnel. Of course when the time came all we got was a 30 minute video of excuses saying why that couldn't happen. Raises are indefinately delayed. The customers are horrible. They are some of the most jaded, insecure, and spiteful people I have ever had to deal with. I had better experiences waiting tables and working in a retail store. The only worse interactions I could imagine would be from working a cold call sales or a collections center. Most resent having to pay for tech support. There are loonies, rude people, people you won't be able to understand at all. Many will not be able to follow simple directions. You don't expect them to be computer gurus (that's why they call) but some people will be unable to follow the most simple of directions. Getting some people to find the arrow keys on the keyboard will be a 5 minute task. This would not get on my nerves if it wasnt for your handle time ticking away. Slowly adding up into forcing your next shift being tursday-monday 6pm-230am. The only thing keeping me here is fear. If I did not fear that not working here would mean having to work minimum wage at some retail store because of the economy, I would have left long ago. Treat this job as a means to an end. It will never be a career. You are a cog in a machine that is being poorly maintained.
