Pros
- Full-time employment with benefits. Many call centers only offer part time, offer no benefits, and use a contractor model instead of making you an employee. - Work from home is usually worth somewhere between $1/hour and $3/hour in depending on your situation. Crunch the numbers and see what it's worth to you. - Benefits are still pretty solid (better than most call centers). I am very skeptical of it remaining this way much longer, however, as the new management continues to cut costs. - Despite the significant downsides, SDC can potentially be VERY good for a couple of specific situations; 1. If you're young or still in school and need some basic IT experience. 2. If you're switching careers and need basic IT experience. 3. It can also be a good in-between stop for more experienced IT people in need of solid full-time work. - Some supervisors are pretty great and do care about their agents. - Sometimes overtime is available for those who would like to earn a little extra money. - Working for different departments/clients can sometimes make the job more interesting - Schedules are based on performance.
Cons
- In the summer of 2016 there was a hostile takeover of the company by a group of hedge funders. This was, to put it very mildly, not a good thing for employees. The group's usual agenda is 1. Hostile takeover 2. Aggressive cost cutting. 3. Sell the company. - For 3+ years now the company has been trying to transition away from its core Call Center business and become primarily a SaaS company that sells their Support.com Cloud software. This transition has basically failed, causing the stock value to plummet from around $7-$8 down to less than a dollar. The company even had to do a 3:1 stock split just to avoid being de-listed by NASDAQ. - Despite the above failure and the fact that the Call Center makes up the vast majority of employees and continues to bring home the vast majority of the company's bacon, upper management continues to treat the Call Center like an unloved stepchild. Work for a very successful department that brings in a nice new profit for SDC? They'll "reward" you by cutting your department to the bone, burning you out, and generally treating you like garbage. Basically, if you work in SDC's Call Center, you're in a part of the company that they've very publically been trying to phase out for years now. The disconnect is almost total. - Crude, detached cost-cutting with no regard for what it does to employees. Deliberate under-staffing to the point of risking large contracts. - Massive increases in expected volume and productivity with no compensation, understanding, or mercy. "Deal with it or get out". - Get screamed at by angry customers all day. You'll need some serious patience to be able to do the job well and not lose your cool. - Deliberate "churn and burn" style management designed to work you as hard as possible, burn you out, discard you, and replace you with a fresh and naive new recruit that has no idea what they're getting into. This has gotten much worse under the new ownership/management. - There used to be "All-Hands Meetings" where the old CEO would let everyone know what was going on with the company and answer questions from anyone. The new management/ownership just keeps employees in the dark. Zero meaningful communication from Corporate since the takeover. - There were also employee committees designed to address various issues with the goal of gradually making things better for employees. These committees have gone nowhere under the new management and for all practical purposes have ceased to exist. - Supervisors and lower/middle management are almost comically overworked to the point where they can't keep up and are not in touch with agent concerns. Many sups are scared of actually empathizing with agents for fear of losing their own jobs. - Raises? No raises. Ever. Realistically, the only meaningful pay increase for most agents is going to be eventually moving from RST to PTE (from $10.25 to $13.50). Supervisor doesn't pay enough to be worth it. Trainer pays decently, but there are very few of them and no clearly defined path to become one. - The meager Pay for Performance bonuses are a double-edged sword. It's nice to have the extra money, but being a top agent puts a target on your back. You will be audited, nitpicked, and harassed to the point where there are numerous top agents that very deliberately find ways to keep themselves out of the top rankings. Meanwhile, mediocre agents fly under the radar, do far less work, do poor quality work, but are largely just ignored/left alone unless they are extraordinarily bad. - HR is so laughably out of touch that they have repeatedly fired and tried to fire people that were hit by hurricanes. They casually disregard important requests, etc. They do. not. care. Neither does management. You're a set of metrics to them, not a human being. - "Command Center" (the people who manage queues, etc) was off-shored to some random company where the new Command agents barely even understand what their job is and clearly have no understanding of SDC or the various clients SDC represents. The savings can't possibly be worth the (sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic) chaos this has created. - Morale in most departments is abysmal. Brand new employees are often positive ("Whee, I work from home now!"), but way too many experienced agents are angry, bitter, and burned out with no end in sight. The work environment (even though it's mostly just chat) is an endless toxic swamp of negativity. If the work doesn't burn you out, the endless negativity of your coworkers will. In summary: If you're going to work for SDC, don't just hang around year after year without a plan. It is really not the kind of company where seniority or loyalty gets you anything. Know what you're getting into, and have a strategy. If you need experience, put in a year or two, do a good job, and then move on to something better as soon as you can get it. It's an IT starter job, not a career. Pro-tip: If you get hired as an RST, do everything you can to move to PTE, ASAP, as that is the only meaningful step up for most employees. Pro-tip 2: If you're going to put in some time at SDC, continue your education on the side. Get a degree. Get some certs. Learn something you've always wanted to learn. Just get some skills somehow. Those additional skills are your path to eventually finding a better job.
