Best place I've ever worked!
Pros
I've worked in several other IT jobs and they were all terrible. I've loved my job at Sweetwater since I started here. So the contrast between jobs I hated and a job I love has been night and day. I hope I work here until I retire. The managers are kind and helped me do my job better. They are leaders, not bosses. They are highly open to innovation and ideas. So when I made a suggestion or had an idea I wanted to try, the answer was usually "yes". My current boss has been a great mentor to me as this is my first managerial job. He's helped me learn and grow as a manager and has the knowledge and experience to back it up. The overall culture at sweetwater is excellent too. There's a culture of excellence with an understanding of humanity too. We change and grow really fast here, but we also understand that people are humans and wont be perfect. In fact, there's a plaque in my director's office that says "I learned an expensive lesson at Sweetwater". It's for when we in IT cause a BIG problem that affects the whole company. All the people who's names are up there have not been fired. We do post-mortums after each incident to see how we can learn from it and prevent it in the future. Team culture is really good. I love my team and they make things so much better. Everyone is helpful on my team and striving towards excellence. We ask each other a lot of questions and collaborate on tons of work. There's not a single person on my team that I'd say is dead weight or drags the team down. Upper management also seems to be pretty cool. I've worked closely with most of the C-level execs including the CEO. They all are really nice and patient. They don't treat IT like their servants and try to do alot of stuff on their own. We do weekly 1on1s with our manager. It's a chance to have their ear and talk about whatever is on our minds. I really value this meeting and enjoy the relationship it helps me build with my manager. It really helps to build trust and allows me a chance to discuss all the things that are important to me. Finally, my boss helps fight against me working past my 40 hours. I'm salaried so I don't get overtime. He makes sure I don't over extend and believes that if I have to spend more than 40 hours a week to complete my work, we should hire a second person. They're also really flexible when I have things like Dr appointments, car repairs, etc. They say as long as I make up the time, it's fine. I know not every department is able to be like that, but it's really nice in IT. That's really encouraging and helps me protect my work/life balance.
Cons
The pace of change can be daunting at times. For example: in IT just this year, we've implemented a new ticket system, a new phone system, a new DNS/DHCP system, cut the whole company over to M365 and we're just starting Q4. But all that change is because we're growing so fast and our systems need to scale with us. A good team dynamic and attentive managers helps us get through the incredible pace of change. Also, communication can be difficult. With all these changes happening so quickly, many changes occur without our knowledge and we have to play catchup. I'm on the helpdesk and we often have to support a new solution that we just learned about the same day. That can be frustrating, but we've learned to roll with it. The troubleshooting method is our Bible and helps us navigate brand new systems with expertise. As a manager, communication is always a tricky thing and we're working to get better at that.