I had two very different experiences at i3. My first role involved working remotely in Huntsville at corporate HQ for a customer located in another city. I had a great supervisor that I really got along with. Work was very interesting - I would’ve liked to have continued this work, but I had to change roles for reasons that aren’t relevant to my review. My second role was a different experience - although the work was boring, the job was easy, low stress, and the pay was good. Unfortunately I had a customer that was hands-off and MIA whilst taking maximum advantage of teleworking for two years during the COVID pandemic. I also frequently witnessed my supervisor angrily lashing out at different members of the team with insults/verbal abuse (mostly directed at my team-lead, and never directed at me personally). Even witnessed him slamming phones in close proximity, which made me uncomfortable to say the least. To be fair, he was under a lot of pressure to deliver analysis results and briefings with little-to-no notice from customers. I got along with my coworkers and immediate management for the most part, but much of their political and religious tirades really bothered me. I often heard fundamentalist “Christian” bible-thumping, bigoted, homophobic, hyper-partisan remarks. Some of it from i3 personnel, some of it also from non-i3 contractors on our team. I tried to steer the conversations away from that toxic rhetoric when possible, but it was a challenge. Sometimes I would walk into the lab and feel as though church was in session (with the typical hateful, un-Jesus like Alabama values being preached). One person (a non-i3 employee, but someone with whom I interacted on a daily basis) said what I regarded to be one of the worst things I’ve ever heard - they said that the wildfires in California were God’s “judgement” on the people for their “wicked ways”. I was stunned when I heard this, but this is just one example of the kinds of things I frequently heard. That said, I felt the team really did care for my well-being, and I cared for them as well. I felt so conflicted at times because I really disagreed them, but at the same time I wanted to find more areas of agreement in order to better get along with them. Bottom line - i3 is overall a great company, but be careful if you accept a position onsite at Redstone Arsenal. If, like me, you dislike hearing and engaging in divisive religious and political rhetoric, then you may want to stick to roles at corporate HQ. I felt like the setting at HQ was much more professional and tame. I had an overall positive experience at i3, and really didn’t want to leave. But I don’t miss having to listen to all the negativity and highly controversial subjects day after day...
