The only plus side to my time there is that I have never seen an unemployment claim go through so fast. The WI unemployment office probably has a hilariously long history with this company. Considering this company's reputation in the area, I have half a mind to pretend I never even worked there going forward. There's this idea that it has never been easier to lie on your resume thanks to the internet. I would like to add to that and mention that it has never been easier for a company to lie about itself. These people know exactly how to hide just how poorly their business is run, and how little they value new hires. Just look at their marketing site, read that garbage and tell me it wasn't written by a clerk from Cousin's Subs trying to make their sandwiches sound like Gordan Ramsay made them.
You will be offered a position that you did not apply for – and you will not be able to change positions once you start. At some point during my time there I became aware of the fact that there were no fewer than 7 people with Comp Sci / Graphic Design degrees that were offered unrelated jobs and told when hired they could move into their desired positions. NONE of them successfully switched desks, and not surprisingly, NONE of them work at iNET anymore. During my time at iNET I probably saw 2 dozen people come and go... new hires, interns, 8 year veterans... the company is barely 4 dozen total btw.
You will not be trained - iNET does not employ anyone with enough experience to train you. Those kinds of employees are outside of iNET's business model, and those kind of activities are viewed as useless overhead. I was "trained" about HTML specifications that were 14 years out of date. INET does not train people, because they know anyone they train will eventually wake up to the job pool outside of Waukesha, and realize they're worth more money anywhere else in the world.
You will not be managed - iNET does not employ anyone with any experience to manage you. The projects have no defined standards or expectations, they just add / remove quality depending on how much money the project budget is. Starting out, you will work on the small throwaway projects alongside other similarly trained newbies, and you will all fall flat on your face. When I was given advice on how to develop sites faster, some real gems offered included things like “instead of naming a SCSS color variable '$white', name it '$w' to save time typing the other four letters.”
You will not earn a decent wage - I had to beg for a 1 year review, and afterwards was told that the CEO would need to be consulted regarding any raise I would get. I was told the CEO is moody, and that I to wait for the right time to bring up a raise. I had to wait one month to be told I was getting stiffed. Not one red cent. A year's worth of training myself, a year's worth of continuous, measurable performance increases, during historic gas prices and inflation, and iNET could not find enough money in the coffers to raise me up above gas-station wages.
You will not be mentored - iNET's ethos is basically "low retention is inevitable – why contain it?". Why waste time mentoring junior level employees when you can just replace them every 2 months? When you ask questions you will be talked down to, the people who answer them will not even necessarily know the correct answer, and the best part: the time your team takes to answer your question will be logged on your project. I was told not continue my education for the sole reason that once I had a BS in Comp Sci I would quit and work somewhere else for a higher wage. A rare bout of honesty, I only wish it slipped out 12 months earlier.
You will compete with your own team - Every project is a silo, and the CEO fosters a workplace of competition, not teamwork.
You will not learn a single healthy professional habit – This company operates entirely outside of the box, they choose to ignore 40 years of proven process and guidelines.
You will be told to work hard while every tenured employee around you phones it in.
You will not be proud of the work you do. Every site looks the same. Every project is bid poorly. The proprietary CMS software is a joke. It is poorly maintained, has worse UX than Dwarf Fortress(google it), and overall feels like an aborted community college project designed by someone who has never used any software before – much less a web application. It isn't worth the hard drive it lives on. It's only saving grace is that it perfectly proves just how silver-tongued the salesmen are. Picture Wordpress if it existed in 1992, was designed by Jackson Pollock, and had 10% of the features. Every customer is laughed at behind their backs for being a good mark. You can't have scope creep if there is never a scope. The standards that do exist make no sense what so ever. Has anyone in the history of UX design heard of making submit buttons red? Why test sites on Firefox when EDGE has more users?
You will not be a part of the team - iNET has a core group of workers and you ain't in it.
tl;dr: If you're an entry level person, just get a job ANYWHERE ELSE and find a community online to help build your skills. Train yourself, because that is all iNET will tell you to do. Hell, work remote for some shady startup that will fold in a few months, it doesn't matter. INET is, without a doubt in my mind, the single most jacked-up business I have ever worked for... from the leadership down to the procedures and product. I wish I was kidding. Very quickly it became apparent that they could not care less about my development as an employee. KwikTrip pays better than iNET does. iNET will use you, and no they won't buy you dinner first.
