Pros
None to list, my pay was low and the workplace awful
Cons
I was only working at Techys2u for a short period of time, simply because it was a truly terrible and toxic place to work. I was employed as a First Line IT Technician & Content Creator, as I have experience in both of these fields. I was incredibly excited for the opportunity to have a job where I was able to pursue both of these passions of mine, but even from the first week it was immediately clear that this workplace was toxic, full of burnt-out staff and malpractice from management. Firstly, there are numerous aspects of the employement contract that had I known were there, I would not have quit my previous job and started this one, as I think they are simply wrong and disrespectful to expect employees to comply with, some of these being: - 4 Weeks notice required to book any annual leave - Expectation of additional working hours over those contracted (despite my annual salary being low for this type of work) - 'We encourage employees to take working lunches' - in a world where every other company is encouraging employees to take care to maintain a healthy work-life balance Had I been aware of any one of these aspects of the contract before starting, I would not have taken the job. The contract was even used against me when I said I would not work on a Saturday (despite none of our large customers requiring our help at weekends) in exchange for a McDonald's breakfast. In my first week, none of my equipment or accounts had been set up, meaning I was not able to contribute to the team and was effectively just twiddling my thumbs all day, despite the company having weeks of notice that I was joining. Once my equipment was finally set up, I then got to using the Task Management system which is beyond a joke! Tasks and customer information is all managed within a piece of software first released 31 years ago, which comes with a whole host of issues, such as not being able to pull up more than one task or customer information at a time. The software also constantly crashed, meaning I was constantly having to fill time on the phone to customers while I tried to fix my own IT issues. In the first week, other engineers made it clear that there are fundamental problems with the management of the company, and only a few weeks in I was told I had to go to a meeting in my own free time to discuss how we as engineers were going to try and fix the company - despite all problems being with management. I raised a number of concerns at this meeting, none of which were actioned and simply ignored. Thankfully, I kept my notes from this meeting, and some of the issues I raised were: - Concerns about overtime, any other skilled worker is reimbursed (with cash, not McDonalds) for working overtime, why do management think this is okay? - All engineers seem to be in a constant state of burnout - {Our CRM/Task Managment System} is not functional and the MD has stated he is not willing to switch to another software - Why is it encouraged for employees to take working lunches, it suggests to me a lack of care about employee's work-life balance - When I spoke to the MD about my concerns about work-life balance, he said he 'has a problem with the term work-life balance', does he not understand that his staff have much more important things outside of work? - Excessive paper processes, why as an IT company are all processes done on paper? I raised this several times with the management and it seems to have been ignored. Every time any change had to be made (something as small as changing a user's last name for example), a 6-page document had to be printed out from Microsoft word, along with many other pointless and tedious paper processes - In my second week, I tried to address a lot of my issues with the MD's PA, and the issues were swept under the rug - As a result of stress from the job I began having health issues, these were discussed in detail I would rather keep between myself and my doctor, and despite this I was still deducted pay and expected to make up my hours spent at the doctors. - The MD is the only senior point of contact to manage the engineers, and he was regularly unavailable - The MD is clearly incredibly defensive whenever engineers try to raise issues with him, and will not implement the changes being suggested During my time at the company, I had numerous 1:1's the MD's PA, and I made my thoughts and emotions very clear, and despite this nothing changed. At some point in my weeks there, the management obviously clocked on to the fact I was hoping to leave the company, and as such decided to throw as many tedious tasks my way as they could, including going through and taking a stocktake of all of our ethernet cables (despite one having been done only a few weeks earlier by me, and the fact we had an admin team that could assist with this while I cover more technical work) and the job that was the biggest kick in the teeth, taking all of the change request forms backdating to 2019, manually unstapling all of them, then having to scan them back in to the computer and organise in appropriate folders! Firstly, why was I as an engineer assigned this task when we have an admin team, and secondly, what was the point in printing them in the first place?! This task was in my opinion just to punish me for trying to leave the company. I believe I handed in my notice the week after this though so they couldn't have continued this behaviour The other engineers I worked with were good, and I feel incredibly sorry for them if they are still working at the company, as from the second I started to the second I left, most of them seemed burnt-out and miserable. A few weeks after I finished here, I went back to return my uniform, and as a first for me I had to fill out... more tedious paperwork! To give back a couple of t-shirts and a jumper - this suggests to me nothing has changed at the very least on the pointless paperwork front. Since I took this job and during my time here, I've spoken with a few people from around Stourbridge that happen to know the MD personally (as I am also Stourbridge born and bred), and none have been suprised that I had so many issues working at the company. A family friend of mine even warned me before taking the job, and I wish for my own health (mental and physical) that I'd listened.
