Lack of Structure, Communication, and Accountability - Anonymous employee Aqueity Employee Review

I have worked at several MSP companies over the course of my career, and while every company has its issues, I do feel that Aqueity makes a genuine effort to make sure their staff is taken care of. There is a collaborative team culture, and people are always willing to help when needed. Leadership is approachable and available.

Some processes are still being developed and/or adjusted, so this can make task ownership unclear at times.

Looks decent on a resume. If you need to break into the industry, you can do that here. Then get out as fast as humanly possible. The good news is that almost every employee already has an exit plan, so feel free to ask them for advice.

Waited a while to post this because, unfortunately, Max is as smart as he is spiteful. Very. This is truly the worst company I have ever worked for. MSPs are already known for overworking their service desks, and Aqueity seems to treat that as a business model. PTO feels like a sin here. While some companies offer unlimited PTO, Aqueity practically offers unlimited overtime instead. You will feel pressured to work every waking minute of your life. Hope you enjoy 3 a.m. fire alarms because a server decided to restart itself. Over time, every good thing about the company was stripped away. Every small comfort or benefit disappeared one by one, almost like clockwork, every quarter. Early in my tenure, Max (CTO) threatened to fire the entire service desk team because of a minor client complaint. He then proceeded to tell us how every other department hated the service desk. That moment perfectly summed up management’s attitude toward the team: they did not respect the service desk, and at times it genuinely felt like they resented the people doing the work. You will be overworked, burned out, and eventually replaced. The turnover rate is extremely high. I have never seen so many people fired at one company and not just at the service desk level. Even high-ranking managers in other departments were pushed out after disagreeing with Max or Dan (CEO). The company culture runs on fear and pressure. Ironically, many former employees who were labeled “under-performers” have since moved on to significantly better roles at far better companies. That alone says a lot about leadership’s ability to recognize and retain talent. I watched several people at my level get promoted, and to be clear, many of them absolutely deserved it for the daily battles they dealt with. I was genuinely happy for them. What became difficult to ignore, however, was that despite consistently being one of the top metric performers on the team, I was passed over time and time again. The only conclusion I could come to was that promotions were influenced less by performance and more by personality fit and office politics. I consistently crushed metrics, but because I used my downtime to actually decompress instead of pretending to stay busy, I was viewed as “lazy” by management. Ironically, the #2 performer at the time operated the same way I did. Both of us were repeatedly passed over while promotions went to lower-performing employees who were simply better at navigating office politics. And by “office politics,” I do not mean becoming friendly with leadership. That is largely impossible. The real game is learning how to stay quiet, avoid attention, and never give management a reason to place a target on your back.