Pros
***The employees are some of the most amazing, talented, hard-working, and smart people I have ever met.*** The president is an extremely charismatic speaker. He really knows how to inspire, and is a good salesman. There is fewer office politics there than many places. It only really has one "clique", but nepotism can disrupt team unity. This didn’t bother me, (I don’t golf,) but my heart went out to the guys who were left out who wanted to go. HDT is a small, local business. They host frequent company events, usually a booth at Eat the Streets on Fridays, where participation is voluntary. The company also volunteers for community and social causes, and almost everyone participates. Everyone works very hard, salaried employees work upwards of 80 hours a week at times.
Cons
HDT seems to be suffering the effects from such a bad economy / financial hardship. This is never discussed with the team, but there are signs of money trouble everywhere. They have switched to cheaper equipment to save money, they haven’t replenished office supplies in the last 2 months, and they have made severe and unexplained reduction in the workforce. For those who onboard, the experience seems highly inconsistent depending on the department and role you are hired for. Some departments had better management than others; some managers take the time to train new recruits, some do not. My manager worked 12-hour days, and he was so busy reacting to issues and putting out fires, he didn’t invest any time into leadership, employee development, training, or providing necessary feedback for optimal learning and continuous improvement. I didn’t receive meaningful training until 6 weeks into the role. When I voice my concerns about not being trained (to do the important tasks that I knew if done incorrectly, could potentially bring down the entire network!), we agreed on a training plan consisting of 30-minute brief training every other day, with once a week for a longer 1 hour training session. My manager only scheduled three meetings, however they were incredibly productive and effective. He is a great teacher when he takes the time, and I am confident if we were able to fulfill the agreed training plan, that it would have been very effective. The job had a lot of end goals, without providing the means to accomplish them. There was no direction, and no authority or access was granted to get anything accomplished. For example: Inventory: I have a strong background in asset management, so I was excited to tackle this challenge. My manager put a hold on it from the start, indicating it was pointless to start inventorying until there was some place to put the data. (he didn’t want to use spreadsheets) I started researching and testing semi-automated software which would increase efficiency and accuracy over manual entry. Management vetoed all suggestions, stating a new requirement that any Asset Management system needed to integrate into the accounting software, Hostbill. Later he mentioned that the developers stopped working on the inventory integration because they were too busy. It was frustrating because the lack of an accurate inventory affected the entire company significantly, and we had no way to measure how much. When the VP and the CIO asked me to list equipment they wanted to sell on eBay, I wanted to start right away, but my supervisor immediately put an indefinite hold on that, stating he needed to go down and verify that they didn’t need the equipment. first. He never actually checked. I was never given the okay to proceed. I learned early in that my manager did not appreciate me taking initiative, so I quickly fell into line. Of course, everyone had their fair share of power struggles and office politics, and the office bully was reasonably subtle about her control tactics. Typical stuff.