NCCER Reviews

My experience was defined by poor leadership, lack of structure, and a complete undervaluing of the production team. The pay alone should tell you how little this role is respected. The team is severely underpaid, even below the lower end of the average salary in Florida. $40,000 is the starting point and it would take you 10 years to get to 50,000. Even if you get a promotion - which there was no clear structure for and like fighting tooth and nail to get - will be a "raise" disguised as your normal yearly pay increase with more responsibility and a title change. I've seen that happen first hand. Meanwhile, people making two to three times more were the ones calling the shots despite having little to no understanding of the production process. Ex: Does not know what a slate is. That disconnect showed up in every project. There was no pre-production and anyone with at least a hour of experience in digital medial production knows how important this is. Projects were pushed forward without proper planning, no clear scripts or AI-Generated scripts, and no structured vision or guidance. What made it worse was that the marketing team, which should have been leading that effort, was either absent or not contributing in a meaningful way. Instead, those responsibilities fell onto the video production team. We were expected to handle scripting, concept, and pre-production on top of editing and production work, all without the compensation or recognition to match. It felt like being paid scraps while doing the work of multiple roles while others responsible for that work were fully compensated and received the recognition of a great job. With that being the issue with outward facing, PR, marketing media collateral - don't get me started on how craft pro went. With no pre-production and those making the decisions not knowing simple video production processes the process became constant damage control. Instead of focusing on creativity and making a great product, the job turned into fixing issues that should have been handled long before footage ever made it to the computer. The culture didn’t help either. Basic acknowledgment was lacking. It wasn’t uncommon for the CEO, to walk past employees without even a simple hello. That kind of behavior sets the tone, and it made it clear how those on the ground floor were viewed within the organization. At the end of the day, the experience felt like being overworked, underpaid, and overlooked, with little support from the departments that were supposed to make the process smoother and instead made the job 10x's harder. Cons: -Severely underpaid compared to industry standards -Leadership making decisions without production knowledge and don't listen to those who have the experience and training in the industry. -No real pre-production or planning process -team expected to take on multiple roles without compensation -Lack of respect from leadership