Deceptive interview, the people were on point and I was excited about starting. At the close of my first day I realized that this was the biggest career mistake I’d ever made; ever. I started the job search and quit within two months.
There are two IT managers that have absolute disdain for the CIO, perhaps this is because he has expectations and they’re not used to delivering. But all you'll hear from day one is how terrible he is, perhaps you’ll get the infamous story about him not wanting people to bring drinks to meetings. Seriously, these are the complaints, deliverables and no drinks in meetings. When I was told about new activities coming down the pike I was excited at being able to do something only to be told to ‘ignore Alan, we just appease him, he’ll be gone soon.’
Not to worry, they also complain and talk terribly about their counterparts, their immediate managers and your co-workers and all by the end of your first week. My manager said the most unprofessional things about her team, behind closed doors of course. She told me about all of their flaws, their lack of work, etc. then would open another book and surf the net. It's okay, her team took the time to catch me up on her and others in the group as well. That was the end of my first week, I knew that none of them respected each other and all smiled at each other and pretended to like each other; such a social group of people talking smack; ugh, 4th grade all over.
The manager I reported to was running her team by reading from books and internet site information, there was no practical experience. After I was hired, there was no interest in the experience I brought, only what the books said. The team appeared content with the lack of deliverables, though "there was a lot to do." There is a spreadsheet of nothings that they measure their work load by. As a new employee I was able to add twenty items of nothings to the worksheet (required that I add every little thing a normal person does in a work day). The praise received for everything I was doing solidified my decision to leave.
My manager couldn't understand why the department wasn't gaining credibility. Well, when you read from a book or a website about how IT processes are implemented and assume that one size fits all, you're going to fail and never be invited to participate. Saying this in more polite ways was not appreciated; candor, no matter how polite is a bad thing here.
The only IT managers that seemed to have a clue was the IT Engineering and Service Desk managers, the others were really lacking. The IT PMO is a hot mess with a lot of head count, so that’s an area to be avoided.
I met a few people that really wanted to work, accomplish things and work towards the deliverables the CIO laid out, the problem is that nobody is fired and the excess of lazy people doing the least that they can, brings down the entire area. AE’s IT area needs a thorough house cleaning, but with taking years for termination (non-union) or transfers (union), it won’t happen. So unless you need the paycheck, save yourself the aggravation of being sold through the interview process of big things that need to get done, only to find that you’ll get dusty sitting in the chair with nothing to do.
