Taken advantage of - Pod Captain/Field Tech/Mentor Cielo Employee Review

1.0
20 Oct 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great coworkers. Most team members are supportive of one another.

Cons

For the longest time before I was promoted to a Pod Captain, I was a “subject matter expert” for the team. In this role, being a SME meant more than just being the go to person for any questions that the team may have. I dealt with escalations, managed a team of up to 10 members, coached the team, led team huddles, and oversaw an entire process on my own. However, I was getting paid LESS than the people working under me. I was asked to complete responsibilities that were NOT in my job description with NO compensation. This went on for two years and every single time I brought this up to my managers, I got brushed aside. When they finally promoted me to a Pod Captain, I quit after a month because that promotion meant nothing to me. I’ve pretty much been doing the job of a Pod Captain for years with no recognition or compensation. I felt undervalued and unappreciated. On top of all that, when I quit, my boss reached out to me and asked me why I quit and what I think needs to be improved on the team. I told them that I felt unappreciated and as a SME for two years, no one recognized my work. I told them that whoever becomes a SME after me needs to be promoted to at least a Senior role. This is a leadership position and no longer a regular TAC role. My boss told me that since she joined the team a year ago, she always thought we should be SMEs bc of the work we do. This made extremely upset that she recognized the issue and never made an effort to change that. YOUR DELIVERY LEADERS DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR SUCCESS. In terms of process improvements, it was very difficult to get my Delivery Leads to help me resolve issues. Sometimes when I see an issue and bring it up in our meetings, my Delivery Leads just smiled and acknowledged the issue, but made ZERO efforts fo fix the issue. After a few weeks, the Delivery Leads only stepped in because the issue got escalated by upper management and the client. This could have been avoided had they stepped in when I asked them to. Finally, the work started to take a toll on my mental health. The last 6 months of my time with Cielo, I found myself working 10-12 hours a day. During our leadership meetings, there were other pod captains or SMEs that would break down crying because the process was all over the place and we found ourselves being pulled in a million directions. We made suggestions and asked our leaders for help. We received little to no support from our delivery leaders. This went on for months. There is an issue if everyone is crying and breaking down during the meetings. But of course, our delivery leaders weren’t bothered by it at all.

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Cons

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3.0
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Pros

well established clients. Interesting projects; friendly coworkers

Cons

No bonus, no merit increase pay out over the last 4 years. They say they want to strenghten their customer relationships and allocate more to AI but this is the worst way to do it. If your team went above and beyond and secured continuing business the bare minimum is a small merit increase. Growth opportunities for high performing employees will bring you more business. There is nothing to look forward to aside from a paycheck and contract renewal every 6 months.

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