SwitchThink Solutions Reviews

I interviewed with the Operations Manager and Director after what was essentially a brief 15-minute conversation consisting of a single question: “Tell us about yourself.” Based on my experience in credit union operations, system conversions, and automation (including OpCon workflow design), I was verbally offered the role the same day. However, the final offer came in $3,000 lower than what had been discussed with the recruiter, reportedly to reduce recruiting costs, which raised early concerns about internal alignment. Training was largely unstructured. Only a couple of tenured team members made meaningful efforts to help with onboarding, while most processes had to be learned independently despite the complexity of the systems involved. After a few months it became clear that many operational processes were heavily manual and had not been revisited for efficiency improvements. For example, disk usage for roughly 80+ hosted client environments was being gathered manually by connecting to each environment individually and recording values in Excel. This process took roughly two hours. I created a PowerShell script that automated the process and reduced the task to a few minutes. While the automation worked effectively, there appeared to be limited appetite for process improvement or automation initiatives. Operational alerting was also centralized in a single shared inbox for dozens of clients. During busy processing periods this created large email backlogs and made prioritization difficult. Suggestions to introduce segmentation and prioritization for time-sensitive items such as ACH processing were not implemented. Similarly, communication with clients during environment upgrades was handled by teams who were not always provided with technical requirements ahead of time. I proposed a simple intake questionnaire template that could be used to align expectations between teams and clients prior to upgrades, but the idea was not adopted. There were also challenges related to testing and deployment practices. Automation scripts were sometimes developed without dedicated test environments, which created operational risk when changes needed to be validated. Overall, the organization appeared resistant to process improvement, automation, and operational modernization. Employees who enjoy optimizing workflows, introducing automation, or improving operational efficiency may find the environment frustrating.

The company culture is nothing like Desert Financial's. As a former employee of both, I can attest that the positive and collaborative culture that surrounds DFCU is nowhere to be found at SwitchThink. I cannot speak to all teams, but the majority of employees I came across were extremely overworked & overstretched. This problem appears to stem from the (S)VP level down. SwitchThink is a Managed Services Provider (MSP). They cleverly avoid this label by referring to themselves as a CUSO (Credit Union Service Organization). Any potential employee should understand the culture that comes with working at an MSP. The workload is only ever growing with the addition of each client, with no end. Growth takes precedence over the quality of service provided or the quality of life. There is no downtime to work on upskilling/learning beyond your role. Your tenure will be spent with your head below water, just occasionally coming up to breathe. The technical side isn't anything to write home about either, at least not positively. The amount of manual work that is required for each client is not scalable. Tasks that should've been automated 20+ years ago (not an exaggeration) are still done manually. In a role where the acceptable error rate is 0%, the goal should be to minimize human interaction, not solely rely on it for day-to-day, if not hour-to-hour, operation. You will find yourself performing tasks that are extremely repetitive and menial for potentially hours a day. Any attempt to improve or automate is swiftly rejected, with you being told that other teams are responsible and to focus on your role. With enough exposure, you're bound to make an error. The hope is that it's one that minimally impacts the client. It's simply a numbers game; you will have a human moment. If there's no impact to a client, you win. If there is an impact, do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly to jail. You will find yourself completely misaligned from the company's goals. You will dread the news of a new client, knowing just how much additional work you're going to have to complete in the same amount of time with a 0% error rate. Trust your gut. Ask details about scheduling and On-Call expectations early on. Pay close attention to those you encounter, even from a prospective employee's perspective, if you look/listen close enough, you will notice just how tired & overworked everyone seems.