Pros
Outside the IT department, I exhibited a positive atmosphere. A nicely kept facility and friendly employees with a healthy sense of pride and commitment affiliated with brand. IT manager is not management material, but is intellectual with a clear understanding of necessary infrastructure.
Cons
The IT department struggles to sustain itself, poorly managing department's resources. From my observations, this style of management is responsible for elevated turn-over rate, dissatisfied workers and weakened interdepartmental productivity. At hire, I was promised training in areas including e-warranty system, culture and technical requirements. This was to be provided by the IT manager, though he was consistently on the road and reserved no more than an hour for formal training. With little to no training, I built a Wyki around my responsibilities to perform as best as I could. Additionally, I worked 6-10 hours/wk off-the-books to further ensure my success. Because of these efforts, I satisfied 95% of IT and e-warranty requests/faults without escalating matters. In fact, I managed to satisfy everyone but my manager. This individual took each act of commitment as a pretentious attempt to make him look bad. Attempts to explain myself only increased friction. I will outline an example of these day-day dynamics below: One of our offices requested a new barcode scanner to read smaller barcodes. This would increase efficiency and accuracy while entering critical data. When I brought it up with management, he stated the barcode was too small, it was a bug within their software that produced the barcode and "a new barcode scanner will not work." With little additional effort, I requested the worker send the barcode to me and tested with our newer barcode scanner. My test was a success and I was confident that a newer, higher-resolution barcode scanner would work. I took this extra step in order to provide the best level of service; I did not care about being right or making myself look good. When I brought it up with manager again, however, it was very clear I had crossed a line and defied him. He had no intention of replacing barcode scanner. But because I indicated the barcode scanner would work with employee, she escalated the matter to her manager. This manager reached out to us requesting new barcode scanner to resolve problem. Unknown to me, my manager had previously communicated to them that a newer scanner would not suffice. But this manager now knew from my tests it would. Our department had to comply and replace the scanner. A week later, I was thanked by this manager for helping resolve issue. My manager was copied on this note. He took this opportunity to re-open the matter and insist again that I made him look bad. While this may have been true, it was not on account of my intentions. Anytime I tried to take ownership of something, I was crucified. It was disheartening, because there was no compassion given on account of my limited training/time on job or the amount of added effort/overtime I contributed. It's these types of situations that made my dismissal less of a surprise. I only wish this friction could have been remediated by a third party along the way. But I knew if I were to request such remediation, it would only be one more act of defiance. I was let go in less than 60 days for "not growing fast enough." I had my laptop and job description at closing interview. The president and HR looked confused when I touched on each element in my job description. They urged me to go on while I demonstrated my contributions. My rebuttal seemed well received and I amicably departed with a valuable lesson. This is private sector corporate, where contributions are locked behind a gatekeeper that has definitive say. It's a shame because I had wholly dedicated myself to providing a level of customer service, on par with their product.
