Pros
There's a lot of good to be said about Storage Etc. Working for this company was great if you like to be challenged, physically and mentally. There were always surprises and a variety of colorful customers/ tenants that kept it interesting. The District Managers and upper execs were all nice and they tried to cultivate a family atmosphere, through bi-monthly conference calls with all employees. They shot trivia questions at you for cash prizes and made the meetings as positive and fun as possible.
Cons
According to ZipRecruiter, the average annual pay for a Storage Unit Manager in California is $49,207/ year - approximately $23.66 an hour. This company paid their Managers nowhere near that. Assistant Managers are entry level and start at minimum wage which is fair enough as they took on people with no property management experience and gave them some training. But most Managers who had been with the company 3+ years were frustrated by the fact that they were still hovering just above minimum wage, even when you included the bonuses that you got when you hit all your monthly and quarterly evaluation markers. Unfortunately, even though I loved my job, it was just not enough to survive on in Los Angeles, and not enough given the work and responsibility involved in the day to day running of a large commercial enterprise. Annual reviews were usually delayed by months, some even by years. Granted, they gave you the back pay that you're owed but the raises began at around 3% and were seemingly reduced by 0.1% for each infraction against policy that they deemed you had in the previous year. I've heard Managers say they were "hoping for a 0.75 cent raise this year because at least it would beat the raise I got last year". Not a very motivating approach, if you ask me.
