Very, very toxic work environment. Often hostile, predatory and offensive interactions with management. All technical and junior staff feel marginalised, targeted and sidelined by other departments. The service desk, the employees who clients talk to the most are treated like dirt. The working conditions themselves are pretty bad. The office is old and poorly equipped. There is virtually no temperature control, with the heating not working in winters and A/C being unavailable during heatwaves. HR are very friendly with management. Often going out to drinks and meeting outside work. This makes it feel like there isn't a safe space to express grievances, legitimate issues, or to ask for help. While working in the office a head of department jokingly stated that members of the IT service desk have bad hygiene, HR found this funny and laughed. Service Desk employees are timed on their lunches, toilet breaks and are regularly reprimanded if their status shows as "away" for any period of time. Employees are told their workday does not include their lunch and this is technically unpaid. There is no compensation for working through lunches as employees are often encouraged to. Lunch times are dictated, and timed with extreme scrutiny if employees either start lunch late, early or end late. With managers expressing their frustration in front of everyone. The clients word is final. Engineers have been verbally abused over the phone and emails by users, with no reprecussions from the company. When complaints are raised, about users, or clients, engineers are gaslit, told it wasnt a big deal and are kindly asked to just get over it. Realistically, the above can all be chalked up to a bad corporate culture, one of mistrust and surveillance, but something that can be fixed with manager training and intervention from the CEO to make improvements. However there are two major issues with Instant On IT that any prospective employee should keep in mind. 1. Your colleagues will leave. Due to the above points and more. There is a revolving door of team members. Don't get used to them. Those who join at the start of the year will find themselves the oldest members of the team by the end. As far as can be seen, the longest lasting employees are those who are fully remote, and not exposed to the work culture. Or those who have an exploitable job contract, thanks to being hired during COVID. 2. The money is not worth it. The unrealistic workload, unsociable timings and extensive hours at the company are not worth the salary. Any engineer or employee who let others in the industry know the amount of work expected was met with gasps of shock and horror. So yes, the salary at Instant On IT is a bit higher than the exact same position at a similar company. But the workload is easily double. Working at Instant On IT becomes almost a competition between colleagues in all the wrong ways, and an exercise in willpower and patience. How long can you last? Who's the next to leave. How long will the new joiner stay? It's a shame, because individually, the engineers at Instant On IT are some of the most intelligent, technically knowledgeable people in the industry and any other company would do anything and everything to keep them, whereas here you get the sense that you are disposable, replaceable and that your knowledge or expertise have zero value.
