Culture over competence - IT Support John Finch Computers Employee Review

After careful consideration, I am unable to identify any significant advantages to working here.

My experience working at John Finch Computers was overwhelmingly negative. The company talks about supporting its staff, but I found very little evidence of that in practice. Employee wellbeing appeared to be an afterthought. There was effectively no meaningful support for mental health, leaving staff to deal with challenges on their own. Basic employment benefits were also lacking compared to many other employers in the industry. Holiday entitlement felt like the bare legal minimum, there was no company sick pay scheme, no enhanced parental leave pay, and little evidence that employee welfare was a priority. The culture often felt focused on extracting as much as possible from staff while giving as little back as possible. When employees needed support, flexibility, or understanding, it was difficult not to feel like they were viewed as a cost rather than a valued part of the business. For a company whose success depends entirely on the knowledge, commitment, and goodwill of its employees, the lack of investment in staff was disappointing. I left feeling undervalued, unsupported, and convinced that there are far better employers in the IT industry. Based on my experience, I would not recommend John Finch Computers as a place to work.

I have seen from my colleagues that, If you need a full-time (minimum, or slightly above minimum wage) job or apprenticeship and you're motivated, you can go in, learn loads, and get out and try to go somewhere paced better for your mental health. Sticking around long term only seems to be detrimental. You get a discount on products online, where you essentially pay the price minus tax. The catch though is it must be products apparently that would be bought by the company, which can be a broad range of things considering that we support home and business users. This must be paid in cash though, and is not in the contract, so I'm not sure if this benefit is still provided, but it is good. Technicians are extremely hardworking, talented, and friendly, being one of my personal reasons to stay on so long. Office looks great. There was monthly pizza at one point, hasn't happened consistently for a while.

I was personally asked to leave a positive review during my employment due to the negative ones. I also spoke to colleagues who told me they had received similar requests. Please keep this in mind when assessing reviews. Limited benefits. While the contract stated sick pay was discretionary, during my time there I was not aware of discretionary sick pay being granted. There is also close to, if not minimal holiday, and little to no help getting certifications for the benefit of the technician and the business, compared to other similar MSPs. Other than the one in the positives that’s not in the contract, I cannot think of any. My understanding was that office CCTV was actively monitored and used to oversee employee activity. I do not recall this being explained in my contract, although I cannot comment on the legal position. While I mentioned in the positives that the office looks good, the office has no air conditioning and a small amount, or maybe no, heat insulation. During the summer it acts as a greenhouse, holding heat in and can be extremely uncomfortable to work in, and during the winter it gets extremely cold unless the heaters are on all the time. There was also an incident at the company where part of the ceiling fell and an employee required hospital treatment. There were further instances of ceiling parts shown to be weak after this incident, that said, I am not aware of any subsequent injuries. There is limited working from home. You will likely not be allowed this even if you ask. If you're a distance away, you may be able to justify a day working from home, but I would recommend fighting for this in your interview. A 'promotion' often includes considerably more responsibility with limited benefits, often with lots of promises of monetary benefits down the line that never come about, or are substantially reduced by the time they do. I feel JFC is grossly understaffed, especially all the time that I have been there. We as the staff have been made promises constantly of a better future for the company and for us as staff, but me and others I have spoken to have never felt like this has come about. Another review stated that employees were often made to feel inadequate. While I cannot speak to everyone's experience, some management and feedback practices left employees feeling undervalued in my opinion. Many technicians I knew subsequently moved to roles with significantly better pay and conditions, which reinforced my view that the company was not particularly competitive as an employer. I've spoken to many talented technicians on the team who feel consistently like they're made to feel inadequate and never doing enough, especially younger employees who haven't known much better, or have only worked there or one other place their entire working life. There are seemingly limited senior support engineers at JFC. There have been many techs who have been and gone. A good example of this is the original "Education Team" at JFC. Back roughly during the second quarter of 2024, JFC formed an Education Team of multiple senior technicians to specifically support and migrate schools to the cloud, as well as deal with other high-level projects. As of a couple of months ago, all of the original members are no longer with the company, and while this may not all be down to grievances with the company, I believe it is telling that this team fell apart within this space of time. This is just a small example of the amount of talent that has joined and left over the course of the last year or so, most of which were incredibly talented and valuable people. Much of the documentation, internal tooling, and technical processes appear to have been developed by people who subsequently left the business. From my perspective, knowledge transfer and handover often seemed limited, which may create challenges in the future. There are other reviews calling the company 'young' and 'a startup' to offset its many mistakes and excuse them, but I've seen that the company has had plenty of chances to learn over the last few years, keeps saying that they will learn, but never ends up doing it.