Sparklight Reviews

Toxic culture; horrible training / unclear change management / strategies for success - unrealistic goals and not open to feedback. Don't even ask about a pay raise - and if you talk openly about salary, they'll write you up.

I'll start by saying that this isn't the worst ISP to work for, but it still pushed me far enough to leave after years of service. You can't live a life with any routine. You can never assume you will get done at 5, no matter how good the day flows, or how much time you save. No real incentive for being efficient. No notable monthly bonuses like larger ISP's offer for performance goals. Your reward is extra work after dark. It's not even the number of hours, really. You just can't control anything that happens. You are at the mercy of sales, support, garbage billing software, management, and other technicians. They all dictate how bad the day will go for you no matter how fast or skilled you are. You are expected to pick up the slack of co-workers with zero accountability held to said workers. Management makes the whole crew work late to pick up the slack rather than addressing the individuals that either can't make the cut, require training, or simply ran behind that day. It is more mentally exhausting than anything. Why work at 100% for 8-10 hours if it doesn't change the outcome at the end of the day? The stress of thinking you are making good time, only to get work dumped on you at 5pm is infuriating. Sure, I might get done at 6 or 7 but any plans I had for the evening are shot. You don't even know you are behind until the end of the day. We are too exhausted to take care of our health, exercise, or accomplish anything else after work. It's straight to the couch 5 nights a week and inevitable alcoholism. Dispatchers don't watch the jobs. They don't consider a tech to be behind unless a work order time frame is missed, which could be as late as 7pm before it's considered late. The system is designed to meet customer time frames but it does a pitiful job of this, as we regularly see techs going home while there is work pending that doesn't get load balanced since the tech will still make it there by 6:59pm, so it's considered totally acceptable. There is no limit on how much work can be put in, no matter how short-handed we are. Half the crew could be out sick, booked out until 9pm and they will STILL same-day schedule jobs. In many cases the customer did not even ask us to be there same day, and were shocked when we showed up so quickly. There is zero communication between literally all departments/levels. It's like working for 3 or 4 different companies. Everyone speaks a different lingo, and has a completely different understanding of what we all do. Almost all communication is done via text. It's an absolute mess, and an embarrassment in front of customers, especially business customers. There seems to be no over-sight for the majority of sales and call takers. Some of the things I hear from customers makes my jaw drop. Problems don't get solved. They act like they want to hear your feedback, but nothing ever changes. Even the most basic request that could save literally hundreds of hours in the field, such as sending a 1 minute email out to let sales or support know something critical is too much to ask. New devices/services are plagued with problems and it takes months or even years to work out the kinks to a level of being decent products, but they are pushed as being a necessity for the "best" service. Instead of problem solving they put all their focus on bean counting and arbitrary metrics. This incentivizes using band-aid fixes and cheating the system instead of real world problem solving. The focus is put on things like recording signal levels to such an extent that the technicians don't even look at the levels. They just record them (because it's required) and move on. It's removing the troubleshooting process, and instead just checking boxes and going as fast as possible to get to the next job. Last but not least, Covid19. Like most corporations over the last 2 years that have made astounding, record-breaking profits, the employees have been put in hazardous and stressful situations with irate customers who demand we break the no-contact policy and go in their homes to hook up a TV they didn't need in their guest bedroom. All because it's easier to "just see what you can do" than to cancel an order that should not have been created to avoid a complaint. In a time where we had less help than ever before, and more growth than ever before it takes a little more than a "we care about your safety" email to keep people working here. They get away with it because you can deny a customers demand in the name of safety, but all the customer had to do was call and complain until they'd put another tech in harms way "willing to go inside" which puts liability on the worker since we could ultimately refuse without getting fired. While this didn't happen all the time we should not once have been put in that situation. It went on for months. An email could have resolved this. Essentially, the customers demands outweighed our basic safety and it was too much work to retract a work order and upset a customer. The phony concern about our safety was the last straw for me. I was no longer proud to work there like I once was. The physical work and stress was having serious medical consequences on me and my family. They simply don't pay anywhere near enough for that level of stress. This is not what a good, ethical company does. This is how good workers get sick and injured. This is how you push valuable workers away. Not a good long-term financial plan. This is how you get unions involved. I say all this because I would happily come back if they'd make some easy to accomplish changes. For now I'll take a small pay cut for mental and physical health benefits.