RDX Employee Reviews about "pay"

Cons

Pay could be a little higher, but it's good for entry level with a bigger return on the DBA team. 24 - 7 can be rough in the DOC. Changes happen, and at times it doesn't seem like the company lets us know in the best of time are times. The main issue is that it gets old hearing people complain about the smallest things, and just to complain. Working with 'kids' is annoying. They don't understand the concept of work really is. They don't get that you have to work hard to move up. Some of the people act like they deserve something extra just for doing their job. It's hard to take just listening to this during turnover. This is one of the reasons that I have almost quit. I've learned to block out the cry babies and do my job.

Cons

- Pay is low. - DOC is the bottom of the priority list for management, it seems. - Daily work for the DOC is monotonous, boring, unrewarding and never thanked. - Management seems to be 'winging it' most of the time.

Cons

- Salary was pitiful when i worked there, pitiful for pennsylvania in general and abysmal when you consider you're basically working in Cranberry Township where employees at the A+ gas station down the street probably make more than you. - High stress environment While it's ironic to say that a place that lets you watch netflix while working can be high stress. This is indeed the case. It's easy to get overwhelmed with tickets and the truth of the matter is if you get a ticket you can't handle it's your fault and you're just going to have to struggle with it until it's fixed. In addition to this the time for the shifts should be changed seeing as how about 20-30 minutes before night shift would end, a flood of tickets would come in often being the reason for us staying later then we should. -Burnout is a real issue, work life balance is none existent. At about the midway point of my time at RDX, my life consisted of working at rdx about 9-9.5 hours a day, sleep for 6-8 and then getting about 3 hours of time to myself and repeating the cycle. It was far from living, and my work life balance was pathetic. -The amount of hours you spend at this company Working more than 8 hours is often expected and is more than just a regular occurrence here. While the extra money was nice, putting in between 84-90 hours every two weeks is beyond draining and often lead to the feeling of being burnt out. -'RDX Magic Numbers' This is what the DOC members calls the process in which RDX comes up with what you're supposed to be paid. The finance department regularly messes up how much you should receive (and never in your favor) and it often leads to visit to the finance department to get you paycheck straighten out. One time in particular, RDX forgot to pay out the differential for working 2nd and 3rd shift, leading to roughly 30 employees missing out on 50-75 dollars. Also due to the effect of the magic numbers, you never get paid what you expected to get paid which is infuriating. The way they calculate a paycheck is beyond ridiculous and nobody in the DOC knows how it's calculated. I've had friends who were accountants try to decipher a RDX paycheck and they couldn't figure it out. -Having both friday and saturdays off is seen as a perk only for DBA's and upper management It was basically said to us we were not allowed to have both days off and that's a right reserved for when you become a DBA -The amount of PTO days is low and includes sick days Having only 11 days for a whole year, in addition to not having Saturday or Friday off meant i used most of my PTO days just trying to live a normal life. Lets not count that these PTO days also include sick days. -Being late is a no no While normally this may sound like complaining. when 80% of the company lives more than 45 minutes away, you would think they would provide some leeway in this matter. Or at least pay us enough to actually afford housing in cranberry. - They really do lie to you about the job description As mentioned below, this truly is a help desk position with a specialization in databases. Truth of the matter is i wrote more lines of SQL in the first week of my new position (and it wasn't even DBA related) then i ever did at this job. They often claimed that nobody writes their own SQL anymore and everybody just gets there SQL off the internet. Which after being in the real world, this was a bold faced lie. More of a excuse so they can have us running the same 5 premade queries over and over again without questioning. Also, When i left here i was no better off at being a DBA then when i started. I didn't even put the world DBA on my resume. - Carrot on a stick mentality Becoming a top of the world RDX DBA is the goal here and RDX OFTEN parades around this imagery and hope of you one day becoming a DBA. While in the pre hiring phase telling you all you have to do is pass a few test and you will get the money and title of DBA. This was so far from the truth and one of the main reasons why i left the company. Truth of the matter is you can easily pass the test, that's not the issue. The issue is that simply passing the test doesn't immediately make you a DBA and/or give you DBA money (which is how HR made it seem over the phone). In truth, you will take the test and pass it and still have to sit in the DOC for at least a year due to rarity that a DBA opening occurs. Then once a opening does happen, numerous other members of the DOC have passed the test and have been waiting in line for a DBA position just like you. So there's essentially a backlog of people that have been in the DOC and waiting to become a dba. There are people that have been in the doc since 2014 and still waiting for a DBA position. When i left this job it came down to the options of studying for the test, passing it (1 month) and waiting on a DBA position (1 year after factoring in the chances of a dba position happening and the people in front of me that were already waiting for an opening) all while making peanuts. or cut my loses and find a new job that will pay me good money now. I took the latter. *Also of note, becoming a DBA for RDX is also not something to strive for. DBA's at RDX get paid peanuts in relation to other company DBA's and RDX also forces you into a two year contract in which your salary is locked in stone and once the contract is finished they have a clause where you can't work for any company that's a customer for them making finding new employment difficult. Also, being a DBA here is borderline torture. There were some days we would come to work finding out DBA's had just up and walked out on the company due to working conditions, not even having established a new job. -You reach a ceiling on learning fast Admittedly, They make this clear to you in training. But after about two months , there is literally nothing else left to learn. This was also a big reason why i left. Having a hard defined cap on your learning (and then the learning you do accomplish not really being that significant) Is borderline career suicide. I would make the case that staying in the DOC more than 1 year is flat out dangerous to your career and its growth. Truth be told, i could go on and on about this place. From the room being dirty (found a toenail on the floor one day) and super cold 24/7 (then they had the nerve to ban hoodies) overall my time at this place was absolutely horrific. But even with that being said, after being able to put RDX on my resume i admittedly got calls from places that wouldn't even consider me coming out of college and ended up doubling my salary as a result. Its sad that in leaving i often felt bad for my co workers… not because i was leaving them in such a terrible environment as is usually the case when leaving a bad job. Instead i felt much more sad in the fact that so many of my co worker were so complacent working here. Not realizing that there are companies that actually care about there employees. Companies that are willing to give you more than 11 pto days and companies that don't see having the weekend off as a “perk”. If you do decide to take the plunge and work here. Give yourself a deadline…. Mines was 6 months.

Cons

- Rotating shifts every 2-4 weeks. It doesn't matter if you're Superman, this is going to put you on a countdown timer. I've seen people last two weeks, a month, three months, and some even a year. Whenever that timer stops, you're going to go crazy. It is extremely difficult to adapt to. - The other departments hate you. Most DBA's don't really like you because you're quite honestly a nuisance. You simply don't know the things they do. As they come to see your name more over time, they'll either dislike you more, or begrudgingly accept you. - The pay is really lackluster IF you have tech skills. You're essentially making minimum wage in IT. - Punishment is really hard. You're going to mess up at some point, and unless you're a competent tech the hammer is going to fall hard. You probably won't get fired, but you'll get a slew of ticked off people wanting to take every opportunity to remind you that you messed up. - What does it say about a company's culture when you'd rather deal with clients than management?

Cons

Pay is a little low for workload Remote Training is tough

Cons

I apologize in advance to marketing, as it's openly known when an honest review comes out, you'll see suddenly very generic positive reviews to keep the glassdoor average high. Unfortunately, RDX has lost its way.Employees have been told they must bill 8 billable hours per day. For some techs, they have clients with large pools of hours who dont examine their billing. Those clients often pay many hours for work never being performed as techs 'pad their hours' to ensure a work/life balance. Some dbas unfortunately may have several tiny clients (this is becoming more typical, RDX is claiming 'growth' by adding 6 clients at 2 hours after losing a client with 100, for example) which making billing and getting your work done day to day is not only difficult, but mentally draining over time. You have no choice in this matter, its essentially the luck of the draw, and directly impacts you in reviews when some techs can get 200 hours a month,where you have less billable time than business hours in a month, which effects further compensation down the line. Additionally, there's a positional manager here who will engage with dbas to make sure they're billing every hour on the contract, regardless if the environment is stable and does not need additional work. Clients, if you see a sudden uptick in billing at the end of the month, your dba has most likely been yelled at to create additional work, or simply their other clients are out of hours, and they need to get that 8 hours that's expressly required daily. Another issue is that RDX bends the business model to the point that dbas may be expected to be available days, nights, weekends and holidays and PTO time.They have no say in this, nor are they compensated in any additional way, and are expected to arrive at the office after getting 3 hours of sleep or less, and get the requisite 8 hours of billable. This means you have mentally exhausted dbas performing high level work on your system, and often deliberately taking their time so they can go home and rest. Not only does this impact their work life balance, this also impacts their health. Once rdx had one of the best insurance policies in the region, they've continually slashed benefits year after year, with a raise smaller than the loss, essentially cutting pay for everyone. One would state the best course of action is to leave, however, they've imposed contacts on everyone, with penalties of nearly half their yearly salary. You could sign this contract and have your workload and client-load radically changed, and you could suddenly have a radically different job that you cannot leave. I suspect the large amount of low contracted employees to prevent turnover, and the collection of small contracts, I believe they're attempting to send the impression that rdx is growing to sell. Once the contracts expire, you'll see a lot of dbas being reassigned to accounts as the good dbas leave for market rate pay. (If you look average salaries for a SQL dba, and divide it in half, that's a HIGH salary here).

Cons

The pay is under the national average for all positions unless you've worked at the company for a large number of years. Management doesn't seem to collaborate or all know what's going on most of the time. There are so many changes that are happening in the company that are drastically lowering morale and they expect unlimited hours of work for hardly any additional pay (if any). This is not a career if you want a good work/life balance. Micromanagement is also a killer.

Cons

Everyone starts by working in the DOC no matter your background. The package offered at hire is a bit deceptive. They state that you get 10 days off per year but they do not tell you that you get no holidays off.so in reality you are really only getting about 4 days the first year - though time and a half is offered for holidays. Plus, there is no shift differential in pay offered for night shift and the entry level pay is low. There is also extremely high turnover in the DOC.

Cons

Work can be very stressful at times, especially when you don't know what you're doing. After 6 months - 1 yr. it gets better. Pay is low. (33,900) to start for DOC.