Toxic middle management and no direction
Pros
The co-workers and peers that I work with are some great people that are for some reason still here despite being over worked and under paid. My clients are some great people that are doing great work.
Cons
I've worked at 3 universities for the past 10 years. The culture at SHSU is one of the worst I've ever seen. This was initially due to our old President. Our new President is attempting to clean house and change the culture but it is a slow process. I'd say 5-10 years to see real change. The culture of Huntsville is a Prison town that hates the college. Everyone says it's a nice little town but those people actually live in Elkins Lake that was specifically built so folks with money didn't have to live in Huntsville. On Sam Houston Avenue there's nothing but abandoned buildings with a college awkwardly growing like a cancer around whatever it can't imminent domain. SHSU fights with TDCJ and the City of Huntsville constantly. The town has no money because the two largest land owners in town don't have to pay taxes. The town has handicap ramps on every corner but no sidewalks. That tells you all you need to know. The culture of IT is one of a beaten house wife that is given a flour sack to wear and will still make the dinner because they have no where else to go. The current regime promised to make changes (just like that drunken husband) and at first asked for 6 months, then they asked for 9 months and things have only gotten worse. IT is basically Amber Heard and the IT employees are Johnny Depp's bed. My title and job description was the first issue. Both were frankensteins that made no sense. It constantly caused confusion and strife due to my split loyalties based on messed up funding on top of the fact that I was part of the Ops side of IT and the Clientele side. For a new college attempting accreditation for IT to essentially leave its employee out to dry is mind boggling. SHSU and most definitely IT is the definition of the Peter Principle this was it. To match this my job position and role has changed 2-3 times. I went from Technician, to manager without pay or title. I manage an FTE without that ever being in my job description. When I brought this up to certain folks they ignored me. For months, I would go to Manager meetings (not a manager) and anything I would bring up I would get "I'll look into that" and for months, nothing was ever done. Finally, I had to just start making managerial and director level decisions on my own. It didn't help that SHSU IT allowed the brand new building to be implemented in such a horrific way that this brand new building needed thousands of dollars of AV upgrades almost immediately. Certain un-named people were so ineffective, so vapid and inept that the answer for everything was to ignore your emails. I have a collection of emails from June until today that is about 1 inch thick of unanswered emails because certain members of leadership either didn't know the answers or didn't care enough to bother answering them. If certain un-named people ever did attempt to come up with a solution, it would usually be something that couldn't be done because they didn't understand how anything in IT worked per policy. Or it'd be something from 15 years ago that wasn't ever a viable option. When you challenged certain un-named folks, they would start yelling at you. These un-named folks were a Boss and not a leader. These folks obviously get off on being able to tell people what to do. They should work at TDCJ, not SHSU. All Hat and no Cattle is the correct phrase. When I pointed out to certain un-named folks that our support for the clinic wasn't being handled properly I was told "we're working on it". Nothing was ever done. Speaking of, I was constantly ignored when I asked about HIPPA Compliance training even though I had full access to every single medical file at the clinic. For some reason no one thought this was important. My Annual Review was tanked which was mind boggling since I had 9 months of ignored emails and had barely ever met anyone from IT leadership. When I challenged it, it was entirely reversed. That was something at least. I've rarely worked for an organization so unprofessional, so vapidly wandering in the woods breathing it's own hubris while the real workers are ground down like the man's bones in Jack and the beanstalk to make the bread for IT to work. I'd compare certain un-named folks to a Walmart Middle Manager but honestly they're so bad that they'd be fired at Walmart. I guess working in IT shows you that people like this thrive at Sam Houston.
