Pros
Coworkers are generally great, provided you can overlook every time they don't care about their job Taking free classes is pretty good too, if you've got a reason to want to learn some of this stuff The healthcare's better than I would have expected
Cons
You will be overworked and underpaid to a ridiculous extreme. Dream consultants are expected to know how to perform equipment maintenance on multiple high end pieces of fabrication equipment, expected to be able to step in and teach classes at no extra pay, expected to work as a marketing and promotional team, expected to set up and manage events, and earn less than they would working at a McDonalds. Front desk staff are expected to work as entry level accountants, schedulers, retailers, receptionists, buyers, education coordinators, and designers, and get paid less than the Dream Consultants. Back office staff are woefully undertrained in half their duties and are expected to answer constantly for the mistakes of broken software; they also are separated by so many things that draw a constant wedge between them and the shop's day to day activities, which creates animosity between them and the DC/FD people who make the shop run. It doesn't help that on an almost daily basis, either a DC or a Front Desk person will be called on to create, fix, and finish their work. They also get paid abysmally - notice a trend? Corporate surprises stores with major changes that they are supposed to just fix - a great example of this is when the stores all moved to running 24/7, and the stores were told on the same day as members, who all had questions that the employees had no idea how to answer. Trial periods do not exist for sweeping changes. Corporate held a company-wide teleconference, exclusively for employees, to answer questions and discuss future plans. This turned out to be nothing more than a marketing spiel targeted at investors, who I can only imagine were silently listening in, as none of the information actually talked about directions and plans for the stores whatsoever. When the scheduled half-hour question session was opened to us, they proceeded to choose two incredibly simple questions to answer, still not answer anything, then panic and say "well I guess we have run out of time bye." No employees are led to feel that they do anything at all for the company, or that there is any mobility to reach for; when new lead positions open, or new positions in-store, opportunities for promotion are ignored and simply opened for outside contractors to apply. When annual cost-of-living raises are asked about, the response is almost a scoffing laugh. It says a whole lot when an actual employee's genuine question about their job to their location's general manager is responded to with a dismissive, jokey, "well you know, this is TechShop" - and that is normal. IT suggestions, even simple ones, are completely dismissed. The IT department responds to one in every ten emails, and staff hear "But I thought this was a TECH shop, you would think you would have this simple thing sorted by now" on an almost hourly basis from members. Speaking as someone who worked in an IT department for a major corporation for three years, I cannot for the life of me work out what they are doing, if they even exist. Accounting is handled by a foreign team in India, who staff have no way of communicating with outside of through a middle manager who doesn't seem to understand why we would use money. Leads regularly sit, dumbfounded, at the inability to find someone who is in the right department to resolve simple billing or credit issues. The design department either does not exist, or does not understand that HCI development is vitally important for any organization that even remotely markets itself as tech savvy. Local lumber yards have better designed websites, back-door data entry clerks use nicer interfaces. Our posters, flyers, marketing imagery, promotional shirts, and signage are all developed in-store by staff members who are given no credit or recognition. The company, now a multinational organization with multiple multi-million dollar facilities, uses the excuse of still being a 'startup' to cover any and all complaints about wages and employee treatment. Almost ironic, really, considering local startups pay their employees wages in the upper 70s, whereas the highest pay for any position in TechShop stores is $11.50/h (or $15 if you are one of the back office people). I guess the term 'startup' now no longer means anything but 'not Fortune 500.'
