Once there was a Dell - now it's a Hell!
Pros
One of the few things that I miss about Dell is the work/life balance. I have worked at Dell for more than 6 years. I was rarely required to be on-call. I was never asked to work during my weekends. There used to be a lot of Microsoft certification training provided when I first joined in 2002 but more recently, training was limited to the select few who were on the buddy-list of managers.
Cons
There is a lot of push to get IT certification of all kinds without any incentives or support from the management. There was rarely any MS-certified training provided. The whole performance evaluation model for a support analyst is based on numbers from metrics that even the management does not have any idea how to interpret. The priorities for these metrics changed almost every other month. Managers were evaluated based on these asinine numbers so most manager would tell you outright that all they care about is getting the numbers right by hook or by crook. If you can learn to manipulate the system, you’d be on the top of the list and your manager’s hero. But there is no way you can meet the goal for these dozens of metrics (e.g. call duration, first time fix (FTF), repeat dispatch rate (RDR), etc.) without ‘working’ the system. What’s even more surprising is that your manager would indirectly imply that if you’re not meeting your metrics, you need to manipulate the system to get your numbers right. For example, if you’re RDR is good while FTF is bad, you should send just send more parts or even hurt your RDR to improve your FTF. Dell’s employee performance evaluation is a joke!