They don't take you or themselves seriously. Be extremely mindful.
Pros
This particular role involved commuting to schools across the five boroughs to take inventory, as well as some light software usage/installation. If you have installed a program onto your computer before, I'm confident you can do this job well. If you can control the makeup of your team, work at your specific site gets done extremely efficiently and is usually a fun time. My direct team mates were bright and motivated. Every day with them was a pleasure.
Cons
Nepotism is a big one. The person running the project back in November 2022, as well as his colleague (who was the niece of a higher up) pretty much set the project up to fail. Neither of them were qualified. They took zero input from team leads and then proceeded to hire managers that talk a lot and do little. (All while complaining about wasting company resources.) They WILL overlook you for a promotion even if you are overqualified. They dangle promotions in front of you and use fear in an effort to squeeze more work out of you. They rarely deliver. There's a discriminatory aspect as well. Part of their mission statement is "CARING" and it seems like hourly workers take a back seat to this. Payment wasn't consistent/accurate and they blamed it on anything you can think of. It got so bad that a "sick out" was staged and they miraculously found funds. A project manager was hired to "fix" everything and was gone within the month due to upper management's hostility to change. If they can't take credit for it, they aren't interested. There was no hourly payroll infrastructure for us until that point. (That would be around 8 months AFTER the project started.) Salaried workers never seemed to have the kinds of issues we did. We felt and were treated like indentured servants. With the commute included, you could be on your feet anywhere from 8-10 hours. You will be expected to stay later than usual on $16 an hour (At the time) with no overtime. One of the best employees I've ever had the pleasure of working with was told she should "Be Honored" when applying for a promotion. She left and we still felt the echoes of disorganization up until it was my turn to leave. They WILL push all of the good workers away until you lose interest in coming to work. Some of your coworkers will be put to work even if they weren't cleared by the DoE. Some of your coworkers won't even be real. For all intents and purposes quite a few were NOT hired after interviewing (which I conducted a lot of), but they still showed up on the schedule...for months. It was made to appear that large chunks of your team (or even entire ones) simply didn't show up. It's all extremely curious... Protocol on how the day is carried out WILL change every five minutes. You WILL get burnt out from the emails, texts, and phone calls that interrupt you with nonsense so frequent that it shuts down any efficient daily plan you have created, and no one will care. All of the extracurricular events created to bond you with your coworkers (Ice cream socials, ping pong tournaments, etc..) WILL be scheduled during your work hours. You will have an extremely difficult time forming bonds with your team in non-stress induced settings. Higher ups will unapologetically switch to speaking Urdu during meetings effectively shutting you out of the conversation. It seems like certain ethnicities (more specifically those identifying as male) had better access to higher roles and networking opportunities. That being said, if you're already here or thinking about working here as an hourly worker, don't forget this is just a step. Don't let this place crush your techie dreams. Keep your head down and collect your paycheck. (Watch that paycheck closely.) As soon as it gets unbearable start looking elsewhere. In fact, don't even let yourself get comfortable. From the bottom of my heart, you are all better than this place. I've seen it for myself firsthand.
