Don't plan your life around a contract gig. - Event Production Technician FIRST Employee Review

Strong, supportive culture where people genuinely care about each other. Leadership invests in employee growth and long-term development. Stable company with a vision and consistent performance. Opportunity to work with exciting clients in a dynamic, creative industry.

Fast-paced environment can be demanding at times. Growth opportunities can sometimes depend on team/department needs. As with any continuously evolving company, processes are evolving in some areas.

Work hours are stable. Hardworking technicians and engineers are the backbone of the company when it comes to live event production. There is a lot of work to do on the engineering side which ensures job security.

Management has been making reckless decisions in recent times that have destroyed the company culture and made it an absolute nightmare to work at. They are severe consequences and disciplinary action for even the slightest mistakes. They’re also clamping down on performance and throwing performance improvement plans on people in an effort for them to resign or fire them. Management also laid off most of the specialist level technicians after ensuring them that their jobs were safe. After they trained lower level technicians to do the work of specialists, likely for vacation coverage, and as needed, management decided to gut the specialist team almost entirely, and it was disgusting the way it was carried out. Some of whom were forced to take a 30% pay cut into lower level positions, because they needed the insurance. This company is run by favoritism, deception and lies from top to bottom. I had requested cross training on several occasions over the years on other disciplines but was given a deaf ear. Google (our client), is also extremely cheap when it comes to maintaining their event spaces. The amount of ceiling tiles that have fallen is surreal. The amount of approvals I gotta go through just to get the job done is ridiculous. Every time Google puts the pressure on FIRST to do more, the work becomes more toxic and unbearable. This used to be a great place to work, but leadership did everything in their power to make this one of the worst jobs I’ve ever had. FIRST leadership also screwed up our healthcare plan, leading to higher premiums and surprise bills in the mail. All we got was an apology via email and sessions about insurance reimbursement that no one can attend because of being overworked and scrutinized as is.