Do not work here/Do not work with this company - IT Consultant Proactive IT Employee Review

2.0
Apr 22, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Proactive has some great clients that they work with. And some of the people who I used to work with were great. They pretty much all left though.

Cons

I never wanted to work with Proactive, I used to work for another company called Hattontech and Proactive bought that company. I decided to stay for a year or so and see how the new company operated. At first there wasn't much change, we started learning the new systems and everything. It was fine, a little clunky compared to our old time-tracking system. Eventually we settled in and learned the new systems and processes for the new company. On the road to that happening we faced constant communication issues from the owner. He would tell one employee one thing, and then everyone else would hear something else. When we got confused and asked for clarification we often heard "oh that was just an idea I was throwing out there." That is maddening and it never really improved over the next year. More issues followed as it became clear upper management had no interest in our input or feedback. The more experienced and successful techs were demonized for not fitting into the specified work hours. I decided to leave after getting setup for complete failure. I was scheduled to setup 14 computers at a brand new client at a location 4 hours away from Charlotte and they pulled my helper at the last minute. I ended up working back to back 12 hour days to complete the project. The only concern from the owner is that I billed my time so they could charge more to the client. The "culture" consists of sitting in the gross old office building in near complete silence plus weekly meetings that played out exactly the same every week. The owner has an insane temper and little grasp of technical issues. His own customers hate communicating with him because he is so focused on profit. On top of that his pricing is grossly inflated and predatory. They charge nonsense site fees for single-location clients and their per-endpoint cost is absurdly high for their basic security and service offerings. They also struggle with basic service options like keeping firewalls updated or enabling 2 factor authentication consistently. If you succeeded at a project the owner would take direct credit for it. If the company failed a client the techs would always get thrown under the bus. That's incredibly demoralizing. Turnover is insanely high and new-hires are expected to be trained by existing techs with no formal structure. This is unfair to the established techs AND the new hires. The worst part of the job was being part of the "emergency" after hours rotation. This involved being on call for something like 40 extra hours per week with ZERO compensation unless work happened. However if you did 30 minutes of work the client would get charged 2 hours of double rate pay and you'd only get paid for the time you actually worked. I brought this up with the owner and he said I was being greedy for asking to be fairly compensated. Some of the techs they hired were nice and competent people. Others had no business touching a computer. It took them months to fire the worst tech I have ever worked with despite many errors and mistakes. This is one of those companies that cheaps out on labor so they want to hire the fewest, most junior level techs they can get away with. It's not fair to their customers who are paying premium prices to get extremely mediocre service. If you just want to go to work, punch a clock and get paid this is fine. But if you have any sort of creativity or ambition you should avoid this place.

Explore other reviews about Proactive IT

5.0
Nov 12, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Wonderful people Work life balance Serving local community

Cons

The team is small, therefore when clients demand is high it can get a bit overwhelming. However everyone works well to figure it out as a team.

5.0
Nov 6, 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

My background is in healthcare. I never loved it, but during the pandemic it became unbearable. I have always been interested in technology from a hobbyist's perspective, and in 2022, I left my healthcare job to focus on finding a way into tech. Steve and the team took a chance on me that fall, and I'm thankful that they did. Working at Proactive, I have been given the space to learn, grow, and make mistakes, knowing I’d have the support to learn from them and improve. I have been encouraged to learn new skills and to embrace failure as a part of the process. As a small team, we all have each other's backs. Everyone steps in to help when things get busy. Everyone cares about the work we're doing and wants to do a good job. I couldn’t be happier with my experience at Proactive IT.

Cons

The flip side of being a small team is that when things get busy, they can sometimes get VERY busy. It can be a challenge during these times to keep all the plates spinning.

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