administrative assistant

real estate assistant

realtor

transporter

customer service representative

Berkshire Hathaway

While Berkshire Hathaway is a wonderful company, their sister company (American Hertiage Property Management) was not a place I would ever recommend to someone looking for property management. 

I was told that turn over rate was low, but 3 people quit before I got there. Work life balance was never established. The bonus structure was laughable, there was no training, no supervision (unless you're doing something wrong); after a month of me being there, my supervisor told me " You have to earn your salary here because we aren't making enough money and we can't afford to keep you unless you sign on more property owners to rent from."

I was told that my position was to advertise and to manage properties. No advertising tools, plans, or instructions were given to me and when I asked for them, I was never met with a response. I was also told that I wouldn't receive more than 40 properties so that I could advertise properly at the same time. I had over 50 properties before I left.
 
Lastly, inwas told that I wouldn't have any properties that were run down or needed a lot of work. When over 15 of those kinds of properties were assigned to me, the response was " Well, you know I could've given you more of them".

You will work so much harder than you need to in order to keep your job and nothing that my supervisor said was true. If you have a family, don't even think about applying. 

Admin. Assistant / Switchboard Operator (Former Employee), New Bedford, MA – November 12, 2013
Pros: Outings, Great Work Environment, Nice People
Cons: Overtime on Saturdays during the end of my teenage years; that was traumatic!
A typical day at work had me answering calls for Personnel in the morning, taking applications, setting up interviews. In the afternoon, I worked in the Purchasing department answering calls and submitting work orders.
I learned about having a job and having responsibilities that I carry with me today. Being on time, learning a job routine, and I learned the pride of that very first paycheck; I was an adult now.
Management: Very patient and kind to the new "worker bee." I enjoyed working with them very much
Co-Workers: Great people - friendly, willing to assist each other.
Hardest Part of the Job: Getting laid off just before my wedding, and being offered the position once again AFTER I moved to New Hampshire.
Most Enjoyable Part of the Job: Meeting the applicants. There was a large number of Portuguese-speaking people in the greater New Bedford area. I began to learn the language to better assist them.

Customer service is my forte.  I enjoyed every call.  We were first contact with the company and  I enjoyed my work thoroughly from start to finish.  I had helpful supervisors and peers.  We did back office work between calls.  

There were exercise areas which I never used so I can't give details on them.  The interior of the area was not visible from the hall.

The interior of the area were not visible from the hall.We had places to rest on our breaks and one hour lunch periods.  I usually napped at lunch time though there was a TV in our break room.

The only part of my job I didn't care for was the "statutory manditory overtime" when we had large outages.  I really have no complaints against the company.  I was successful at one call resolutions.  The main thing I practiced that made me successful was the tempo of the call is set by the operators attitude when they first speak to the customer.  Treat them with respect and as you would want to be treated.  Resolve their issues with one call or explain what needs to happen and how they will know when their resolution is complete.

Berkshire is a good starting company. Unfortunately the wages are not competitive to other companies in the market. When you can start out at the competition making more than you left this company with after several years. There is something wrong with the company. No scholarship programs that are geared to all employees. Only minorities get a full ride scholarship. Which is great for them, but does not help anyone else when you are working for less than $11.00 an hour. Raises tend to be between 1 to 3 percent and you start out at $10.08 an hour. And raises are once a year.  The one good thing is your PTO time. They start you right away with PTO, but If you are sick they apply the PTO to your absence and you are also given a black mark for missing work. Raises were terrible, vey few advancement jobs. And a lot of promises of advancement that never happened. Customers could be very difficult.
Floor managers overall were pretty good.

Extensive experience in system analysis, design, development and implementation of web based and client/server application using HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, AJAX, Java/J2EE, Servlets, JSP, JDBC, XML, XSLT, Python, Django, PHP. 
Working knowledge in multi-tiered distributed environment, OOAD concepts, good understanding of Software Development Life cycle (SDLC).
Expertise in working with server side technologies including databases, Restful API and MVC design patterns using Python Flask framework.
Experience with Requests, Pysftp, Gnupg, ReportLab, Numpy, Scipy, Matplotlib, HTTPLib2, Urllib2, Beautiful Soup and Pandas python libraries during development lifecycle.
Good understanding of NoSQL databases such as MongoDB, Datastax, Redis and Apache Cassandra. 
In depth knowledge of Cassandra and hands on experience with installing, configuring and monitoring Data Stax Enterprise cluster.

As an independent contractor my days are spent contacting clients and prospects by phone, in person, direct mail, email and online through social media. A great deal of time is spent chasing leads or figuring out where my best return on investment is when it comes to marketing myself. 

There are very restrictive laws that sometimes have to be tiptoed through. If there are ever any questions about the proper way to handle a situation I can always count on either my peers or my management to guide me in the right direction. 

There are so many things that need to be done at any given moment. The most difficult part of my job is organizing and scheduling my time in order to benefit both my job and family.

I have told many people that this is the most satisfying job I have ever had. The pure gratitude of my clients is my biggest reward.

84 hr work week. If you do not make pay plan you get $1,500 for 336hrs that's $4.46 per hour. They find ways around the minimum wage law trust me. They promise the moon and do not deliver a single thing. We ended up in cubicles we had to find parts to and bring our own laptop then go and get customer records from the office ourselves and create our own call list. We had no one even talk to our entire class for the first two weeks. We just wandered around trying to find a space we could set up in and supplies. They wanted us to make 10 appointments a day or you could not go home. You could not be out on the floor selling unless you had those 10 appointments. They would constantly call in another friend of theirs to close your deal when it was clear they did not need to and take half or all of your commission. We had to keep real good track of our pay because they would try and shot us every check.

They were deceptive from start. Offered me salary much less than what was advertised. Healthcare premiums very expensive, $1500/month.

Turned out managers weren't really there based upon qualifications or experience, but rather just seniority and having been in company for while. So when existing manager left, someone else was found and promoted into that role, regardless if they actually had experience as manager.

Performance reviews were extremely subjective and evaluation criteria were never disclosed upon hiring. A lot of these were made up on spot when reviews were done. If your manager was sick or in bad mood that day, your reviews would be negative.

What is the best part of working at the company?
If I’m being completely honest, personally I have not experienced anything good with the company.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The lack of support or training. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
It is a professional setting, laid back environment within the office. The team were not friendly or welcoming towards me.  

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
The days are what the individuals make of it. A typical day consists of checking and responding to emails. Making contact with clients, attempting to obtain new clients, scheduling appointments, showing homes, completing contracts and paperwork and attending weekly sales meetings.

Most of the people are great! The leadership in technical services should not be in their roles and should be replaced with fresh ideas, energy , and leaders who practice modern leadership styles! I think they climbed the ladder to the top so they can say they have a fancy title but you never see them and they do nothing to improve working conditions, raise salaries, or properly develop employees. Every quarter they move people around to play with the budget. They put people in roles they don't want to be in just to adjust opex/capex to make their quarterly numbers. Everyone is unhappy!!! Old command and control styles, their processes are ridiculous and a bad version of agile. They need a complete restructuring and new leadership!

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Administrative assistant 11 salaries reported	$500 per week
Real estate assistant 1 salary reported	$15.00 per hour
Realtor 3 salaries reported	$31,667 per year
Transporter 2 salaries reported	$26.62 per hour
Customer service representative 1 salary reported	$20.00 per hour

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