splicer

field engineer

project manager

regional account manager

designer

CCI Systems, Inc.

I have worked at CCI for about five years as an engineer, designer, and in management. This company from my experience on both the designer level and management level is severely lacking as upper management is severely disconnected with those underneath them in middle management. Designers are overworked and burnout is severe across the board as upper management picks and chooses specific designers and runs them dry.  The company dedicate itself on having a culture, but my time there showed anything, but except for those in the geographical location of iron Mountain Michigan, where the company headquarters is located if you aren’t with the quote in the crowd as you live there then you were looked at as second unless you know someone. This company cares more about filling the pockets of those in upper management and then they do about helping those understand and make a livable wage. This is included in their overseas team as well. Regarding pay as another point con for working with this company. They have a higher focus on making sure that their upper management makes their bottom dollar well not coming close to even the median income for the positions that the company offers as my position was in the bottom, one percent of what I should have been making as I was making 20 grand less than what I should have been while the same time we hire sales executives and promote all upper management within the last quarter. I was there additional sidenote to the cons. This company is heavily disorganized and structured. There are nine vice presidents, which makes no sense overall this company is greedy as they only want to fill those in upper management wallets and those who live around their specific geographical location. Where CCI currently stands, I would not recommend anybody to work here, but if you were looking for an entry-level position to start in the telecommunications field, this wouldn’t be a bad spot for about a year to build your foundation of design on, but be prepared they will absolutely use you for their own benefit rather then work with you as management views you the designer or the new hire is just a number and are easily replaced. They talk family and culture, but this company has anything but family and culture as it is very profit. Driven management doesn’t even follow their own management training rules and actively goes against their training. Upper management and management believe that they are smarter and better than those underneath them as they will talk down to and belittle in conversation. If you ask questions from my experience each time, I spoke with my leadership and they asked me a question I was in fear of losing my job on a daily basis And if I brought a question or a critique up, I was immediately dismissed management should be able to have open communication with their sub Even and including from manager to supervisor yet this company does not do this. In my humble opinion I would not recommend this company to anyone. 

CCI is genuinely a fantastic company to work for but the call center is a bit of a mess at times. The call center is constantly changing and moving, which is to be expected since they work with various different customers.

Leadership really tries to make things better and work for the employees but it isn't as helpful when the issues trying to be fixed have been unaddressed for such a long time. Thing being "unaddressed" may also be things that just take time so be sure to check-in if you haven't heard anything.

Though things seemed messy at times, I think the current leadership team is doing everything they can to meet the employees needs while also maintaining the business needs as well. 

CCI has and maintains an open door policy for employees so make sure to reach out. Leadership wants to help, but they need to know the specific issues to get the ball rolling. Make sure to bring your own thoughts on what a good solution or idea could be. Spend more time trying to fix the problem than complaining about it.

If you don't like something, speak up. Then, if you feel the person you spoke to didn't listen or you feel they didn't take you seriously go to someone else. No matter the position you hold, you aren't just a cog in the machine. They want to to listen to your opinions and thoughts because you are a member of their team and possibly the future leaders of CCI. 

The culture for CCI or the call center, isnt something that is constantly discussed but is lightly addressed. The problem is that most employees don't fully understand the culture so it would help to cover a culture topic (one topic every month) in one-on-ones or something. Maybe have a team meeting to discuss it together and how they can exemplify it. Then brainstorm how to do the same individually. It would basically be a monthly theme.

CCI was unable to do many in-person company events which could have been due to covid. Some weren't very happy about this as it was something to look forward to.

To help this, call center leadership started some monthly movie nights that everyone could vote on to choose the movie. This was really amazing during the week of Christmas when a new movie played each day.

CCI is a great company to work for, and has some extremely intelligent people working together to continue making it a better place. If they have the position you are looking for, I would recommend giving it a shot.

Bad: The intro training to any new position is poor. The question you are asked often is "Did you check the playbook?" which was an incomplete disaster. Changed positions, got two weeks of training in an immensely dynamic, inconsistent, complex, and difficult position, and then thrown to the wolves. Your coworkers are happy to help, but it stresses them out because then they suffer production loss due to helping you. They get sternly talked to by management for helping. Often a no win for anyone involved.

Good: They give out bonuses and amazon gift cards for contributing ideas to increase production. They can reimburse you for purchases such as gym memberships and computer chairs, etc, if you put the effort in.

Good and Bad: Benefits are not terrible and get them after 90 days. Hours are usually consistent. Overtime is rare. Get a decent amount of sick and vacation, but it accrues. Employee stock. Retirement. Lots of extracurricular training. They want you to succeed. Sent everyone quickly home because of Covid.

Amazing: They took good care of me while I was hurt, I didn't qualify for FMLA yet, so they looked the other way while I got treatments. They really respect your privacy. 

Bad: Can be very corporate America. The upper management and it trickles into middle management of they do not understand what and why speed bumps come along, your production numbers can really go down if you get a series of difficult, confusing, technical jobs, then they ask why? and your explanation falls on deaf ears. They can get annoyed with you asking for help too much and not asking for help enough. Sometimes it feels you cannot win. 

They are more than willing to train you to be a designer, with no intentions of doing so. Having gone through designer training twice in the last year, I have proven twice that I am knowledgeable and capable of being a designer, as have the rest of the drafters currently working at CCI. Despite this, you are required to jump through hoops to move up, but you only will if you are friends with your supervisor due to rampant nepotism throughout the company. Directives handed down are changed with every pair of hands it touches before reaching the actual workforce of the company, who has to change what they are doing every week due to middle and upper management incompetency.

Most questions related to these frequent and sudden changes in directive are met with unrelated questions, leaving you in the dark on where to go on your job. With changes in directives, also comes a higher workload every week or two. Of course, this higher workload is never taken into consideration when the entire engineering department's productivity numbers are trending down week after week.

To top off a growing workload and an unwavering, unrealistic production goal, you WILL be met with a pay cut each year that you are not promoted. Like I said before, if you aren't friends with your supervisor, you aren't getting promoted, so be prepared to make less and less money every year you work here until you're forced to go somewhere that will treat you with respect.

The design aspect is a lot of fun once you know what you are doing but I don't enjoy working for this company specifically. Management is unorganized and half of the time doesn't even understand the design aspect of the specific job or they don't communicate well and they reprimand us for things that they themselves don't even understand. There is almost never any consistent training so you basically have to drown until you learn to swim. CCI seems to care way too much about profit and if you are making money for the company and doesn't consider giving employees any paid time for team building. We are all remote and it took over a year to even get to know someone as more than a coworker. Every 15 minutes of our time has to be claimed towards a project or SOMETHING and if there is no work or the VDI goes down and we are unable to work due to a company issue we have to either use PTO, get no pay or make up the time later on. I feel I am personally paid fairly but I know this isn't the same for everyone and others are highly underpaid.  We have started hiring internationally, which is great, but the language barrier is very stressful and we get forced into training with almost no notice and dealing with a language barrier on top of it. 

I've been working for CCI  for a long time. I've seen the best of times and the worst. I love the companies direction as a whole, but it has some major management issues. 
With each project that I have been assigned to, I am given an easy task for a robot, but a really hard task for a human. The need for production is at a(n) all time high. The expectations of a designer has gone beyond the salary/hourly. 
The overall environment for management is concerning to me. There seems to be alot of passive aggressive behavior through out the whole management team. The current projects that have been assigned has put a strain on the relationship between designers and managers. 
 I do understand that the projects that we have been assigned to are in a time crunch to get done, but the work that has been given is alot bigger than what the company has ever recieved. 
The benefits are really nice. It does has some drawback due to premium rates consistently rising each year due to the current economy. There is bonuses each quarter. Which is a huge plus in recognizing production. Not to mention the 401k and employee owned stocks. 

In due time, I believe the company will get better, it just needs time to expand. 

My duties were to schedule projects, communicate with all parties involved to gather data about each project and follow up on the project to make sure that deadlines were met. I would be the "middle man" between upper management and the teams out in the field to make sure that no lines of communication were crossed/mis interpreted. Management gave daily or weekly instruction and allowed me to run with it; allowing me to have control over each situation and use my own time management skills to get things done.
It allowed me to increase my management skills, create more effective communication skills and allowed me to continue to improve and perfect my task prioritizing skills. Overall it molded me into a very effective, self starting leader.
The most challenging parts were dealing with certain construction crews who weren't used to having to report their progress. It seems that sometimes it is difficult to teach an old dog new tricks.
The most enjoyable part of the job was being able to take control of each situation and know that my management team knew of my capabilities and trusted my instinct. Because of this things ran smoothly every day and deadlines were met consecutively.

A typical day begins with prioritizing received emails and voicemails from close of previous business day.  As my current position involves two separate areas within this job description, I prioritize into Receiving,  RMAs, and general email.  Duties also include working with the inventory, finance department, and warehouse personnel.

Once email and voicemail has been prioritized,I address any urgent requests pertaining to Returns and/or Repairs.

I begin the receiving process as this enables the invoicing associate to begin her daily duties.  Once receiving has been recorded, entered, printed and posted,  receiving moves to the invoicing associate.  Once the invoices are generated, I proof the invocing prior to posting.  

RMAs and Repairs begin with opening any new requests, contacting vendors, customers, shipping companies, and others as necessary.  The RMA process is about customer service for incorrect, faulty, missing, damaged product.  It can be the customer changing their mind, design changes within their system.  Duties also include arranging for product pick up, return, working with engineers regarding functionality of equipment and whether a return or replacement is needed.



Work starts right away, answering customer calls and assisting them with tech support. There's always assistance available from coworkers, trainers, and supervisors. Manager of the Call Center is the best manager I've ever worked for. Quite busy in his role, but will always answer any questions you have and will consider any improvement suggestion. I've suggested a number of improvements to the Call Center myself and over half were implemented, and I was actually given decent reasoning for the ones that were not. The work environment can be cramped with smaller desks than the other departments in the building, but each employee is made to feel like family. Training starts on day one and continues throughout employment as needs and responsibilities change. Overall, an excellent job.

I took up a remote position with the company last year. The positives were the remote flexibility and the generally laid back nature of the position. That said, a lot of job of learning and follow up questions left a lot to be desired. As did the adherence to our SLA where we often had to argue with management regarding the services we provided.

The worst part of my experience though, was being terminated while on vacation and the follow up attempt to gaslight me into believing that I had overstayed my vacation and that there was an honest intent to reach out to me. Of course, both of these were false but to be fired as a single parent while on vacation, and then lied to about the circumstance, just really cements how little the company valued me. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Splicer 398 salaries reported	$90,533 per year
Field engineer 605 salaries reported	$76,000 per year
Project manager 329 salaries reported	$89,711 per year
Regional account manager 212 salaries reported	$110,000 per year
Designer 187 salaries reported	$21.25 per hour

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