account manager

account representative

sales intern

program manager

intern

You start the job, it is great.  Great people, training is good.  You understand the ins and the outs of the job... Than you actually start, and that's where your hopes of it being a good training program start to fall through.

When you actually start they give you tons of training modules to work through... Most of the training modules are common sense "How do you communicate effectively?"  "How do you troubleshoot?" Mind you these are generalist learning "Courses" you take where everyone sleeps through the entire training and nobody wants to talk in the classes.

Regardless of that... Let's get into the ACE SRE Training itself and its ups and downs... Yes it is fantastic, they will pay for your Certifications making you a valuable asset anywhere you go... However be warned that the on the job training is minimal.  They expect you to sit and and ask questions... "Well what are we supposed to ask questions about?" You will ask as everyone does...  Why is there no training session that explains... "This is what we do on a daily basis... these are the types of problems we run into, and we expect you to be able to fix these things... Here is how you would fix these problems or where to look to fix these things."  Instead you are dropped into a Shadow meeting at the beginning of your day and expected to ask questions about what is going on rather than them explaining what each utility is they use and what they are doing... Maybe if they did that us ACE's would have more incentive to ask questions and learn about the job and be motivated to want to understand it.

On top of that, you will have classes where they may want you to make a PowerPoint and speech about the dumbest subject in a world and expect you to literally knock it out of the park with tons of details when you are supposed to work on IT certifications... And if it isn't good enough you will get yelled at by one manager, I won't mention his name that will make you feel like garbage about everything you make.  If the project is pointless or stupid, AKA giving a fake mock speech to "students" about what it is like being an engineer, and expected to do such a stellar job at it, when it is so meaningless you don't even want to put the work in it, they will HOUND you.  I've never been yelled at in my life for the first project I've ever had to turn in on a speech.  I was like... "What in the heck is this".  They then said "You didn't follow directions you are only supposed to put a few sentences on the slide!"

Just let me do what I'm good at... IT... How about tell me to make a speech about a subject in technology I could talk for hours about that interests me instead of something ridiculous nobody cares about putting a ton of effort into.  Then of course I think the manager had it out for me because I would act like I could skate by all the IT certifications without a problem, and they thought I wasn't studying... And I passed both certifications... So I think his attitude was "You won't actually end up doing any work here"... Which was false.

I am supposed to be learning how to be an SRE... Put me on projects that are worth it, and I will EXCEL.  Don't tell me to make a PowerPoint about something so ridiculous nobody will care to put the effort in.  We are in IT for crying out loud.  We can communicate effectively and work well but don't yell over something as small as a useless PowerPoint nobody will ever look at but a manager.  It probably gave him an Ego boost seeing everybody give speeches for these ridiculous PowerPoints.  I thought... No, you are not going to see me bend down on my knees for you and give you a PowerPoint about nothing so it satisfies your Ego.

One thing about CDW in the ACE program for SRE, is that they will always move the Goal Posts forward... They want you to drink the Kool-Aid, and everything you do will never be good enough if they see you don't take their garbage seriously.

Yes, I can understand the "Boot Camp" Mentality but in this case, these people are just annoying.  Would I still probably do it over again and try harder to be an SRE though there and work on actual projects?  Yes, probably, because the benefits they give you and the possibilities of growing and pay are very large.  So at the end of the day, perhaps I only had myself to blame... But I don't like giving people satisfaction over garbage.

Worked on 2nd day shift under 9 months as a contractor. 5 days from Mon - Friday with possibly a 6th day either on Saturday or Sunday depending on which shift you are in. Overtime is expected on somedays depending on how busy the day is. You could work from 40-60 hrs a week. It's a warehouse environment. Managers and coworkers were easy to get along. Configuring with some slight troubleshooting as a configuration technician. You start out learning the basics of how to complete customer orders by configuring chromebooks and you work your way up to slightly more complex projects like hardware, network, packing, BIOS etc. Your work productivity is scored based on how many orders and how units in those orders you configure. You need to maintain a high enough score to ensure no issues. 

As contractors from various staffing agencies sent to CDW, you get paid around 12-15, with them adding a $1 for every certification that you are certified for. CDW and the staffing agency negotiate your pay. CDW pays your staffing agency and your staffing agency pays you with the agency taking a slight commission from it. In my case, I was paid $16 with the agency taking probably $3-4 bucks for every hour you work. Once you get hired full time by CDW, that commission difference should be added to what you are already being paid. As a contractor, you don't get benefits from CDW besides the pay. Getting hired by CDW from your staffing agency does involve you working hard and becoming an asset to the company.

During covid, the company bought free lunches everyday for contractors and their employees. Free snacks every Wednesday. If it's summer, 1x free ice cream every Friday. You get 2 10 minute breaks paid and 1 30 min lunch break. 

CDW does do some lay offs. They had several rounds of lay offs starting in late summer all the way to the holidays. I was on the list with several others. It was sudden with no warning ahead of time. Currently collecting unemployment. It was probably cost saving move due to the warehouse not being busy during the holidays and covid. I learned there  were more rounds of lay offs after me with the workforce almost cut in half.

Overall, I enjoyed the workplace. People were nice. You learned new things everyday. Free food was good. Pay was decent considering what is happening right now with the economy and covid. The ending was all too sudden. 

If you can be successful at inside sales at CDW , many doors will be opened. The real beauty of working there is that you acquire some of the best sales skills and product knowledge . You then take your talents to another company that will compensate you fairly. 

It is well known in the technology manufacturer community that CDW employees are excellent hires; as they know the competitive landscape, internal and client contacts. It is also well known that they no longer compensate employees well and offer extremely low flexibility. 

CDW used to be an amazing company to work for. Once they went fully public ,investors returns became the only priority. I understand cuts must be made. Many of these cuts came directly from sellers..in the way of spiffs, events & travel budgets. These cuts did not hit management.

The fact that employees are taking their lives when management pulls the rug out from under them.. that says something. It is not a healthy company culture. Employee mental and emotional health within the organization is terrifying. 

Here is what you NEED to know:

 If you are just out of college and have no critical overhead (mortgage, children, serious debt etc); if you can work 60 hour weeks and deal with the stress of not having a predictable income... CDW will shape you. 

It will really beat you in...It is a grind, as much as they give the illusion that it is not a call center--it really is. If you can flourish in that environment.. you will be able to kill it anywhere. 

I would recommend the job to a recent grad who can live at their parents and focus on the job. I do not recommend it to anyone with children or a mortgage . I would not recommend CDW to anyone who is easily offended or prioritizes a clear work and home life boundary.

If this sounds like something you can handle...Get in there, survive to two years and get out!

Typical days at CDW are chaotic to say the least. You never really know what is going to happen from day to day, and only so much of that can be attributed to the IT industry. 

As far as set processes and procedures go, there really are none. Each team does things their own way and management does very little to try and change that. If you make any suggestions through your management about establishing standard practices or procedures, you will get a lecture about how this is a "dynamic and ever changing environment" or you will be ignored completely

You are pitched about how there are so many growth opportunities in your respective fields, when in fact there are not. There is a lot of re branding and re-badging of titles, but they don't come with any more compensation just more work. 

Depending on what department your are in, the teams are very different. The Sales teams are very rotational due to internal movements and high turnover with  account managers. The support functions have more of a clique mentality, and are not always very welcoming to new people. People in the support functions have typically been there for a number of years and "hold their ground" on any sort of changes. 

For an IT company, it is very surprising to find out that they do not use a robust ERP system or Contract Management System. This makes tasks such as reporting, contract management and basic organization very difficult. In lieu of this, multiple programs are used to compensate and the data put into Excel spreadsheets. With all the different type of programs in use, it is very difficult to try and train new people or even manage your day to day task. The number of manual processed lends itself to any number of possible errors.

•	Provide onsite Technical Support for the Configuration Center to solve hardware, software advanced setup. 
•	Perform research, and create technical document for departmental usage.
•	Communicate with varies venders, Customers, Account Managers, Configuration Center Technicians and Managers. 
•	Customers follow up to ensure configuration requests have been completed to the customer’s satisfaction.
•	Support the configuration Center in install Operating System and migration Windows XP to Windows 7 and Windows 8 to 8.1.
•	Performing mass deployments and migrations from Windows XP to Windows 7 operating system.
•	Setup RAID levels, RAID Controller and configure Boot Camp partition.
•	Install and configure Endpoint Protection, PGP desktop Encryption, and Computrace. 
•	Provide Bloat-ware removal and operating system tuning for best performance. 
•	Experienced in Lenovo, Acer, Panasonic, HP, Apple, Sony, Toshiba, Dell, servers, desktop, tablet, Printers and laptop. 

•	Build, provision, install, and configure servers for multiple platforms.
•	Basic monitor, troubleshoot PC, Printers, servers, operating systems, and hardware.
•	Assemble/build hardware to meet client/service order specifications
•	Build servers using Approved OS images via ghost or SCCM.
•	Install, configure, and troubleshoot all PC hardware including RAM, hard drives, and network cards.
•	Motherboard installation, system modifications and upgrades, video cards, BIOS, keyboards, monitors.
•	Configure Servers, PC, laptop, Apple products for government, end user, and private corporations 
•	Mass image deployment, Hardware replacement, and VPN configuration.  
•	IP setup, and customize configuration for corporate printers.

The AP management, manager and supervisor  lacks experience in AP and accounting.  No management or  leadership skills , it shows by  decisions they continues to make, Some co workers have more knowledge and Experience than  management.  Management does not exercise any of the company "Core values"  There is no communications in the department,  Lots of slacking/ goofing around,  management never around, not visible , management is aware but turns the other way and allows it,  find a way to justify it, no structure,  a lot of favoritism by management,  management should lead as an example,  not participate in the unprofessional/ unethical actions it makes, AP managements  allowed bullying, confrontations, on going issues to continue, by not taking action, the high turnover in the  department speaks for itself. The good / dedicated  hard workers   leave /management never take action on any issues.  Too many chiefs and not enough Indians, management  encourage employees with same title to boss around other co workers with the same title, that only creates issues among the department.  Management should focus, assist the hard workers and hear them out, show them they are being hear and follow up.  Employees are not recognize or appreciated for their hard work. Restructuring is  strongly needed in the AP department. 
Come in at what ever time, extremely flexible for those who never worked in a corporate environment.

Sirius acquired a local Omaha company, MSI Systems Integrators, in 2010, for several obvious reasons - MSI was at the top of their game, an IBM darling. Customer service was key at MSI - doing what it took to keep the customer's systems running was paramount to all employees. Over the years, MSI had stepped up their game on the behind-the-scenes, back-end office support systems in order to better serve their internal and external customers.

Since the acquisition, Sirius has no interest in keeping their customers happy. Service contracts at MSI had a 4 hour turnaround time - creating and sending out the contract to the salespeople. Sirius took pride in having multiple people touch their services contracts before a customer or the salesperson ever saw it. It takes about a week to wind its way back to the salesperson - and if you had changes, forget about timeliness! Some customers have had to a file a lawsuit in order to get the right thing done. Selling them equipment and not providing the Engineers to install it - really? Sirius does not encourage independent thinking. The owner was upfront that he was just waiting to accumulate a certain amount of wealth before he retired, so he could work with his charities spoke volumes on how they viewed their employees.

I worked for CDW for over 2 years as a Corporate Account Manager. Basically I found that most of your teammates are great people but management likes to ruin these relationships by stirring the pot and creating problems and trying to turn everyone against each other.

Your pay is garbage for your first year and unless you suck up a lot and get your manager to feel sympathetic for you, you will not be handed any worthy accounts. They are constantly changing the pay structure and don't tell you about it until AFTER it's already been implemented. This is probably the biggest reason for their HUGE turnover. From my hiring class of 13, only 5 remain just to give you an idea.

Management constantly expresses the "team" mentality. Basically if you hit your goal but the team did not, you get put down because it wasn't enough. You go to pointless team meetings every week and awful training's that take you away from your computer and phone. We liked to call this "Sales PREVENTION".

CDW has gone down hill BIG TIME since I started and no longer care about their employees as much as they once did. You're only a number here and even if you outshine your colleagues, you're replaceable. CDW reminds me a lot of Office Space.

CDW is claiming to be in fortune 500 companies but their management and work culture is worst like a third world country. I worked in warehouse 3 technical lab where the work wasn't technical at all. During my daily work day I was unboxing and boxing laptops and PCs with some automatic imaging by connecting VLAN cable. It was kind of labor job while standing on my feet for 8 hours. 

I was hired as a contractor for six months but got laid off after 6 weeks with the reason of low work load. And the most stupid part was, they hired my friend on the same day i got laid off. So it proved that either CDW managers are liers or they got no guts to tell truth. There are no breaks at all. You get 45 minutes of unpaid lunch only. 

There is nothing to learn at CDW. There is no IT work involved in configuration technician position. Company has no ethics or diverse culture. There is lot of favoritism and unfairness in the company as they required candidates to have A+ or Net+ certs but their supervisors got no certs. 

Don't waste your time in applying at CDW as they are loosing their contracts from clients and there is no way that you will get hired from contractor until next 3-4 years. And yeah as a contractor, you won't get any benefits at all.

CDW is a great place to get experience but they'll quickly take advantage of you and make you work 12-14 hour days. They hire temps to permanent positions, but rarely do they make them permanent. I'll say there's 50%-60% temps working there, they usually say there is a 3 month probation period and promise to hire you permanently. They don't, they just do layoffs so they don't have to hire you permanently and go on to hire other temps. The local management is very deceitful, they seem like nice people but don't be fooled, every few weeks they'll give you free lunches for all the hard work and hours you put in, but then they'll do layoffs, they won't even tell you, they just have the temp agency call you and informed you that your services aren't needed anymore. No explanation, just goodbye that's it your done! I understand there's deadlines to make but when you put in a lot of effort, hours and care you don't layoff those people. The work wasn't that hard, installing HDDs, RAM, expansion cards, imaging systems, and installing OS to the systems. They demand a high volume, which means there's no room for mistakes and training. I didn't have any issues with any of the co workers or management it's just the way they do business.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Account manager 15 salaries reported	$41,267 per year
Account representative 5 salaries reported	$36,000 per year
Sales intern 9 salaries reported	$18.18 per hour
Program manager 6 salaries reported	$107,137 per year
Intern 9 salaries reported	$19.33 per hour

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