software engineer

inside sales representative

account manager

principal software engineer

senior software engineer

Dell Technologies

I'm going to give a long but fair review as I worked at Dell well over the average 18 month turn over period of most employees, and worked in several different departments during my time. 

First positives, Dell pays well above average for the position, title, and location you are in. Benefits are good, health insurance, 401k match, stock options ect. There are many ways to move up in the company structure if your a top 10% performer or meet one of the many "diversity" requirements. Management is always on hand to help, and if they are not, someone else will fill in the gap. Towards the end of my time with Dell they hired some really great ex military generals who stepped in and really improved the place. Its hard to tell if that is still going on now, but at the time the regional manager over the whole site would take 15 minutes out of his day for anyone in the company, from top to bottom, and hear your concerns no matter how big or small. Often times those concerns would actually get addressed if deemed significant. He even set aside 1 hour per month and TOOK FRONT LINE CALLS HIMSELF to see how the process worked and if anything needed improvement. He would even walk up to some random persons desk and take over the call right then and there so that the lower management couldn't set him up with just the really easy stuff, or control the calls. I can't say I've worked with any other company where that happened. Very impressive.

You will make a lot of friends at Dell (because you will essentially live at the office), the culture is laid back, they don't care how you dress unless its a big onsite executive day, in fact they seemed to hire the "creative" types more often than the straight laced executive types. This generally worked in their favor as you got people who actually wanted to make things work. 

They spend a month training you, so even if you have zero experience they will get you up to speed to do the job. Many other companies seek out and hire ex Dell employees because they know Dell spends the time and money to train you right. Its like boot camp for phone techs. If you have a couple of years of Dell on your resume you pretty much go to the top of the pile when applying to any other company, because surviving more than 18 months at Dell means your battle tested and a hard worker. You also have access to people and resources who make the proprietary Dell systems and products, so you can get behind the scenes takes on technical issues you can't find anywhere else, even on the deepest tech forums online. This gives you quite an edge in the market after your time at Dell as you know things people can't learn anywhere else.

Negatives: Expect to work overtime. Expect to work overtime on your overtime. Expect to walk into work for overtime only to be given extra overtime after your overtime. Expect to be given overtime the last day of your week the hour before you leave for your day off. Expect your days off to actually be work days. Expect to book PTO so you don't have to work overtime. Expect to book that PTO on January 1st of the work year so that the available time to book your PTO (which actually should have just been your normal weekend) doesn't get used up by everyone else. Planning on taking Christmas off? Did you book it on January 1st? Well you better think again because Christmas is now overtime. Expect to work overtime on December 31st during New Year Eve just so you can be the first to book PTO in the system for next years New Years Eve. Did you work 12 hours of overtime today on your normal weekend? Better go ahead and add one extra hour of DOUBLE TIME pay to your day for a total of 13 hours. Did you work 10 hours of overtime today until 1 am? Guess what, you have more overtime 5 hours from now at 6am, so I hope you brought your sleeping bag and bathroom stuff with you so you can go sleep in a meeting room otherwise you might miss your overtime. Did I mention the great health care? Your going to need it when you get the medical bill for the ambulance that had to drag you to the hospital after you blacked out out mid shift from too much overtime. Did I mention the overtime? 

This was back over a decade ago so it may have changed, but if you work for Dell you better be single because you will do nothing but live at the office. I lost touch will all my friends for three years and it seriously affect my relationships. Everything in the above paragraph I did myself, and on two occasions other people had to be wheeled out in ambulances for passing out at work due to exhaustion. I slept at work twice in a meeting room so I didn't miss my next shift. Double time is nice and the paychecks were huge, but money only goes so far. You spend so much time at work it becomes difficult to even use the great benefits they offer. Want to meet your friend for a drink? Better book 1 hour PTO ahead of time just in case. On many occasions people would rage quit or burst out in open rage after being handed more overtime. 

The other major negative for Dell is the cut-throat competition, and the fact that everyone was disposable. Twice my department reached top revenue company wide, only for everyone to be laid off 3 months later so they could move the department to Canada. If you were a top performer, which I was, the layoffs did not matter because they would just pay out your severance (2-3 months pay), give you a month off (the only time off you really got), and then re-hired you in a different department. So it just became a mini vacation. For everyone else down the food chain however, it was brutal. Several people actually moved across country from Texas to Tennessee (or the reverse) after a layoff to get rehired with Dell only to be laid off again shortly after arriving at the new location. This was after they sold their house and bought a new one in the new city, had their kids change schools ect ect.

Dell also suffers (or suffered) from the "SJW" crazy sweeping the nation even as far back as the mid 2000's. This often time resulted in a few people moving up the food chain who did not meet the high metrics based requirements but were promoted for "other" reasons. This often caused a breakdown in certain management functions as they were not the best person for the job. Luckily, this was self correcting at the time as it was likely the whole department was going to get cut in 6-12 months anyway due to the "fast paced environment" and they would not get rehired in another one due to their poor performance, so it never became a lasting issue. 

In closing, if you are going to work at Dell, make sure your single or your significant other is a workaholic. Tell everyone of your friends on your social media that they won't see or hear from you until you get laid off, or find another job. When you get laid off take the severance pay and go live in the Bahamas for a month until they rehire you (if your a top performer). Book all your PTO on Jan 1st, you can always cancel it if you need it for something else. If you survive 18 months, go ahead and last another 6 month to make it two years then quit if your not moving up the food chain. Then go find another job with less overtime. Invest all your overtime pay and double time pay into some solid investment. If I would have done that I'd probably be a millionaire today.

Maybe spend a couple of years here to experience such a huge enterprise and get the name recognition on your resume. If you stay longer, never sit in the same role more than a year. If you get stuck for any reason then leave. I joined Dell about 5 years into my professional career. I was there about 12 years, 8 managers, 4 layoffs, so many "re-orgs" I lost count. Only one of my role/team moves was by choice via internal job application. Was laid off in the 5% exodus in Feb 2023.
I learned a lot, my skill set has shifted into a totally different area than where I began, in my case (thankfully) put me in a more desired field than I would have been in a straight trajectory. 

The manager/director you have at any point in time can either make this the best job or a nightmare. I had a couple of great years and then a couple of severely disfunctional years and then back again.
This seems to arise mostly because a director has to choose to be a good manager or selfishly pursue their next career move - meeting with peers and superiors they arent working on programs with, and mentoring others OUTSIDE THEIR OWN TEAM. Yes, HR immediately encourages newly promoted Directors to do this. Along those lines, there's far too much required HR process documentation, not including the time spent actually managing the staff. 
The manager/director is also positioned to apply any HR policies at their discretion. That is stated in HR documentation. There's not an open door policy to skip jump to the next managerial level to get support. It's either your direct manager, or a formal HR complaint. When someone does go directly to HR, true anonymity to the manager and team is impossible. Then that person is always on the next layoff, because guess who writes that list? The only way out of that is to have a solid connection in another org that will take your word for it over what the old manager could say happened. I've seen it all. Please note this is not what happened to me, lol.
If it's not a re-org or layoff that disrupts your progress, it's a new strategy that requires a lot of process changes that replaces the previous processes that didn't have time to mature. 

10 years ago it was a great salary for the region but as of today it's average until you get to that Sr. Director level. 

One distinctly Dell thing is that there are still a lot of people that worked their way up from an hourly job on the phone queues or other non-professional positions 20+ years ago, when MD was all about that entrepreneurial spirit. They make things difficult because they have gotten a Dell form of education ... Don't use the same jargon as the industry, etc, and have zero insight about it. There are even a few that are objectively not qualified for their role. That also comes with nepotism, obviously. Disguised as professional networking.

However, as you can see from social media that some people have amazingly fulfilling careers here. So it's a toss of the dice.
If I hadn't gotten so beat down and confused by the rollercoaster, I would have looked for a new company after the first 5 years. 

Dell provided me with an entry level phone technician job to help customers with their enterprise server systems during failures. While there Dell continued to provide training opportunities in just about any Enterprise technology that is available. I chose to focus on servers and operating systems but at the same time was focused on working to the next level. 

I then moved into team lead roles of Dell's Silver, Mainstream, High Complexity Microsoft and then Platinum teams. From there I advanced into a Technical Account Manager position where I managed large Enterprise technical accounts. From there I moved into my current position as a Resolution Manager handling escalations across most all Enterprise and client  products sold by Dell. 

The experience at Dell has been very fulfilling. I have developed, through Dell's help, a broad and effective skill set ranging from technical troubleshooting to negotiation skills as well as communication both verbal and written. Dell has provided the means to gain several important certifications within the industry including Microsoft, Citrix, VMware, and ITIL. 

The atmosphere at Dell is very friendly and edifying but professional at all times, even when fun is to be had... I have developed many strong professional and personal friendships there. 

The focus is always that  the customer is first. It is amazing to see the day in and day out amazing collaborative efforts across the people and teams within Dell to achieve the end goal with the customer which is essentially ensuring that they remain a partner for life.   

Through my time at Dell I gained experience using multiple CRM's, and a good portion of the Microsoft Office suite including but not limited to EXCEL, WORD, PowerPoint and  Publisher. 

Management has always been focused at not just improving my current work experience and effectiveness but they focus on my career path to help me find my best places within Dell. I have consistent one one ones as well as skip-level one on ones with management where I am offered the opportunity to get deeper insights into the business both current and future. In these meetings I participate in the process of improving myself professionally and to focus on future opportunities. So far I have not been disappointed with any manager and I have had many in my 11 years with the company. 

The hardest and then again it also can be the most enjoyable part of my job are the escalations I work on. No doubt it can be pressing and quite stressful to have a job where no one comes to you when things are working as they should. When things fail in a customer's environment and when the costs are great I am brought in to make sure that resolution is achieved in a manner that satisfies the customer. Having a lot of people depend on you as such can be pressing at times but when issues are resolved and the customer is happy as what happens most if not close all of the time that is where the enjoyment of the job is realized.

The pros? The lower level managers are very empathetic and really do their best. They feel the same pain we individual contributors do. They do a ton to alleviate as much as they can. The work-life balance is also good. For some roles, they are very flexible. As long as I get my work done and I keep them informed of what I'm doing, my bosses don't care too much that I'm working exactly on-schedule. If I want to take off an hour early every now and then I can just send a message to my manager verifying that's fine and 9.5/10 out of 10 he just says, "Sounds good, have a good rest of your day." 

The fitness reimbursements are also pretty nice. We get 500$ per year to spend on most kinds of fitness purchases. It can be subscription to a service, a personal trainer, equipment, etc.

I've worked here for over a decade. It used to be a good place to work, with clear leadership and direction. There was a culture of understanding that leaders would hear anyone out and then take their advice to make an informed decision. Today, no one is willing to tell leaders their ideas are bad or need to be modified. We waste millions of dollars on nonsense just because some leader thinks it's a good idea, even when we can clearly prove it's not beneficial. If you ask why you're jumping, you've already been fired. They aren't hiring backfills, so our team of over 30 is now down to about 12. We are still expected to achieve the same amount as with 30. They tell us "just use AI and automate" when we ask how they expect us to do that. When we ask how to use AI and automate, we don't have expertise, we're told to figure it out. The company is asking everyone to upskill to a point 2-3 times above what they've been hired for. When asked how they'll compensate people for doing much more highly skilled work than they were hired for, the answer was, "You'll be highly employable." Suggesting they have no intention of increasing anyone's pay or rewarding them for going above and beyond and becoming highly qualified. Instead, the company plans to continue paying them the same and taking advantage of skills they are not willing to hire people for. 

I would not advise anyone to work here unless they enjoy being seen by upper leadership as nothing more than a statistic and an annoyance; while being bled dry of everything you can possibly give.

As a Tam at Dell, no day is typical, you deal with escalations and need to think out of the box.
You are the point of contact between Dell and customers.
Workplace culture is normal for Austin. Team environment, if you can be a positive influence, lead you fit, but there is room for followers.
The hardest part of the job,  if you have a technical background as I do is you have to share maybe a hundred technicians among all TAMs. There may be times you notice some incident that could be resolve easily, but you have to keep in mind Dell considers themselves a hardware company.
A small software configuration or something basic will get addressed by hardware fixes. Very rare a software issue is every given to the software team to fix. Even if you want some incident resolved, your job is to let the technicians do their job. I had 3 Black Belt level projects in one year, just did them myself, as an ENTJ I spot inefficiencies easily. So I would just do them knowing they would bring in multi million dollars with zero cost.Made Dell look good, maybe not others on team. Keep in mind not everyone is an excellent worker like me.There are some you will wonder how they got hired. Just the way it is. Dell is heavy on promoting women, Mormons. too. You may have multiple managers. I had five managers change in one year. Just be flexible. But if you are a TAM keep in mind customers are real people. Normal server/network for you if you are day time Tam is around 4500 servers/networks in production. If daytime TAM you own the relationship 24 hours a day, but there is good 2nd and 3rd shift. They are just maybe limited in dispatching some things only the day TAM can do. Don't let the sales team have too much influence on your decisions, in fact they need to stay in their own building. Some people get stressed out. But having worked at other Fortune 500 companies it was easy for me. There should be an opportunity to move to another position in 18 months, although often that won't happen. By the way, I haven't worked at Dell for ten years, but I know the top circle of managers. Currently own  4 businesses. Dell was a good learning environment, but now I own companies and let others do the work, and I create more businesses.

I will provide an analysis of a typical day at work. The place where I worked at offered their own parking lot for employees as well as their own kitchen area. The company is in a building surrounded by other companies. It is very big and is a really good atmosphere. Provides a a variety of work rooms, kitchen area, parking lot and a ping-pong table. A typical work day includes arriving to the workplace at 9 am; having your own way of transportation. Once you arrive, you go to the kitchen area and wait for your supervisor to arrive. Once your supervisor arrives, you will spend the morning half of work learning the basics of the company, what it offers and how you can help it prosper and thrive. For 3 hours you do a couple activities with your group members and supervisor then you go on your lunch break. Lunch is an hour from 12-1 and you are allowed to go wherever you want as long as you are with a supervisor. The company offers 3 floors. The first floor being the entrance, parking lot and a local cafe. The second floor is the office area, work rooms, kitchen and a ping-pong table. Second floor includes some office workers and your supervisors. This is where you will be mostly during the work day. Third floor is the top floor which includes other office members as well as a balcony of the company. From 9 to noon you will work with your supervisor. Once 3'o clock hits you can leave. Your supervisor is the one who helps you learn different tasks and what you will do. Everyone at this company has a different background yet they all connect with similar interests and passions for the company. For this company, I had to follow orders from all of my supervisors. I would say that the hardest part of the job was the activities that we were doing with our supervisor. I did not find them very easy or interesting. These activities/tasks were the least bit interesting. The most enjoyable part of the job was you got to learn something new everyday, work with others, lunch break as well as work individually. Really tested your strengths and weaknesses. Overall, this company that I worked for showed me what it would be like to work at that company. The work conditions, hours and other services it offered provided insight on the company and what it would be like to work as an employee. Working at this company showed me what it would be like to work in the workplace at this company on a daily basis.

Contributes to the development of new techniques and plans within area of expertise.
Works on abstract and complex problems requiring evaluation of intangible variables.
Develops innovative and creative output based on interpretation and analysis that improve business.
Performance and contribute to corporate goals and strategic intent.
 - Opportunity/risk analyses
 - Cost/benefit analyses
 - Pricing models
Acts as a subject matter expert in the design, architecture and deployment of new systems to keep the server. environment stable and interruptions to a minimum in standalone and mufti-tiered environments.
Provides deep subject matter expertise, advice and program delivery.
Influences others through their professional/technical expertise.
Manages critical projects, customer engagements or business processes.
Contributes to the area through delivery of end results and contribution to planning for the area.
Provides thought leadership, guidance and advice in own field.
Works across the organization to effectively obtain and allocate resources to complete programs and projects on time.
Allocates work and mentors others.
Adapts communication techniques for audiences at multiple internal and external levels.
Presents facts and information to negotiate mutually acceptable solutions.
In-depth disciplinary knowledge; leverages business acumen and subject matter expertise.
Thorough understanding of Dell business priorities, strategy and direction.
Thorough understanding and management of customer business needs and expectations.
Integrates trends, data and information into plans, deliverable and recommendations.
Anticipates operational, program, and implementation issues and develops preventative measures.
Transfers knowledge and provides leadership support to less experienced team members in the implementation of new hardware, operating systems and other required software on the systems.
Architect new POC RHEL 6.4 physical to virtual with Raw Mapped Device on  SAN using VCenter Converter.
Creating Server Deployment and Provisioning Solution to increase server builds using php, powershell, VMWare API, puppet and python.
Resolved Bladelogic upgrade as well as timeout connection issues by designing an in house script using netcat to check the port and then setting NSH scripts to execute once the connection is validated.

Dell is a big company. Really big. That brings advantages and disadvantages.

It's difficult to review an entire company when the company is so huge and diverse. It really depends on the team and manager. Some teams have terrible work/life balance, especially mission-critical teams, like IT. It's not uncommon to hear about 80-100 hour weeks and working through the weekends on those teams. On the other hand, some teams, like marketing, have excellent balance. Your schedule can be what you need it to be. It can be easy to get time off. The entire week of Christmas is a company holiday.

Also, some teams have a lot of redundancy. It can be easy on some teams to feel disconnected to anything valuable or to just feel like you're spinning your wheels. Other teams are very clearly connected to customer satisfaction and company goals, and it's easy to see how your daily work impacts the bigger picture.

Dell has its own culture. It emphasizes the ability to move around from one position to another. It provides a lot of great opportunities to do completely different things while remaining at the same company and location. It's not hard to find yourself in a position and with responsibilities that you could not have found elsewhere. It can really help to build experiences and skills. The downside of that is that the organization is constantly in flux. It can be hard to figure out who owns what at any given time. It's easy to repeat mistakes because it's difficult to maintain institutional learnings. Picking up a new role can feel like starting from scratch. On the other hand, it provides fantastic opportunities for ambitious people to get involved in projects that really make a difference.

As a result of this culture, Dell prizes "organizational agility", or the ability to navigate a complex organization that doesn't actually make sense or have firm rules.

Interestingly, despite this fluidity, Dell operates with very rigid silos. Despite its repeated efforts, it can never seem to break those silos down. That means cross-functional work can be difficult and sometimes impossible.

I can't recommend Dell as a whole, but if you find the right team to work on, it can be a great place to work.

I have worked many IT jobs over the years. This is by far the worst. I believe I work at the same desk as a previous review "not a fun place to work" except my training was only 3 weeks and there is no stability to procedure. 

First the Pros: The managers I worked around were great people. Doing their best to hold things together in a ship that is flying apart.

The other agents were great people. Only the most patient and enduring people stay in this job.

The Cons:

In serving multiple clients we have a set of rules for each one and they are not static. In one instance you are to do it this way but if the moon is waxing and Jupiter is in decline you must do it another way, unless it is Friday. 

And all this may change next week so remember to read those emails you have absolutely no time to read!

Things were chaotic when I came on and only proceeded to get worse. Calls are non-stop, so find time to take that sip of water while you have the client on hold. You wont have time to do it between calls. There is no such thing as between calls.

It will only get worse. They are not planning to increase staffing yet are due to increase the customer base by a lot and add more duties onto the agents yet.

The agent above said he liked helping the soldiers? That's out the window. Helping them with their personal systems now is to point them towards a couple of websites and tell them to have a nice day.

Because of the increased call volume they have cranked up the pressure to end calls even faster.

Very few I know that work there want to stay there.

There are no raises. Agents who have been there 3 years make exactly the same wage as new agents. 

There is no overtime. If they call for you to cut your lunch time in half expect to take that time and leave early on another day that week.

You will make LESS than when you start as a contractor. You get the privilege of paying for your "benefits" if you get hired on.

They have "volunteers" to work holidays since the desk is a 24 hour desk. What is the benefit? Less chance you will be drafted unwillingly on a different holiday and a "floating" holiday. 

You do not get Holiday Pay.

You will usually get a 1hr. lunch and 2 15 minute breaks as well as 10 minutes "personal time" so if you have any gastric issues on a day either stay home or get talked to.

As with any large company the overall experience will depend on the specific organization you work for. Thus, this review is primarily targeted at Dell’s Professional and Field Services as a Field Service Engineer. 

The day to day break-fix, installations, continuous training, administrative work, and managing customer communication can be a challenging but rewarding experience. You are directly solving problems and working with customers. If you enjoy having the freedom to start from home, drive to sites, and not have the same routine everyday this is perfect for you. 

As with many IT support roles you are expected to participate in an on-call rotation and depending on your team size this can be quite a strain on the work-life balance. Another challenge regarding time is upper management now takes the stance “every hour is the same”. This means a weekend hour at 2-3PM is the same as a normal 10-11AM M-F hour. This combined with current strict overtime controls forces employees to compensate the time in the the week if they had weekend work. There used to be incentives for working “off” hours but that is gone now. In general, time is flexible for this job and with the new policy you don’t have a standard shift where you finish at the same time everyday. 

Speaking on management the direct management I have experienced is fantastic. I have worked with multiple Field Service Managers and all have been wonderful to work with. However, upper management is a bit disconnected making decisions the engineers on the ground largely disagree with because they worsen the customer experience. 

Finally, the greatest challenge with this job is simply communicating internally within Dell. To do your job effectively you are reliant on other teams like Scheduling and Remote Support, which lately have been going downhill. Both teams have had problems over the past few years and it doesn’t seem to be getting better. Also, some of the control the Field Engineers once had was revoked making us now more dependent on others. Some of this was warranted, but when you spend your whole day fighting your own internal employees because simple things weren’t done it can be draining. 


Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Software engineer 44 salaries reported	$130,733 per year
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Senior software engineer 54 salaries reported	$141,979 per year

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