sales representative

customer success manager

project manager

software engineer

technical support engineer

PowerSchool Group

The typical day in support really depends on which product you land. Either you have well-structured and well-documented support steps with enough talent to train you or, you have a 2-3 person team to manage hundreds of cases/tickets in products where development work is, behind and there is no boilerplate troubleshooting documentation. I would hear people talk about their,r jobs and I would get jealous. My product was the pits no one cared about. But it was a customer magnet!

The Student Information System and integrated systems around it, are super complex. Without sound and professionally created documentation with a well-written troubleshooting knowledge base, you will struggle to resolve your tickets, and it will take a lot of time for you to learn. Either switch products or quit. Or you will end up miserable, overworked, burned out, or...fired. 

You arrive in the morning, and there is a pile of tickets. If your product has documented solutions steps, you are lucky. Otherwise, you have to take your own notes. These products have ridiculous backlogs where tickets get much older than 60 days!!! 

If tier 1 can't resolve it, the ticket gets escalated to tier 2. If you are offered a promotion, evaluate if the 50-cent salary increase is worth going to tier 2. I know of several guys who turned the climb down. IT IS NOT WORTH IT! Tier 2 is a lot more work that can be easily made into a data analyst or a software analyst role and pay grade. But tier 2 makes 1/2 of what those roles are worth but for the same effort. AND PowerSchool does not acknowledge your degrees and certs... They pay you to dial and answer the phone. There is no extra if you know SQL.

Beware if you are a woman. The girls make less for the same amount of work. Much less. So girls, know your value and shop around before getting into PowerSchool.

Life of the tickets: They come in by phone, chat, or via the web. A "router" person will assign cases around to the team. The problem starts troubleshooting at tier 1. If the person can't resolve it gets escalated to tier 2. If tier 2 can't fix the ticket, it gets escalated to development. But where are the developers? 

I heard developer firing happened two years ago because they were too expensive for the bottom line. Those still in the company got spread too thin. They got overworked and left, making it worse for the few developers who stayed. Then some project has scope creep, and management leaves your product hanging...

Support management is bizarre at PowerSchool. This is the only company I know where the tickets escalated to development count their age in days on the poor tier 2 agent who escalated the case (?), instead of the assigned developer's queue. So, if you are interviewing for tier 2, try to find out where the development tickets age. I have seen support colleagues get 100 days in ARTs. With numbers like these, there is no bonus...

Management also has this habit of disposing of off people to make the quarterly numbers look better. 

Agent metrics are sub-par. The values spoken in town halls are not reflected in the parameters of the OKRs and evaluation. And, unless you create your own salesforce performance reports, support agents are unaware of their hourly, daily, or weekly metrics (?!?!?!). Only managers have the details. 
So, if your boss is nice, the person may share the MONTHLY metrics with you. So much for adjusting your performance. Also, ask about the average number of tickets your product will have. Some products have 200 tickets/month for all agents. This means it is really hard for you to get your numbers up.

Concerning training, the management of some support products does not give the senior colleague training credit nor do they get evaluated on how well they train you. Often the more experienced agent is, the more overworked he is, and the less time he has to help you. The time is spent fighting backlogs. 

The source of the problem is the managers 2-3 layers above you. PowerSchool is a magnet for old-style management. No matter if the person is from India or the US. These managers are ignorant of what support work looks like, their needs, and their challenges. No one dares to upset them. They think that publishing little success stories about the folks on the easier and better-documented high-volume support products can magically get your mind out of your misery and make you pull resolutions from the thin air.   It is unfortunate the talented ones will leave in silence. If they speak up, they get fired and your team back dwelling in the backlog again. It seems upper management has an agile for dummies copy on their night desk... unread.

Over the last few years, PowerSchool has made acquisition after acquisition. Being owned by an investment company, I assume this means they are just tying to make the company profitable enough to sell. 

While the company itself is good and ethical with a good product and lots of great benefits, my particular department‘s (Tech Support) management was awful. They would often hold negative views towards employees who sought growth even within the company or their own department. Personal development is slow and limited and difficult to achieve, and managers will pretend to be supportive while also denying opportunities and having antagonistic internal interviews prior to allowing any kind of movement within the company. 

Managers of the Tech Support department knowingly make false promises of promotions and raises to trick people into staying in the department rather than to a position or department more in line with an individual employee’s own career goals. Higher managers make last minute and poorly thought through decisions that impact only the individual contributors, often leading to poor training, overworked employees, denial of overtime even when it’s desperately needed, padded customer metrics, and low morale. Meanwhile, lower supervisors are run ragged and are asked to do anything BUT supervisor duties, making them unavailable to their employees.

If you can get a job at PowerSchool, that’s great!! Unless, of course, that job is in Tech Support. Then run away. 

During a typical day we would answer emails and phone calls require technical help with the Powerschool UI and functions, API's, Java, Gradebook attachment, mobile support, locating and editing information within the Oracle DB, Oracle DB deployment and errors, FTP programs, Autosend issues, firewall issues, IP issues, DHCP issues, Shibboleth errors, State reporting issues and remote sessions. 

The management was top tier. I learned a lot from my bosses and they were very attentive to our needs and to help us grow and move forward in the company, while still being down to earth and fun to work for. 

I am still in contact with most of my co-worker who are very knowledgeable and tech savvy. They made work a joy to go to. 

The hardest part of the job was retaining the vast amount of knowledge needed to perform well troubleshooting this product. This product and accompanying products were in a a word gigantic. 

The most enjoyable part of this job was cracking tough problems and finally getting a solution for the client. I really enjoy problem solving especially from a technical standpoint and this job allowed for a trial and error troubleshooting style which is usually the best way to solve technical issues.

Training was minimal for the tech support position.  Powerschool's product uses an overly complicated system to store and retrieve data so learning how to debug client's problems can be tricky. The upside is that you can learn a lot about how to handle complex problems that needs to be solved in a limited time frame.

However, the absolute worst part about this company is the management.  They simply don't care about the tech support team and see them as little more than worker drones that handle people's cases endlessly.  As a result, mandatory overtimes often happen during the beginning of the school year, and because of Powerschool's reluctance to hire more tech support, my colleagues and I were often overworked.  

Even if you are overworked, management still likes to single any individuals out who are falling behind.  Any time you try to have an understanding with them, chances are you will get ignored or rebuffed.  The same goes with new ideas- most new ideas brought up are simply ignored.  Avoid this position unless you are desperate for a paid job.

A typical day at PowerSchool would be to login to the different Programs you would be using for the day and also to check your work email. 
I learned a great deal about the learning program with PowerSchool, the program was awesome for the customers that used it on a day to day basis.
While I was with PowerSchool I had personally reached out the management to help me set objectives for my job, within a month I had a new manager that did not follow through with my training. 
I received my training over the computer with Zoom.  I was the only person in our office that was learning the PowerSchool Learning Program.  I felt alone! 
Everyone around me was very busy doing emails, chats and answering calls from customers, so with that, the workplace culture was not very good. I didn't even get to know the people around my station. The hardest part of the job was working alone and trying to learn a new program with distant training. 
The most enjoyable part of the job was learning the program and solving customers issues with the program.
Overall, PowerSchool Group LLC is a great place to work!

This is a review for the CloudOps department in Roanoke.

Everyone I worked with (with the exception of one rude person) was great: friendly and helpful. My manager made sure everyone was on the same page and had our backs. I learned on the job by getting instruction from coworkers, most of what I did was odd jobs. My days were mostly busy but not too busy. I worked with digital security software and access management. Management had everyone on a skill improvement program and encouraged learning. During the pandemic everyone was able to work from home full time, but eventually executives started encouraging everyone to start working in the office again for a day or two per week.

I believe I was laid off due to budget cuts. Management tried to get me to apply to a different department (which would pay less) but I believe it was because they felt bad about laying me off.

Great place to work. Less profitable than the executives thought it would be.

I have been in the workforce for well over 25 years and have never dealt with a company so mismanaged and misguided as PowerSchool. Their leadership sits behind closed doors and refuses to speak to you, and instead relies on untrained managers to relay their messages you. When messages are not relayed clearly (think the old game of Telephone), you are not given the opportunity to speak to upper management - only HR. In some areas, they have continuous turnover, yet believe the problem lies with the employees. While life may be blissful at the home office, satellite offices around the nation experience constant problems within. It's time to look inward and examine why people are leaving in droves. There is an old saying...when you are constantly pointing your finger in blame at others, there are three more pointing back at you. This holds true to the upper management at PowerSchool. It's time to take a long hard look and figure out why all the good people have left, and the company is starting to lose it's status as a top player in the educational software field.

Culture - great if you differentiate yourself by one of their ERG groups or make your work your life but if you're a normal person trying to work and make a living you don't fit in

Remote work - no problem a given unless you live within 50 miles of an office, then you are forced to drive into the office at least twice a week regardless of whether anyone you actually work with or even any other humans are there and all your work is done via video conferencing

DTO - great if you land in a department where utilization is not tracked or all of your hard work is counted toward utilization otherwise you will work hard to meet near impossible metrics and barely be able to take any time off 

Pay - wild fluctuations in salary for the same roles because of wage compression, favoritism -see culture- and constant redefinition of roles and restructuring bka layoffs

Training - be prepared to train yourself as long as you work for them and btw it doesn't count towards your metrics so do it on your own time

Mission - your mission is to make the company money improving education is a distant runner up

PowerSchool offers DTO which means the employees do not accrue vacation time, they just take the time they need, when they need it.  The company is very invested in keeping the employees happy by offering a game room, fitness center, yoga classes, numerous parties and events, and even standing desks.  

My personal experience at PowerSchool offered very flexible hours, and great work/life options.  The company is a fast pasted, hard working atmosphere consisting of long term employees and many young college grads combined.  

PowerSchool does work hard to engage their employees and make them happy, so they have little tolerance for slackers.  They will remove an employee without hesitation if they are not contributing to the company and culture in a positive fashion.  Since there really isn't any reason to not be happy there, this seems to be a very good policy in order to keep the good ones in and get the bad ones out.  IMO anyway....

This is probably a good job if you are starting off in your career as you have an opportunity to work long hours and learn lots of new things.

Problem is if you are not starting off in your career and have experience will well ran organizations. The managers, especially senior managers, are way over their heads here. There doesn't seem to be a plan. Deadlines show up at the last minute. I almost feel like they sell a feature then try to get the developers to write it in before the customer goes live. Very chaotic environment.

All the good technology people are leaving. All that is left are overworked managers and developers who depended on the good ones that left. They replace these great developers with kids right out of college. Things are about to get real bad real quick as there isn't anybody left who knows how to complete projects.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Sales representative 3 salaries reported	$73,333 per year
Customer success manager 3 salaries reported	$72,333 per year
Project manager 3 salaries reported	$102,333 per year
Software engineer 5 salaries reported	$82,000 per year
Technical support engineer 5 salaries reported	$58,200 per year

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