AHEAD reviews

AHEAD is a total train wreck. They bank their success on merging and acquiring other MSPs. In the almost two years I worked at AHEAD, I had about 4-5 different supervisors. They were constantly laying off staff due to the M&A’s. They claimed it was due to overlapping functions and roles but in reality they had no control over the org after acquiring 10+ orgs. The internal IT ops Is a joke. They had Ken as CIO who knew absolutely nothing about IT. He finally got canned after the last acquisitions CIO took his role. Grant the “CISO” was the root of all problems in IT ops. He hired a crew of friends/family members that has no business being in IT with zero knowledge or experience. Goals were centered around cyber security initiative but were executed in the absolutely worst order that caused multiple failed projects. The project managers were horrendous. They constantly laid off folks in the hundreds every quarter. They beat around the bush every town hall stating that there would likely not be more lay offs. Just to hear there were tons more the next quarter. I would not recommend working here at all. It’s a totally mess and your job will be uncertain the entire time.

Working at AHEAD has produced some of the most bittersweet memories of my entire career. The level of technical talent at this place is unparalleled. There are many amazing, smart, and truly talented technical people working at this company. The ultimate issue with this place, after working there for years, is the absolute lack of respect, trust, and confidence that upper management has with its technical personnel. This materializes in many ways, but some of the standouts: - No notice layoffs, multiple times after repeated assurances that they "over-laid off" to ensure no more cuts were needed. (I understand layoffs are a business function and not the sole reason for a negative review.) Middle management was not even informed of this decision, resulting in completely at-random decisions that left open projects without leads and technical support, blindsiding the managers doing the work to keep client relations working well and managing utilization across the team. - Of those no notice layoffs, many employees were confused as to what had happened, losing access in the middle of the day, only to be contacted hours later by managers that never checked in with them on a regular basis to begin with. - Talent management is a mess, where a select few employees will be inundated with unmanageable amounts of overtime work, while others are left on the bench and inevitably let go because of their "bench time". - During a layoff period of well over 100 employees, the company sought to standup a robust and celebrated offshore contingent to replace onshore resources. - Tone deaf decisions such as hosting large, pompous and excessive internal company celebrations, one within days of a mass layoff wave. - Sales does not understand the capabilities of the technical team and will oftentimes sell services in a vacuum, resulting in underqualified, understaffed, and confusing projects that have poorly written SOWs and undefined scope. The technical resources will often be the fall guy for these issues. - The PM team was gutted with the intention of making technical resources responsible for managing the entire project on top of technical duties. - You must act like an independent contractor, advertising and advocating your abilities to massive company wide teams channels in an attempt to get off the bench, in lieu of a proper talent management solution. - Executives will message you into the evening hours with requests for internal pet projects. I overall would never work here again, as it did awful things for my confidence, mental health, work-life balance, and overall well-being. The culture here is entirely sterile and manufactured. I would advise anyone else of the same thing -- if you want to work at a place rife with uncertainty and miscommunication, this may be up your alley.