ATS buys existing products and takes over 1 or 2 key members of that product. These product owners are "The Gods" at ATS. If they jump you say "How High". Better still you should thank them for asking you to jump. As an employee under these "Super powers" you have no rights, you cannot strongly disagree with them, and you should just do exactly what you are told.
For this reason you have the entire team just agreeing with the product owner, who on his power trip Will do things like threaten to get you immediately fired if you don't go along 100% with what he says.
Trying to use creativity, even if it's good for the customer, etc - Is not valued. All they want is people who can follow orders like slaves and carry out the product owners every desire.
On the IT side it's not much better. Useless IT infrastructure and almost no processes.
Salaries aren't great.
Their whole tactic is to pay as little as possible, make you feel like you have to pass some proverbial stick in the sand to be valued, in the meantime you're treated like dirt / a child.
Only that it will take you maybe 10 years to get anywhere in this company, rather than 1-2 years in another company with more opportunities and one which is more democratic.
In short - do not work for this company if you have any real ambition or if you have a mind to think for yourself.
Would also like to add, one of the "managers" / product owners I was assigned to point blank refused to communicate with me and another developer. After about a year I can count the amount of times on 1 hand that I spoke to him. I actually even tried to get the communication flowing a few times, and was told "Don't be so high maintenance"
In terms of actual skills learnt, not very much. 1 internal product which means nothing to anyone else in the market place, because they only have a few customers. Unfortunately too they were using legacy software and so those skills too aren't highly valued in the market place these days.
