Start there, be valuable somewhere else.
Pros
- Location: close to everything. The Plateau offices are surrounded by restaurants, shops and bars. You can easily access it via metro or bicycle, but it's a pain in the ... to drive to the office. Don't even try. - Agile environment: The teams are well designed and as a developer, working in that type of environment is stressless. - The people: In the Ste-Therese office, most of the employees have a young family, so they are long gone by 4:59PM. In Montreal, you'll be able to join a happy hour almost any day of the week. The fauna is diverse: geeks, sportsmen, shy, loud people. You might not always get well with all the members of your team, but you will for sure find a nice coworker to befriend. - Mentors: The skill level of the employees is pretty various. They created a sort of geekparent relationship where you have a mentor assigned to you when you get in. Depending on which employee you get, you might be really lucky, are unlucky. - Toolboxes: As they use a lot of different CMS and programs, they put in place specific toolbox o help regulate the code and the final products. That helps a lot when you need to takeover a project. They are putting a lot of time in developing those toolboxes, and it is, most of the time, pretty useful.
Cons
- Opportunity of advancement: close to none. It's a good place to start your career, but you'll get bored really fast. There are not a lot of seniors there (none management). Most of the time, skilled developers will leave their teams and work on the toolboxes, smoldering it, and they become useless in term of knowledge. They don't have time (or don't want to help) anymore. Buckle up, and try to survive on your own. And when you did the tour, you can either try a new position, or look for another place with bigger challenges. - Salary: don't get excited. They use the fact that we don't chat between coworkers to give you as little as possible. I was making 5K more than a former coworker who had more experience but was coming from a company that was underpaying him. When he asked for a revision, he hit a wall. Also, even tho you get some certifications, outdid yourself all year, and created new features, the chances of getting a pay rise are close to none. You'll get the minimum at the end of the year, but don't even dream of getting more. - Be a sheep: if you don't make noise, that you follow, and that you agree with everything, it's the place for you. Try to fade in. If you are too loud, of if you point out problems in the company, you might get burn. - Everything breaks: not that it really matters, but when one of the perks of working there is that they have 2 coffee machines or a beer tap, and that you need to get out 10 days a month to go grab a coffee somewhere else because the 2 coffee machines are broken.... it's... annoying. - Cleanliness: Toilets, kitchen, coffee rooms, meeting rooms. It's like living with pig roommates. - Long projects: Some people can work for 2 years on the same project. It gets really boring. - Insurances: They do change insurance company 1-2 times a year. The 2 times it happened while I was there, we were paying the same price for half to covering we were getting previously. So you might think you have a good insurance policy, but it won't last. - Single/younger employee: They have a Family program where people with children are favored. The problem is that single or childless employee also need some "family" time and it seems unfair. In the meantime, it's not the only way they favor employees. If you are not in their grace, good luck. - Onboarding process: A real nightmare. Brace yourself, your first weeks will be ruff. The HR dept built an onboarding process they think works. But they have no idea how the development teams proceed, or do the onboarding on their end. The theory is far from the actual practice. You'll be brainwashed and stuffed with concepts and procedures. - Lack of communication: frustration guaranteed. None of the departments agree with each other, or work together. You'll do again something someone else did a week ago. Design and UX are not communicating, nor is Marketing and the rest of the company. You'll be the last to know something that concerns you and your team, and most of the time, your opinion is... not valuable. - Food chain: developers are the bottom of the food chain. You have a voice in your team, but outside of that, no one will ask your opinion.
