A company that does not have your best interest at heart
Pros
They have a room to play ping pong and foosball, but you rarely will have time to play.
Cons
- The company has no vision as it swings with the mood of the executives. Products that were not discussed are suddenly due as it needs to go to market without any notice (even management is left out of these decisions). This is done without any thought of other projects running in parallel and the effect it will have. - The company is well known for cutting corners and low quality products. The company culture is "how fast can we get it to market" and "just throw more developers on it". 90% of the issues with clients is due to poor quality code and this is because of the mentality of the executives to just put more developers on the project until it gets completed. This only creates more issues as the new developers to the project have no clue of the project and are expected to complete it on a shorter time frame since there are now more developers on the project. - No bonus. They will not give you any extra incentive for completing projects. - The office is a very toxic environment. Titles mean everything and some managers will use it to intimidate and harass employees. This is most common in meetings when all they want you to do is sit and take notes and not ask any questions. In other cases, they will refuse to speak to you as they feel you are beneath their title and will only speak to your manager. - Teamwork is not part of the culture at the company. There are individuals in higher positions on another team that will take all the credit for the work done by others, even after criticizing the work and putting the person down. The executives will then praise them as "superstars" to the company even though the person has no idea how it works. When this was brought up to the executives, their reply was "to promote yourself more". - There is a lot of discrimination if you are not Indian in the US office. The executives treat you like second class citizens and constantly put you down, while putting up their own people. When a project is late they will always point the blame to you even though everyone (except the CEO) knows the offshore team is behind and has nothing to show. They also only promote and recognize their own people, often times never mentioning your contributions, which has the company believe you bring no value to the company. Getting information is also very difficult as it feels like they don't trust you and will not tell you anything, in which case the only way to get answers is to ask the non-Indian co-workers until someone knows as they are a lot more helpful. - This is not a company to grow individually because if you know too much then you're likely to get fired or let go, if not then you are constantly being put down so they can assert control over you. This is a company that does not like people that are smarter than them as it challenges their authority. They target people who are "Yes men" and do not care for your opinion, as evidenced by most of the smart people in the company being let go or leaving. One way they will put you down is to consistently challenge your intelligence and find ways to point out flaws. Over time this is very exhausting and why most of the remaining people at the company have fallen into group think to avoid confrontation. - No opportunity to move up. They will rather hire someone new at the position than promote you. This is a family run company that already has those positions filled (nepotism) and are only looking to bring in people that could grow their client list. - Management has no experience managing. Either due to nepotism or close friendships, the remaining managers and executives have no idea how to manage. They believe you can just bully or threaten your employees to get results. - Fear of job loss is very high. Besides "restructuring" the company, by letting go of half of the workforce, and all the managers leaving within a 2-3 months span, there is ongoing discussions of "can we replace you with someone offshore". Most employees know that the company is continuing to grow the offshore team and reducing the size of the US team, so morale is really low. - There is no work life balance at the company. The expectation is to work long hours in the office, and at night get on call to talk and help the offshore team. 11+ hour days are common. - Micromanagement from executives and some managers is very common. They want to know what tasks you did each day and also provide them a weekly report of what was accomplished in addition to tracking your hours daily. At the same time, they will constantly walk by to see if you are at your desk and then walk away without saying a word. Your desk also must be set up in a way so they can always see your screen to see what you are working on.
