Aston Technologies reneged on their verbal offer. The offer was “rescinded” due to budget constraints. Interestingly, part of the verbal offer was an in-house position after two years of 100% travel. This begs the question; how can a business budget a headcount out two years, but have budget constraints after only four days? The following should be considerations to anyone approached by Aston Technologies:
According to the web site and the state of Minnesota, Aston has been incorporated since 2001. the owner and founder, however, was employed by a major health care provider until 2008.
A whois on the web site shows domain history dating only back to 2008. The site being hosted on a Taiwanese shared server with 221 other sites (budget hosting). Bear in mind this is an infrastructure company.
Aston Technologies testimonial page has many positive reviews. But no proper names of businesses or individuals can be found in those reviews.
Aside from a handful of anonymous positive reviews on Glassdoor and a few LinkedIn references, there is a complete absence of any on-line publications referencing Aston Technologies.
Aston's Google page rank is 1. 0 would be the lowest score 10 the highest. This is a remarkable achievement many sites, with little effort, acquire a ranking of 3 in six months to a year.
There are no direct contacts on the web site.
I filled out information needed for a background check and checked to box to have the results sent to me. I never received the background check, however was told my background check was fine.
If you are an applicant:
Require a written offer outlining everything related to pay, vacation, sick time, etc. This is normal and should be expected by your prospective employer. Do not make a move in your existing life without it! I believe they had decided to renege on my offer after I had requested a written offer.
They may ask you to work overtime without pay. I cannot help you with that if you need the job. It is perhaps best dealt with after you are hired.
There is no payed vacation. You will be a “W-2 contractor”. I do not know what this is.
They will ask you for a blank check your first day, ostensibly for direct deposit. Either ask for a manual pay-check to be mailed, or setup a checking account with a minimum deposit. Do not give them access to your main account.
Ask to see the 4 million dollar training facility. I saw no such opulence, however I did not ask for a tour.
Once hired, be prepared to walk if suddenly there are budget constraints and you are asked to train for free. This happened to me once with Cray Research (training without pay) and the practice is reprehensible.
Make sure you receive any non-compete before accepting their written offer. A non-compete can reach further than the client you are working for and like a written job offer, it should not be insulting or surprising by the hiring company.
If you are applying for a web design position, ask yourself, “in an industry flooded with talented web designers, why are they interested in me?” I had some web design experience, so, to give myself a break, it seemed reasonable. However, I did speak with an individual who had just started working there and had no experience in web design.
Be extremely skeptical with Aston Technologies. There are many things, in hind-site, that should have alerted me to the fact that Aston Technologies was a pass.
I do not know what Aston Technologies is and can only speculate that:
They are primarily infrastructure, but, in my case, are involved in web development as well.
They have one, maybe two, major clients, and the work extends across continental U.S. This client(s) is probably headquartered in Minneapolis. A little more research would likely prove fruitful.
That they backfill client(s) technical needs, but probably do not directly manage large projects.
For whatever reason, the company keeps a low profile. Likely a complacency with their current situation.
