Aquatic Informatics Reviews

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(29 total reviews)

Edward Quilty

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29 reviews
1.0
4 Aug 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great management staff. Great location. Great office. Great HR team. Great training team.

Cons

A handful of people in the company are overly sensitive, overly anal retentive, closed minded, high maintenance and severely controlling. This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that they have somehow became the lead developers and one is a project manager. It also wouldn't be so bad if their decisions were based on well informed facts, but instead they are based on personal bias and in the project manager's case, fear for her job. There are a lot of good people here, but we all have to bow to the will of the few. Sad really because the company is hand cuffed into doing things very inefficiently simply because of a few self declared experts. I often see good people with good ideas frustrated by these individuals. The new software is just a rewrite of the old software. Same poor design with a few minor improvements. Not much has changed. A so called "RESTful" system that is never at REST. Too many messages being sent around. In a few months when the software is released they will have to let a lot of people go because there won't be enough work for everyone. Also, the place is too quiet, people get mad if you talk. Oh well, time to leave.

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Aquatic Informatics Response
10y
We do have a great location, leadership and office. We definitely agree there - but we are sorry and surprised to see your “Cons” comments as they are very inconsistent with the experience and opinions of the vast majority of the team. But clearly your experience has been different and we’d really like to find out why and see if we can help. Have you talked about your concerns with someone within AI? If not, we’d really encourage you to do so. We aren’t being controlled by one or two individuals. Scrum teams do their own solution designs and decide how much they can get into each release. Those of us on scrum teams challenge each other and try to let the best ideas bubble up. It is usually the person with the most knowledge about a topic that influences a given decision most – not the person with a particular title or the loudest voice. Yes, we have strong opinions, and some loud voices – but if they don’t hold up under scrutiny, their ideas don’t get implemented. We are a flat organization. We feel empowered to come up with our own ideas and make decisions. At the same time, we want others to find flaws in our ideas and our work – before our customers do. We do this by encouraging everyone to review and constructively criticize our work. This does cause creative tension at times – but we think this is the best way to continuously improve the value and quality of our individual work and our products. Regarding our job security – we always have more customer wishes and opportunities than we can possibly tackle. Our business is forecasted to continue its rapid growth. We are hiring!
1.0
18 Sept 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Lots of good people and great location

Cons

A few people are extremely grumpy, overly analytical and anal-retentive to the point that its impossible to get anything done. Day to day work is dictated by the grumpy few. Analysis paralysis! No architect and so the software architecture is hugely inefficient. Software development is too slow. Overly focuses on clean code without any focus on business value or architecture. There is this false belief in the office that the work they are doing is saving the planet, but really its just helping people make money and sell more water. There is another false belief that the software is complex because the equations are complex, but this isn't true either. The software is unnecessarily complex.

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Aquatic Informatics Response
10y
Thanks for your review. We did indeed hire a SW Architect in January 2015 as well as a Team Lead for our new Water Quality product. As we’ve grown a lot over the last few years, we’ve taken various measures to support this growth – including more decentralized decision-making within scrum teams. We recently did an anonymous employee poll of the dev team, and feedback was very positive – people said they are feeling empowered and encouraged to make their own decisions. Yes, writing good code is important to us, but not at the expense of slowing down development. People here come from many walks of life and have diverse perspectives. It’s true, many of us do really believe that we are helping to make things a little bit better (while still running a successful business), and it’s one of the things people say they like about working here. Saving the planet… that’s a little beyond our mandate :)
3.0
23 Nov 2022

Lots of potential but missing the mark

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- The people who work here are incredibly kind and passionate about what they do. - The customers and problems solved are incredibly interesting and meaningful. - If you do great work it will be recognized.

Cons

- Heavy departures in leadership over last year left many feeling directionless. - Vision has been lost - Unreasonable expectations for company performance. - Corporate indecisiveness leaves you feeling unsure about your job and the future.

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