Pros
- Colorado employees are allowed to work from home three days a week. (+1 star for this alone) - The education team is well-managed and growing healthily. - They are based in a slowly-evolving industry, so their products (although a bit dated) are excellent contenders in this market. I expect them to continue growing. - They finally traded the same 12 jazz songs they played over the speakers for an alternative-hits Pandora station. - They have a generous amount of paid holidays.
Cons
- CIC has many products, but not enough developers to keep up with the growing demands and customer base. They are slow to hire new developers. - Often times, developers cannot focus on work due to the immense number of support tickets that are forwarded to them regularly. Division of labor for support is grossly unbalanced. They will tell you support-development should take 20% of your week-- I have found it to be closer to 60%. - As another former employee noted "Benefits are nothing to write home about." You get 10 days PTO... after one year. It doesn't accumulate, it drops all at once. That's one entire year with no PTO except holidays. - You begin on a six month probationary period (a bit long, but standard) with status removal dependent on a positive six-month review. Management will do their best to avoid this review far beyond six months, well beyond the regular probationary period because: - if you don't meet their ludicrously high work objectives, they will dock your pay to something disrespectful. They would rather not do that, so they will avoid the review. - Their project tracking/time accounting system at some time may have been psuedo-AGILE, but now it is just micromanage-y and constantly has you focusing on meeting a deadline rather than providing good code. - You are expected to hit 42-45 hours of "chargeable" work a week. Any less than 42 chargeable hours will dock you points. Examples of things that are not chargeable: paperwork, paid holidays, and sick leave. All of these hours must be made up or you will lose points at your review. - There is absolutely no culture to be found here. No parties, gatherings, group outings, office traditions, or lunch meetings. Only retirement parties are held for long-time employees. - Their office is decorated with bland "motivational" posters written in 72pt Times New Roman on a white background, sporting phrases such as (and I quote) "GET ON WITH IT!!!" and "The customer doesn't care why you were late." - Management can be difficult to get a hold of (they are often juggling many balls at once and don't have time to meet with you regularly). - You are often left to fend for yourself in support environments, with senior developers or project managers too busy to help answer questions for you. - I'm also not a fan of cubicles. Just a personal preference. Overall, this place is wildly out of touch with their employees. They do not value you, and I have seen them terminate employees on the spot for reasons that don't warrant such an action. Any positive reviews here are from people who have been with the company for decades and are not aware of what a respectful and enjoyable environment the software industry has come to be at most jobs.
