Be Prepared to Go to War for Argen - Web Technology Architect Argen Employee Review

I was hired as a Web Technology Architect. My first meeting with the head of the company was kind of interesting. After a short introductory talk, he told me (when I was about to leave his office): "We are watching you!". It immediately reminded me on Meet the "you know what" but this time around, it wasn't funny. Argen is a family run business, they have many of their family and friends in the company. Either you are an insider (family/friends) or an outsider. The owners talk a lot about "Family Business" and they really mean it. It is their business, not yours. There are many people (at all levels) working for Argen for many many years and still do the same thing (no room for growth). If you join Argen and have a family, be prepared to fork up about $20,000 if you want PPO for your medical/dental/vision. They also offer 2 HMO plans, the lowest would still cost you more than $15,000 out of pocket. I have seen many employees who could not afford to have medical coverage. The worst thing is this: you can't join Obama Care because Argen offers health care plan and their plan meets the minimum requirements outlined in the law. When I told HR, for employees it would be better if the company did not offer any health care plans, she said: "We use the health care coverage as a recruiting tool and Argen gets tax benefits when the company offers a health care plan." None of the managers and IT people I talked to, were happy but they are stuck. They all complain about the poor working condition, low pay rate, high medical cost, zero respect for your professional opinion, unreasonable expectations. You see, the company was a small company for very long time and operated as such; it used to be a friendly place as most small companies are. They are now trying to act like a corporation when it comes to their expectations and policies but want to provide like a small company. As such, employees get shafted from both ends. It is a very loud place and no offices (except for a few). Employees are crammed in a small building (given the number of employees). They have a lot of loud machines and most of their people are on the phone most of the day (talking to customers). If your work requires concentration, well...good luck with that. When I asked to have at least a cubical in a bit quieter place, I was told "NO, I can't have it.". I replied "I can't concentrate and there is a reason companies like Microsoft give their employees an office or a quiet place", my manager quickly responded: "We are not Microsoft!!". And that was the end of the story. And regarding my job responsibilities: every job has some high points and some low ones that you do but you really don't like to do them. My manager (one of the company owners) practically took over all the high points of my jobs, leaving me with breadcrumbs because she wanted to get credit in her family for highly visible activities. For example, one of my job description was: "Select a vendor for project xxx" but she did that or "Host regular meetings with key stakeholders" but she practically ran all the meetings. You feed her with all the information you gather/know, she goes to the meetings, hosts and talks and talks. Once she said it all, she looks at you and asks you: "Anything else?", and of course you don't have anything else to add. That's a perfect way to outshine even the experts. Technically she wasn't qualified (by any means) to do any part of my job but she would do it anyways because she had authority. Also she started asking me to send the agenda for our meetings, write up meeting notes for every single meeting (including our daily scrum meetings, which defeats the purpose of scrum if you ask me). In my opinion, these tasks are typical PM tasks (and I told her that but she wouldn't care). Also she asks you to write it up in the next 30 min after the meeting, send her the draft, she would eventually approve it, and first then you can send it out. If it takes longer than 30 min because it was a 2 hours technical meeting, she would stop at your desk and tell you "you are late". If you are a professional and would like to work independently and don't like to be micro-managed, Argen might be the wrong place. Oh by the way, be prepared to have your one-on-ones in public. Everybody can listen to the conversation while they critique you and tell you, how you could do it better and faster and what you lack etc. And they expect and will tell you to "Go to WAR for Them. That's not a joke. And never mind about reasonable expectations. You tell them 3 weeks, they tell you 1 week regardless of the circumstances. One of the vendors we were dealing with experienced the same thing: he proposed X months evaluation and Y dollars for a project. The immediate answer was: X/3 and Y/5. He ran away and later told me: "Are we trading horses or what?" She chose a different vendor and actually ended up paying twice as much and taking more time. I guess that's what you get when you think you can bully everybody. And the most important thing: if you are an expert in your field and your opinion is different than the company owners', good luck with that, they dismiss it and you loose creditability. You better keep it to yourself. They won't like other people coming to their company and tell them other things. For example, they don't know (and don't want to know) that their ERP system is an outdated technology from 60's and early 70's. If you like to use Putty (an ugly and extremely cumbersome DOS based utility) to interact with the ERP databases, then Argen is for you. But if you like to work with modern database systems such as SQL Server or Oracle, Argen isn't for you. I bet you don't know their ERP but don't expect to get training either. I requested that several times and was denied every single time. Reason given to me: "It's expensive". The bottom line is this: 1) Don't go to Argen unless you are unemployed 2) Even if you go there, keep applying for other jobs 3) Don't have high expectations, you will get frustrated sooner rather than later 4) Have your spouse get medical coverage 5) Be prepared to be overworked/under-paid/under-appreciated 6) Have a clear exit strategy 7) Don't have an opinion, keep everything to yourself 8) Don't expect to have lunch breaks, they will schedule meetings during your lunch breaks on routine basis (without asking you), 9) Don't expect nice words when you have your one-on-one next to everybody. For example, expect to hear things like: "IT is the weakest link in the company". You can bet that everybody's antenna is way up when they hear comments like that. 10) Be prepared to be told (in form of a company wide email coming from the top) what kind of color you have to wear on Wednesdays, and get ready to be singled out if you don't follow that.