Pros
An opportunity to get some work experience, but you will miss out on learning best practices.
Cons
SC is a right-to-work state – you can quit or get fired without cause.
You will get fired without cause.
2022-23 There was a 95% turnover within 1 year
• 4 quit without having another job
• 10 were fired with no warning or prior conversation
• 8 left for new opportunities
Ownership asked current employees to write positive reviews to counter the bad reviews.
The reasons for poor employee reviews:
1. There is no leadership.
- I’d like to modify the use of “leadership” in previous reviews. There is no leadership, only ownership.
- Ownership is too engrossed with other businesses to provide leadership.
- There is no one looking out for the team or employees
- The CEO is in sales but doesn’t understand software development
- The CTO admits he’s not a manager
2. There is no management
- Without management, there is chaos.
- No one to structure projects based on knowledge or skills
- No one to gauge employee performance
- No one to understand your strengths or weaknesses
- There is no middleman between ownership and the team
3. There is no HR
- There is NO communication from the top down.
4. There is no planning, systems, or processes.
- Without these, there is project chaos.
- Chronic employee uncertainty and low morale
- There is little to no research and user testing before, during, or after product development– Ownership considers this “a waste of time.”
- You work on products that are overly complicated and feature-heavy.
- Time is invested in designing and developing products with features that are not tested.
Your Team:
• The talented and experienced immediately look for work elsewhere, are fired, or rage quit.
• The team is made up of friendly employees with little to no training or experience.
• Arrogance is mistaken for competence.
• If you are given responsibility, you will be blamed for what is wrong with the company.
Without guidance, leadership, or management, how can an employee with little experience do a job well?
- If you don’t do something the way ownership thinks it should, it's wrong.
- You will be accused by ownership of doing your job wrong infront of your peers.
Project Managers:
- Given a lot of responsibility
- Do not utilize project management software
- There is no project planning
- There is project chaos
- Like in the 2000s, Project Managers interrupt your workday to hand out tasks and get updates.
- Project management does not know what is going on with projects
- This makes working remotely impossible.
For women:
- Ownership will not make eye contact (unless you are young and very skinny).
- If you offer a suggestion, you will be cut off.
- If you question a decision, ownership will perceive it as an attack.
- The patriarchy is no stranger here – A man’s opinion holds more value than a woman’s.
- The company operates much like a fraternity
Low salaries:
• You will not get a raise.
• No metrics are recorded, neither for projects nor employee performance. You have nothing to compare your contributions to.
• They’ve been in business for 5 years but call themselves a startup and use this as the reason for their low salaries.
• You will have to provide your own workstation.
Developers:
• Freely admit the products they work on are built poorly and take too much time.
• There are no systems, processes, or user testing
• Developers have little to no experience, and their team leads’ guidance comes from little to no experience outside of Code /+/ Trust. Engineers are given a task and jump right in.
• You will be removed from projects without reason.
• Features to be developed are determined by ownership or project management