Pros
Great place to sharpen your ESL translation skills. Upper management (always coming from Europe) has a rough time verbalizing and communicating effectively. This is evidenced in the October 16, 2013 posting below by the CEO. Yes, he feels it necessary to write false positive reviews about the company on here. He has also told employees in the past to write positive reviews on this website, specifically. In all seriousness, though the issues with communication between senior management and the rest of the employees runs much deeper than language barriers. It’s not a place where you’re going to work for and feel involved in business decisions with upper management. They do a good job or drawing a line in the sand and taking credit for as much as they can get away with. The October 16 post is referring to them in 3rd person and basically heaving praise at themselves even though they have yet to accomplish anything more than putting together a pretty website. It’s sad, but true. Other than that, there is usually free soda in the fridge, which is nice. Being a software company, the dress code is also pretty relaxed.
Cons
The biggest issue is upper management. They are completely out of touch with the organization. They force employees to work 12-15 hour days and then take credit for the successes by directly stating in a company-wide bulletin that they, themselves have achieved whatever fire drill it is that week, without communicating who really did the work. Beyond that, they’re extremely under experienced. They’re constantly telling you that they worked for a premier consulting firm, even though no one really cares. It does not matter where you worked in your past if you can help the organization in the present. Material product issues (which they’re still constantly experiencing) have been the major driver in forcing out good customers. This is an industry where, once you have a customer, you should be able to keep them fairly easily. Costs for new systems is a large deterrent in migrating vendors. However, over the past 3 years (even more so in the past year) the company has experienced a mass exodus in client base. A very small percentage of that is due to moving off legacy systems and defining their product offerings. The fact of the matter is, if you can’t consistently meet ICD/MU compliance on the scheduled dates, you’re going to be behind in the industry no matter what type of product you have. As much as they try to tell you they’re an industry leader, they’re not. It’s a small, starter type organization. If you’re looking for a good, well-managed product, seek one elsewhere. The company culture has taken a dramatic dip downward in the past 2 years, partly due to a revolving door of CEO’s and high volumes of layoffs, without much communication. Individuals (most of whom were from the legacy companies that were purchased) have gone from caring about the organization and working hard to improve the processes/products to constantly covering their tracks and making sure they don’t do anything to cause an uproar. This is a not a culture that promotes constant improvement and innovation. Ultimately, it leads to slow moving decisions and frustration from employees who want to improve the company, although, it’s the customer who suffers in the end. The turnover ratio of this company, alone, should tell prospective customer/employees there is something wrong here. Even more telling, might be the amount of Manager/Director level employees that have left in the last 6 months. Although, when most of these employees leave, they try to put a positive spin on it. The last example is a high level employee in the Sales division was forced out (fired). A company—wide bulletin was put out, with the spin that he/she left on his/her own volition to take care of family matters back home. While you don’t need to communicate the reason for letting someone go, believing that your employees are dumb enough to not see through the lines is asinine, especially after you had made very hard push to everyone the previous 3 months telling them how this new individual was the solution to all the Sales department issues and that they would finally bring in new (outside) customer sales. It’s just offensive. The benefits are non-existent. You get little time off/vacation, no 401(k) match, extremely high health care costs (going even higher for 2014), and no job security to go along with it. Some posts here sarcastically say, “If you want a challenging work environment, work here.” I’m telling you that unless this is your only offer do not take a position with this company. If you do, continue to keep your lines of communication with recruiters and other employers open. Whether it’s due to zero outside sales (only sales to existing customer in the past 2-3 years), a dwindling customer base, or a myriad of corporate culture issues, you’ll want a safety net when the next round of “re-organization” comes about. But, if you’re an optimist, your boss probably won’t be with the company for a long period of time (whether due to leaving for a real job or getting fired), so there is always the opportunity for you to jump into a managerial position with little experience and no training.