Pros
There were some pros to being with DSD. Just some. - Pay is optimal, usually averaging on par with market industry pay or even slightly into the higher pay range for roles with the added education and background experience. Monthly pay forces you to budget better ahead if needed. - Work/life balance is decent. Most positions are based under contracts, so labor performance is strictly regulated. This equates to not working longer hours than needed. Many positions are hybrid (office and remote) but depends on the contract and client. Time off is flexible. PTO is given average and separate sick PTO is given. - Health benefits were decent and no premiums were paid. This meant that the company took on paying the full premium amounts for the health plans and nothing came out of my paychecks to contribute to this (many companies don't do this, however, read the Cons section to see why).
Cons
- Although the salary was fairly decent, you get paid once a month. Might be some pros to that, but uncommon pay structure since pay is released during monthly invoice periods on contract. Unfortunately, with a larger sum paid in this frequency, larger tax deductions come out all at once as well. Consider budgeting more wisely throughout each month, especially if you are the breadwinner of the family you're supporting. - 401k vesting: company matching does not occur until 1yr employed. I paid into my 401k for a couple months wondering why the company wasn't matching my contributions to a certain amount as promised, until HR said that wouldn't happen until 1yr. Not fully vested until then. - While not paying premiums from my paychecks for company-provided healthcare plans was nice, it unfortunately increases your tax liability during tax season. The tax burden falls more on the employee since paying into a healthcare plan would have been added to your tax deduction. I actually owed taxes in more than I had anticipated. Something to consider. - When you get thrown to the wolves without disclaimers, training, or much other information to move forward, it can take some time to hop that learning curve. - When you work hard and do things well, more is expected of you. No praise, nothing said. However, they'll let you know when things aren't going well. That's when you hear back from management. - When you submit your resignation, you hear words coming back to you that you never thought you'd hear, such as disappointment for leaving. - Hardly any chance for upward mobility. You're hired for a position and expect to play that role for as long as they can milk you for it. - No performance feedback or annual process. How can you gauge performance if not being evaluated in any way? - No annual increases. - Very little communication from company entities. Seems like employees are mostly siloed into their work with other teams and clients. - During my time, VP and Sr VP of the company were micromanaging and meddling into nearly everyone's work. VP was also oddly participating on technical calls for projects that didn't seem relevant to her role at this level. They were all about control and sales pitching. Too much overselling and overpromising to deliver to the clients, even as technical SME's knew a lot of things weren't feasible or possible to achieve (time constraints, resources, etc.) - that's one thing that drove their reputation further down the hole since it was a losing battle and hard to deliver. - When you speak up as a technical expert with how senior management is trying to pitch selling points and you want to point out any flaws or how some things are certainly challenging to even complete because of the resource limitations (ie: telling a client we will develop the same functionality using a tool that doesn't have features designed to handle the intent of the work and that it will replace something that is much more customizable/versatile with coding designed to handle the features asked for), then only to be told to know your place, keep quiet, and do the work (when you know some aspects are virtually impossible to complete with existing resources). So, you have no choice but to march forward and aimlessly attempt to make magic happen. Then, you get questioned on why you're spending so much time and why it's being so difficult to achieve desirable outcomes. Is it worth it running in circles all the time when you have no voice in the matter? - When you deal with more work and responsibilities that go beyond your initial role and you ask to reevaluate for some additional compensation, you're told flatly "no" and "if you want more, go find it elsewhere". - While nice being offered a 6-figure job, there's a caveat to taking on the role. They want to entice you and bring you on for the work. Ultimately, over time, you find out it's not really worth it. The only good thing about this was that it allows you to work through a lot of pain points to build up the experience on the job so that you can find better opportunities outside of DSD. Be careful of the dangling carrot that gets puts in front of you. - When half a dozen employees suddenly put in their resignation within the same month, that's a red flag! - When you have a manager that sends out a copied and pasted email message (verbatim) to the rest of the team members asking if they intend to stay or find work outside the company after a couple people had left, what kind of engagement to the team is that? Not even a huddle or group call to address any issues/concerns.