Pros
The developers on the team all seem smart and dedicated, it was a pleasure to work with them.
Cons
I've had ample time to think about my experience at Nimble and have tried to give some distance to when they ungracefully let me go, and I am not convinced they are not setting themselves up for success for either their employees or their company as a whole. Here are just a few things I noticed during my tenure.
- Meetings overload. I would have on average 3-4 calls a day, throughout the day. There were even times I would be scheduled a meeting the night before and would be expected to be at one before my usual start time and then it'd be used against me. This is partially due to having teams globally, but had I not seen the email the night of, I would have missed it entirely anyways.
- Speaking of, crunch and working extended hours were encouraged and also expected. There was no respect for work/life balance.
- If an employee is struggling with real life, health, or other issues that could affect performance, they do not try to work with the employee. For a while they did, but over time it became more rigid and with the change in management they didn't seem to care about previous accessibility changes for employees to work.
- They refuse to hold clients accountable for abuse until it is well too late and taken out on staff.
- Management from middle to upper had a LOT of turnover which also changed directives. A few months in one direction. Change of management, Move a different direction. It was difficult to keep up with the changes.
- They put far too much emphasis on time entry, efficiency, and writing reports of "ways to improve". This has caused a lot of stress.
- My experience is that they do not use the talents of their development team to the fullest. I told various management where my passion and interests lied, and was not offered changes in positions that would have better suited my skill set nor was told they were making those positions available. I was shocked when I learned I was one of the few on the whole team that knew how to script code and even after showing proficiency in that was not given opportunity to use that while others who struggled or lacked experience with it did.
- Meetings would discuss a lot about the company needing to "improve", highlight "low points" (This is admittedly a directive from the parent Community Brands), and "improving reputation". Yes, this is transparent which can be applauded, but it was crushing for morale and also added a lot of unneeded stress to employees.
- They stress communication, but require employees to use too many tools for that communication. This includes email, multiple chat/video programs, time entry sites, meetings, project management sites, client facing sites. It was incredibly difficult to keep up with conversations. Was it on the ticket site? Chat program? I got talked to multiple times for not communicating enough. I showed management my chat logs but was told it wasn't "public" or trackable.
- Company culture and morale is very much an afterthought. Anything that is set up for team or morale improvement is seen as a waste of time or money and is not encouraged. If you do end up with an activity of some kind you were expected to make up the time later. Your billable time/efficiency is rigidly calculated by a spreadsheet and if you get too close to your percentage of your billable time, you get in trouble.
- They clearly do not trust the word of their employees. Towards the end of my employment I found out they were doing a lot to "track" and micromanage employees. It felt too invasive and I was shocked at the breach of my privacy.
- The final thing that I learned is that while they don't fully trust their employees, management in turn cannot be trusted either. I felt like I was building some professional relationships with the new management, but they didn't hesitate to drop me. I went from having zero issues to suddenly being put on watch.
These are just a few of the things to expect if you are hired at Nimble. I was pushed to my mental, emotional, and even at times physical limits. For days, turning to weeks. The grind was too much and eventually led to burnout which I am still recovering from to this day. It has made me lose confidence in both myself as a person, as a developer, and the parent company as a whole. Should I have left when I realized the abusive and toxic work culture had reached a breaking point? Yes. That is on me. But I held on to some of the continual hope that was offered by management that things would stabilize, improve. I trusted they had my best interest as an employee at heart. That trust was ultimately violated. If you want to be a developer for the Salesforce platform, look for another company.