Pointwest Reviews

In my 3 years of stay (bond duration), I was never promoted (only regularized from probation). The manager in charge of me was assigned to lead a new department and thus dropped all the responsibility of handling the promotion process which resulted in no promotion until the day I left the company. Our batch of 'bootcampers' was gathered for the promotion announcement and procedures (1 year into the company). However, due to what happened to some of us (said scenario), we were not promoted and waited for nothing with false hope for the following 2 years. I left the company having a lower salary than the newer 'bootcampers' as my promotion and salary increased was not given to me (see below) If you were put in a situation like mine, your team might not have projects for years without any plans from the higher management. They will constantly retool you and put you into responsibilities where you don't belong. Many times, you would be training or 'bootcamping' for nothing. The bond contract is very long and very strict and is not retroactive. This was the opinion of a consultant from the Department of Labor and Employment (PH), not just my words. Shady Practices: There are a lot of informal promises used to lure you into hiring, such as promised certifications or signing bonuses. Don't be tricked by this, since this company plays a lot with contract legalities. As long as it isn't part of the contract, they won't provide it. They will literally tell you to check the contract, then lie afterwards that they didn't promise anything. You can't be too innocent for them. If you have submitted your resignation, even if you are pending a promotion or a salary increase, you would be removed from those lists. Does it matter? Of course, you'd be leaving with a lower rate for your final pay. You are required to absolve them of any problems that could come back to them (e.g., mental health problems) before you could be cleared after resignation and have your final pay processed. Even if it is agreed upon in their contracts and forms, from my experience, there would be chances that they won't fulfill their obligations. For example, by agreement, they would provide the final pay within 2 months (which is a long time compared to other companies) from resignation based on their clearance form. In my case, I got my final pay after 3.5 months, and I had to seek help and assistance from the Department of Labor and Employment (PH) just so I could get them to process it. Note: This was the 3rd company I've been in, and none of the prior companies I've been in treated employees as badly as Pointwest did,

Keep in mind that you will be bonded for 3 years, and a breach of that bond will cost you 200k. Staying for 3 years in a company isn't necessarily a long time, but don't forget that you'll go through the following: you will rarely use the skills you will learn from bootcamp, because they may assign you (this is not up to you to choose which one you want to participate in, UNLESS management/leads like you) to projects that use a different/old system, so you’ll have to learn through hands-on experience fast. You will also get stuck in a project for long periods of time, and I know they promise you that you can be exposed to other projects/get transferred from time to time, but no, the only exposure you’ll get will be stretch assignments, and even if you do well on that, you’ll still be paid the same low salary (so technically, you’re doing free labor for the company, when it’s not part of your actual responsibilities. Please be mindful of this, because most projects are hectic and will cause you to feel burned out). Also, when you do get transferred to another project, there is VERY little to no onboarding – you will literally hit the ground running, and then you get reprimanded if you make mistakes. They’ll tell you that there are promotion opportunities, but that rarely happens and is also dependent on how much your lead/s like you, and whether there's budget, apparently. The most ‘promotion’ bootcampers get would be when they graduate from bootcamp, and then they stay in the same salary range for 2+ years. The salary adjustment they promised? Rarely happens, and when it does, the amount is small that you won’t even be able to feel it. I know they also promised learning opportunities through the way of certifications, but they will only select who can participate in them. Also, I've heard from my teammates that there’s little to no budget for it anyway, so if you want to acquire certificates, use your own money (this is what they did). Also, keep in mind that if you do get chosen to participate in a certification class, depending on the cost, it can get you bonded too. There’s rampant favoritism, which I’ve noticed with how HR handles resignation notices. You will know whether management likes you if they book time with you to try and prevent you from leaving (and no, this is different from the offboarding process). Developers often let each other know that we'll be resigning, and as a result, HR receives the notices almost consecutively. However, I’ve noticed that there are common factors to those they convince to stay, such as the school they came from (especially if they’re from Ateneo, UST, DLSU, or UP), their fluency in English (typical Filipino mindset: if they’re good in English = they must be a good employee – but really, that’s what BAs are there for to cover), and their project assignment/s (which is not their fault because they don’t have the power to choose where they are assigned to anyway), but they will be easier to let go if they’re not in a billable project. Lastly, it irks me when HR/Payroll repeatedly says that salary is confidential. In my current company now, this is not our practice. Why? Because this means that employees don’t know how their pay relates to the others, and they may start to think that they’re being underpaid than the others (I can guarantee that here, you will be underpaid compared to your peers who graduated from ‘the big 4 schools’, even if you equally started in your career path during bootcamp). Keeping salaries confidential leaves employees prone to being sabotaged, because they will not know if their colleagues are paid higher for literally the same responsibilities (hate to break it to you, but you will also realize that you have colleagues who earn more than you but do and have WAY LESS responsibilities than you). Ultimately, just use Pointwest for experience, then realize your worth. Loyalty doesn’t pay the bills.