Fresh Grad Predator
Pros
- The senior RPA team members and leads I worked with gave good constructive criticism and are non-toxic. - Hybrid work arrangement. Two days WFH; 3 days RTO.
Cons
- Pay is extremely below average. Fresh graduates, do not believe their honeyed words. Pay here is stuck in the low to mid-20 thousand Peso range. They will say their pay is competitive, promising a promotion based on your performance. I will get to that. - The contractual bond is several hundred thousand Pesos. New grads - this bond prevents you from changing companies lest you shell out the amount stipulated in your contract IN FULL. If your contract says "five years", then you cannot leave for five years - leaving even a day before your contract expiry ALSO forces you to pay the full amount. Yikes. - The chain of management is dead. Vertical career progression is nigh impossible since managers are so hands-off in monitoring employee career progression. Moreover, the higher-ups just do not care about ensuring that there are seniors, architects, or even a CoE Head to lead the team. So, what happens is that because the pay is not competitive and the experience is not worth it, seniors leave as soon as their contractual bonds expire (or whenever a willing company shoulders the bond) and no new seniors are either promoted to their level or hired. What happens is that the team is left with a bunch of low-level developers who work as if they're one to two levels higher than their current rank responsibility. New hires also rarely get the opportunity to pitch in here since clients want experienced members to participate instead. So what you get are underpaid, promotion-due "senior" members working mostly solo on supposed team projects while the management continually and deliberately ignores their hard work, refusing to even give them the slightest salary increase. - Management promises to support certifications but will do everything in its power to either delay said certifications (which are absolutely beneficial to your career progression and are, in fact, part of their promotion prerequisites) or deny them to you outright. My seniors had to fight for our batch to receive the promised UiARD in our contracts. - Junior hires are likely to stay on the bench without any useful commercial experience for months if not years. - Management is intentionally misleading and toxic. They give out performance evaluation forms that they themselves do not follow. As mentioned, they require certifications to reach higher levels but they will do everything in their power to make sure you don't get that certification. They also require certain months of commercial experience but if you're a new hire, you're likely to stay on the bench for months on end doing nothing but clerical work for OTHER teams instead of the automation team. - Talent management and management is slow at processing Certificate of Employment and Final pay.
