Synectics Reviews

- Weak leadership - unable to drive change - Immature development practices; chaotic, adhoc, individual heroics, unpredictable software. Software is typically unreliable, re-introducing previously resolved issues, uncontrolled feature introduction, driven from development rather than Product Management. Features are typically what the organisation feels the customer wants rather than asking what is needed - Lack of strategic direction, poor communication and lacking in organisational capability. The heroic nature of the majority of projects (both in development and delivery) has created a reliance on "key" people (the "heroes") for strategy and direction. However these staff lack knowledge and experience in areas where the business needs to improve; hence a continuous cycle of emergencies and disaster and an inability to analyse and learn from previous mistakes, or take on-board new ideas or thinking.

All the issues raised in other reviews are correct. Management unable to drive change. Three different sets of management in the development team over the last few years and original problems still exist. Part of this is down to a history of producing highly complex, customized software, and a stubbornness to let go of old products for fear of making some customers unhappy. The latter extends further to the point whereby we end up creating a considerable amount of problems for ourselves just to appease customers. Processes don't exist, and even if they did they wouldn't be adhered to. Product management is still a new concept for Synectics and they still haven't quite nailed it. Software is very much developer focussed and very little thought is given to the end user in terms of appearance and usability. Products are sent out the door in an untested state with no supporting documentation. Support teams struggle to provide assistance and development spend a considerable amount of time providing support. This cycle then repeats itself. Again it's this obsession to appease the customer even if it means shooting ourselves in the foot. There is a real desperation to win projects even when we know it will cause a problem further down the line. Nearly all recently won projects have been won without consideration for how we're going to deliver them, all leading to panic and chaos in the weeks leading up to the required go live dates. Concerns fall on deaf ears as money has priority (even though the aforementioned projects likely end up incurring a loss). Sadly it's reached the point where people in the development team don't want us to win projects for fear of being unable to deliver them. The promotion of a people first culture is just a façade. Recent years has seen a large drop in headcount and little has been done to replace people however expectations haven't changed. In fact there is an expectation that more needs to be done and the pressure some people are under is immense. The employee survey never gets acted upon and is a box ticking exercise for the annual report. Salaries vary wildly with lots of valuable staff considerably underpaid and a large amount of senior staff who contribute very little earning eye watering amounts. This inevitably means that recruitment is a struggle for the positions that matter, and the company is unable to attract any talent. The future outlook of the company is concerning. Any sign of turbulence or if a loss is forecasted and the CEO is immediately cutting staff and reducing business expenditure. I appreciate that Covid has thrown most companies a curve ball and it's better to play it safe in these circumstances however I've witnessed three rounds of redundancies over the years and it seems to be our default go-to action, instead of being able to weather the storm and focus on the future. Whilst this could be blamed on market volatility I think the real reason is two fold; a lack of a long term plan and a bit of an identity crisis. Sadly both are a chicken and egg scenario and until both of these get fixed the company won't improve and grow.