Pros
- Almost all the managers are good people. Regardless of their department, Ruby hires good people bringing an assortment of positive attributes which makes for a great environment. - When I was there, all of the Project Managers were really, really great to work with (I was a developer). - The entire Design department (top-down, bottom-up) are all super awesome people who are qualified subject matter experts. If ones domain is primarily front-end focused, when making decisions on a UI elements impact in the design like data consumption or design influence, they're great people to be chatting with. They really strive to do their best. Always aiming for perfection in their work, helping make a developers life easier and they're open to ideas. As an example; I offered a suggestion to help solve a certain type of problem and they ended up going above and beyond to help implement it. - Location is near TTC and around lots of food options. Restaurant, groceries or prescriptions, products are attainable with very little effort. If one utilizes the location properly, they can really reduce time spent outside work on menial tasks. - This could have changed since I was there, if it has, that's a shame so this could be something to think about for your interview. There wasn't any micromanagement. To provide an example; there was a very stressful period of work due to poor decisions of the past. Couple that with the inability for management to divorce themselves from these bad decisions. The impractical was expected to magically be made practical. The devs & qa (being the great people and team-players they are) sacrificed weekends to try and satisfy their superiors. There was no doubt big pressure on new management, in my opinion a developers life was not made to feel like hell (I'm sensitive). Even when times were tough, my peers made life easier. Regarding the bad decision making and the reluctance to change the approach, this was eventually addressed and things got better. So... People listen, it just took a while sometimes. - HR & their surrounding teams were great. Never an issue with payroll, bonuses always paid on time. Whenever I had to interact with HR it was always a good experience. Whether it was something like questions about vacation time or personal matters HR was a pleasure to deal with. - Benefits package is good and they make the rewards super transparent.
Cons
- Unusually high turnover rate. You're either working with relatively new employees, long-time employees or those who have left and came back. The ratio of new hires far outnumbers that of long-timers. - This is difficult to put in the "Con" column given that it should be looked at contextually. Ruby went through some really tough times and had to deal with some extremely unusual business/legal problems. The company has overcome some extraordinary issues and in the process of rebuilding their market ownership. Either that or they're slowly decaying. I haven't dedicated enough time to come to a conclusion on this for myself. If career trajectory is something you value, try to get a sense of where they are and where they are headed. - Unfortunately they are still married to poorly engineered products. I won't get much more in this for security reasons but if you qualify them enough on where the company is and also headed, you may get a decent enough signal as to what I may be speaking of. - With the high turnover rate came a sometimes chaotic environment. Again though, the coworkers really played a big part here either making a newbie fit in or a full timer laugh at some ludicrous decision that was made.
