Vantaggi
ASG really is a low pressure place where you can have a decent work-life balance. And, I've had quite a few colleagues who I admire and believe are doing the best they can given the circumstances. Because it's such a universally demotivating working environment, a certain camaraderie has formed among the non-senior employees where everyone mutually understands each other.
Svantaggi
The official line is that ASG is a "privately-owned sales-based software company". In practice, what that means ASG is essentially a financial instrument - a means for the CEO to buy software companies and use those companies to leverage the buyout of further companies. This basically will continue as long as the banks are willing to loan him money. Do not be misled into believing that ASG is a "software company". It sells software, yes. But Walmart or Amazon sell software, and they're no more software companies than ASG is. The pattern goes something like this: ASG identifies a company that it can acquire. The companies usually are just marginally profitable or perhaps struggling a bit. Once acquired, most staff in "cost-center" departments are let go, usually those in support or HR type positions. When the new employees have had a chance to survey their new surroundings and lack of employment incentives, the most mobile and re-employable leave quickly - usually in about 6-12 months. Unfortunately, this often includes the people who understand the software and related industry best, lots of technical people and developers, and usually no effort is made to retain them. Now, with costs of supporting, maintaining and developing the software greatly reduced, ASG sells the software more profitably and use the maintenance revenue to persue the acquisition of yet another company. Obviously, the ability to do this only lasts a short time, as the market evolves and the original software becomes obsolete. So except for a small handful of products, many of the products haven't been improved or developed in years, and because of the high employee turnover there is literally no one in the company who knows anything about them. For a typical acquisition Google the ASG Mobius acquisition and you'll see a fairly old but typical example. It's almost identical to the acquisition of Visionapp. For further evidence of this, compare the value of all the companies that ASG has acquired to ASG's current value, you'll see the current value is actually less. If you Google ASG's debt rating it shows the whole is worth less than the sum of the parts. Yet, somehow the banks continue to lend ASG money and the CEO continues to acquire new companies, which to me implies something about the banking industry and the financial crisis in general. Most of the employees left behind are usually trapped and demoralized. The only people that seem to benefit are the CEO himself and the cabal of mercenaries that he has surrounded himself with. The CEO rents the buildings where ASG is headquartered to ASG, and apparently he even owns the jets that ASG rents to fly him around. I'd compare the CEO to a run-of-the-mill dictator who surrounds himself with cronies, but that would be unfair to dictators. Even Gaddafi had better approval ratings. He's got a captive labor pool in Naples, where its small economy is almost entirely travel and tourism based. If you're a technical person, you must have nothing to do with this company. I can't stress this enough. A job here is strictly temporary. There is no career development whatsoever, no substantive training or skills refreshes, and no raises. What you come into ASG with, is what you come out with. This is fine if you just need short-term work, but you'll find yourself losing earnings relative to inflation and having trouble re-entering the job market after a long stint here.